9 months ago, I made a CDR for a friend of mine who was a medium scale Prince fan.

Medium Scale? Well, he owned all the albums upto Rave, and he did own Small club and Lovesexy Dortmund videos. You decide how bigg a fan he is.

You get the picture. He likes P in a big way, but has dropped his interest as Prince Records as they became less available over the years.

Roll on March 2004.

I burn him (no judgements here) a copy of Musicology. But with a difference.

I add the C-note Empty Room as track 4, and Splash as the final track.

8 months later he tells me the albums is pretty good. He makes a point of telling me that the Empty Room track blows the rest of the album away, but Splash comes a close second (followed by Pimp Coma third).

My point is, he never knew I added these, or they were from different eras. Yet he picked two out of three that were "better than the rest”.

Does this mean Prince really has “Lost it” in song writing ability in the 00’s??

Can we do some more Prince "pepsi challenges"!!!?!?

I'm goin' with Coca-Cola Classic.

raveon2tnek said:

Mumbo-jumbo bollocks. We're talking pop music here.

NouveauDance said:

did u 4 one sec think i was talking porn?

All of my friends except for one, wrote Prince off after he changed his style in 1985. The only one left, has been a hardcore fan up until the present. After hip hop albums like "New Power Soul" and accoustical albums like "The Truth", he is about at the end of his rope. The last two albums, he listened to one time and put them on the shelf. I told him to listen to them some more but he's tired of wasting money on "weird" albums.

I still enjoy Prince's new music, but NOTHING like the old stuff. If his next album is accoustical, I will not be buying it myself. It will just be one Prince album that I don't own.

I guess it all boils down to a matter of opinion. Personally, I don't think Prince is capable of what he did in the '80s. Does that mean he should stop making music? No. I love much of the music he has made since then. But it would be nice if he decided to release more of what many consider his "prime" material. One way to look at is this, if Prince's first album was Graffiti Bridge, he still would have released many great songs and most of us would probably be fans, but when you compare his work from 1990-2004 to what he did in the '80s, it just doesn't quite measure up.

prince as a songwriter is still going strong...its the studio thats killing him...i dont know, maybe he needs susan rogers around cause his new songs sound awesome performed live....throw on the cd after the show and you are left with a blah represenation of the work...

reminds me of how wendy explained trevor horn's production process..."you record and re-record until all the life is sucked out of the songs".....

somethings missing.....can not compute..can not compute.

my era can beat up your era....

Handclapsfingasnapz said:

oh come on dansa.....this isnt about an era of music but the quality of music.....dont you have a thread to lock or something?

sosgemini said:

the quality of stuff pertains to particular eras as well. for fuck's sake, you hear people complainin about it all the time here. "i liked things better during the time of (insert album name here), it's better than what p's got goin on now."

Handclapsfingasnapz said:

but isnt that a valid comment to make? not everybody has lived here at the org for seven years like you and i. us oldies need to start appreciation the joy in repetition..

If I mention the last album I bought, I'll probably get banned for life from prince.org.

UptownDeb said:

Do I even want to know?

FunkMistress said:

sosgemini said:

Handclapsfingasnapz said:

IMHO...He has for the most part put out very quality music throughout all of the eras. The only thing that really changes is people opinion of the quality.

I showed NEWS for a friend and he said is great and said it´s much better than Purple Rain.

P.S. HE is a musican.

7salles said:

im a nudist...does that make me more qualified to judge your sexiness?

Too small of a sample size in songs as well as listeners giving an opinion.

What would other casual fans think of those same songs?

What would your friend's reaction been had you dropped in other new songs or other older, obscure songs?

We don't know the answer to either question.

No "proof" at all.

sosgemini said:

I'm a cineast/film maker ... does that make me more qualified to judge the quality of a movie?

I'm a basketball player... does that make mo more qualified to judge Kobe's skills than average person?

I'm a professional cooker.. does that make me more qualified to judge a new dishes on the the restaurant downtown?

7salles said:

yeah....so Celine Deon is technically a better singer then mary j blidge...the enjoyment of a song does not neccesarily equal the artists "technical" prowess...

There is no definitive answer to this question. The whole premise is subjective.
I believe that Prince has changed and much of his audience has changed- probably what he wanted all along.

You know what basically what average listener is going after is just a hook, or melody they can hum to and can remember. NEWS is full of interesting things musically, syncopated drumming cool rythms some great solos, pretty chords, but no one besides musicans (or people with good taste) will understand it. It is not genious, its not incredible as Prince used to be, but it's far from shit, and far from crap. ANYONE whos says NEWS is crap is a musical idiot.

7salles said:

Maybe anyone who says NEWS is crap doesn't like it? As others have pointed out, musical proficiency doesn't necessarily equate good music. Example, all those guitar shredders from the '80s. Sure, many of them were great players, but most of them couldn't write good music.

but they made great riffs and solos and that alone qualifies the music as not crap. Plus the vocalists could sing.

I LOVE N.E.W.S

SquirrelMeat said:

-----
If you listen to "Call My Name" you can see P has not lost it as a song writer.
CMN is still getting airplay after 4 months. Somebody out there likes this song.

All of his CD's have their dogs and their jewels like any other artist.