between the back ground ad lib toward the end of Prince's 17 days (long version) and Alex O'Neals A broken heart can mend? is it my imagination or maybe its that minneapolis sound thing - anyway love both songs and after 20 years of listening to them only just noticed.

what no one?

As far as I know, there is only one version of "17 Days"

This was also mentioned in one of Per Nielsen´s books a long time ago, I think in his first edition of Prince;A Documentary. You can find a lot more similarities when you listen to some of P´s 80´s songs and other Jam/Lewis songs ( listen to You Can Be Mine off Janet´s Control album...guess where some of those melodies come from )

Or listen to The Love I Never Had by MaryJBlige....it blatantly rips off I Hate U...and maybe that´s the reason it got delayed when it was first mentioned in Vibe magazine in 1995 or 96...because I Hate U was still fresh in people´s ears and the rip off would´ve been too obvious....but it´s all good, they´re all one big family anyway, and who knows who stole what and when from each other.

KoolEaze said:

Yeah there are loads of similar sounding riffs etc, and I actually dont think any of it was stolen from anyone else, there may have been certain styles/sounds that people just naturally incorporated - remember how many tracks had that Soul II Soul sound in the early 90s? My observation was more one of warm recogniton

Is there any TRULY original music...

Don't everything start with some inspiration from something, oftentimes being an unintentional rehashing of said inspiration.

steevetheeo said:

True , the point of my origianl post wasn't to point the finger more to acknowledge that two brilliant records had similar touches at similar times and that it just underlined how close the producers still were as friends.