This week's New Yorker, (June 11th 2001), contains an article by Ben Greenman entitled "Funk's Past and Present" (pages 92-95).

The article is mainly about the re-release (with a slight shuffling of the tracklisting) of Shuggie Otis's 1974 album "Inspiration Information" and the subsequent revival of Otis's career.

I'll quote the relevant Prince passages here -- only two brief mentions -- but I recommend the article for Greenman's discussion of "neo-soul" and his references to newer artists such as Musiq Soulchild and Jill Scott (also brief):

"What brought Shuggie Otis back? The simple answer is Otis's record label, Luaka Bop, which was founded by David Byrne and has made a habit of bringing idiosyncratic guests to the pop-music party, from the Brazilian folk eccentric Tom Ze [acute accent over the "e" in Ze that I don't know how to reproduce] to the African vocal ensemble Zap Mama. But it took more than Luaka Bop to stage a resurrection. It took neo-soul. By the early eighties, black pop was hurting, unless your name was Michael Jackson or Prince, and the late-eighties explosions in hip-hop and honeyed four-part harmonies did nothing to revive soul music" (93).

"The feral "Ice Cold Daydream" sounds like a studied update of Jimi Hendrix's molten blues, and "Happy House," a minute-long squib of positive thinking punctuated by trippy synthesizer swirls, could be the latest single from Prince or Beck" (94).

The remainder of Greenman's article is about Michael Franti and Spearhead, for those interested.

[And here I was, thinking I was quite possibly the only prince.org person that read the New Yorker I didn't get to that article yet, though! -Ben]