There are a few - as there are in every music legend's history. There is always someone lurking to cash in or claim credit for the success of a star once they reach a certain level of fame. YOu could say this for Michael Jackson's entire family now - except perhaps Janet.

I always got a kickout of Pepe Willie. Putting that old 94 East stuff out with young Prince and Andre Cymone was interesting if not musically relevant. I remember the day I saw the album cover - all purple clouds with a dove and sticker that said PRINCE. I laughed out loud. Pepe had some old tapes that had suddenly become historic musical documents and the earliest known recordings of Prince. Hey, I would have gotten them out there and latched them to the tail end of that purple bandwagon post-haste. You cant blame him.

NOw he has built entire new songs around some old guitar riffs Prince laid down in the 70s. Like Mpls Genius, it is marketed with Prince's name out front. Which wouldnt be ridiculous if it all the new music was so lame.

The fact that Willie is still hacking at the music busines well into his 50s and this is all he has come up with that anyone would care about is, at best, cheesy - at worst, pathetic. ,

Brofie said:

You

I don't know... A musician's life is tough, Pépé probably didn't make much cash out of his career as a producer and he had this material... Of course it's a bit ridiculous to have this rereleased over & over, but after all he legally owns the stuff, it's basically his music, and to be honest if you or i had the possibility to make a few dozens of thousands of dollars out of such material, i guess we'd just do it... So yeah, it annoys Prince (he said it in some interview i think) and yeah, it can seem a bit ridiculous, but i don't think that most people who'd be in his shoes would act differently... I probably wouldn't... So we shouldn't be too hastly in judging Pépé...

After all, Morris Day and a few other Time members are doing exactly the same thing even though they're all composers in their own right: 95% of the material they play live is 25 years-old Prince compositions, and they don't even do much in rearranging them differently, but who are we to judge?