True.

False.
Remember people said this when Sign of the Times came out, they said it before Batman sold millions of units, they said it before Diamonds and Pearls came out, they said it before The Most Beautiful Girl In The World came out, and they said it before Musicology came out..OK, he gave away cds at concerts, but even without the giveaway cds it would have gone high in the charts with the tour alone, and that is without any real hit single and minimal promotion .
They also said it before the Gold Experience came out, and that could´ve been a hit if it wasn´t for the war with Warner Bros. Remember I Hate U made it to position 11 in the pop charts without any real promotion behind it and a very cheaply shot video.
Take all his releases from the early nineties ( after the name change) and compile different albums or release other singles from those albums and you have some hits.
Or better yet, re-release some of those excellent tracks with proper promotion and he might be up in the charts again ( lots of wasted opportunities, like Shhh, I Hate U, Acknowledge Me, Right Back Here In My Arms, The Undertaker album, a decent live album or DVD etc. etc. etc. )

Keep in mind that , on top of all the WB fuss, he also made some strange decisions and went through a lot of pain that would´ve made other people give up everything completely...instead, he´s still releasing music, doing fantastic shows, makes music like Osaka, Tokyo, The War, Family Name, Everywhere, Last December, to name just a few..

He could be in a totally different position considering all the drama of the past years. So I , personally, am quite happy with the current situation and think that he´s still got it in him.
Another good thing is probably the influence of his wife, she seems to be very familiar with his body of work, and that´s a good thing.
Things are getting better I guess, we´ll just have to wait and see.
Also keep in mind that Prince´s musical peers and competitors/ rivals are either no longer there to challenge him or have been replaced by talentless acts like Usher etc.
There´s simply noone to chalenge him creatively, except for DÁngelo and so on, and even that is debatable since D´Angelo makes cool music but borrows a lot from others, especially from Prince.
The lack of challenge is a huge and mostly underrated factor..in the 80´s you had all kinds of competitors, from pop to rock to RnB, but todays music is different.

False

He still has the talent to make a great album. He did it before and he can do it again.
Some may find Musicology great.. I don't. It's not the Prince I like best.
He should do something more with his guitarskills. Make it rock again Prince!

if you dont find every album great anymore theres other artists to explore

Absolutely FALSE.

dreamfactory313 said:

True

It must be - surely he doesnt set out to make crap albums everytime..it just seems to happen that way

true...

over the last couple of years (since emancipation i think), he's gone more than a little insane and also has surrounded himself with "yes" men, who dont have the guts to tell him when a song sucks...

TRUE

The answer is what you make it ....If Prince release today Controvery you would more probally say what the fuck is this cuz the album with all the promotion would not be played on the radio at all this is the main point most of the org people don't get. The supposed classics can't stand by todays mindless talentless music, but again it goes back to you someone is buying Usher , Britney and others and losing then minds over then but, someone that is the real deal you bash them call them names and the list goes on Prince can't do anything for you guys but it goes back to you what can you do! Prince can make and made great Cd's but if he gave it to you the fantasy one of all what would you do then? Whin no flash again

Define Great.

u know what the f.ck i'm taking about ...play dumb if you like ...its like Prince saying love is to weak to define how much i adore you.

It's pretty much true. Sad to say.

Between burning himself out, becoming a JW, getting older, and becoming family friendly, he's just worth attention from time to time. He's not in the right mindset for creating good music. He's lost his edge for creating new and edgy stuff. He's lost his balls. Larry has them hanging off the end of his bass.

False. The Chocolate Invasion was great. Musicology was one of the better albums of 2004. I have no doubt we will hear greatness again.

Absolutely false. Great artists who are prolific and continue to work at their craft are always capable of creating great art. Cases in point:
- Picasso
- Wayne Shorter
- Elvis Costello
- Martin Scorsese
- Michaelangelo
- Annette Bening
- Bruce Springsteen
- Robert Pollard
- John Coltrane
- Ingmar Bergman
- Jack Nicholson
- Siouxsie Sioux

As for Prince, I can't wait for the next great album.
[Edited 1/8/05 9:53am]

EvilWhiteMale said:

But you've felt this way for a very very long time now. I seriously doubt he'll ever put out music you will like. maybe a tune...but not an album.

Oh I agree on the balls thing

That so completely and totally and ultimately depends on what is 'great' to the listener.

superspaceboy said:

I think it's possible for him to come out with some cool shit, but he'd have to switch gears so dramatically. Maybe if someone hits him on the head with a frying pan, he might snap out of the shitty spell he's under.

False- Musicology is a GREAT album. Many Prince fans are so twisted that they cannot appreciate what they have. The man just had the best year in his career since 1984 and people are still bitching.

It's like all the "Star Wars" fans who begged for 20 years for new "Star Wars" movies. George Lucas gives them some (That were monster smash hits) and a section of the fans bitch and moan Lucas has "lost it".

PurpleKnight said:

Well, who's gonna decide what "a great album" is?
I'm sure Prince feels that all his albums are great, don't you think?

EvilWhiteMale said:

??? When did he switch gears and lost you? Diamonds and pearls? I think that if someone could not get past that (I actually think that was when things seriously changed) everything after would be really hard to swallow. He lost all his purpleness about him. And by the time he actually started getting a little of it back...the sound had morphed into something completely else.

To be honest, I had a really hard time following after Batman, I really didn't dig the music that much. I think I grabbed onto a couple...like Melt with you and Loose. I was getting into techno and these hit those spots...sorta. It was when someone hit me over the head with the "genius pan" and I not only revisited his older material, but explored his newer stuff I hadn't paid attention too. (Being around 3 Prince geeks at the same time can influence how one hears him). I found him to still be a genius albeit an very angry one at this time. But his sound had changed. ANd I found that I did like some of it. I was "getting" it. And I went from there.

I do find his output during the 90's not really to be my favorite era...though I like Come. I do feel his return to "form" was a little after the CB and the War...when he did Rave. Though SO much time had passed, it just didn't sound the same. TRC I think is proabably his best musically...in recent times. It was very fresh and inspiring. Too bad the lyrics took away from most of it.

Really, the only way you will like his music, is if you do the adjusting. I am a born-again Prince fan.

FALSE!!!

Sorry folks if I sound a little bit angry but I'm a little tired of all this "Prince doesn't have it anymore"-"the 90's were bad" stuff. I just can't stand it anymore. Sorry, but if you get sick of Prince these days, go and open up usher.org or britney.org or (even better) ashlee.org and discuss their "great musicianship" and "excellent albums" there I mean, I will not defend anything the little man has ever made or released, but TRC and Musicology (and even most parts of Rave) were excellent and GREAT. O.k., they might be different from what some people want or expect from him, but that's Prince, always doing the unexpected, always proceeding, hating to repeat himself (isn't that an aspect of him most of us love???). So, if you are just into Prince because of albums he made back in the days when Ronald Reagan was U.S. president and a C64 was cutting edge in computer technology, maybe you should open a museum (maybe the "Purple Rain museum"), but I really can't understand why people spend their time posting in internet forums just to complain how great P's past was and how boring he is nowadays.
And, btw, I really get tired of all this "Larry G bad boy" stuff, do you really think that a man so innovative and polarizing as Prince is not able to develop his own opinion, but just does things another person tells him? I mean, I'm not a JW, but we should respect P's decision and stop making stupid jokes about it.

Again, sorry guys for so much angriness, but I feel better now

superspaceboy said:

FALSE!!!!

Define 'great'.

Does he have it in him to make anything like the material pre-Lovesexy?

No, I don't think so.

Does he have it in him to make something better than the post-Lovesexy material, better than The Gold Experience, or The Rainbow Children?

Yes, I think so.

Prince is a genius. He can pull it off. FALSE. Who knows what he has cookin in that big ass almond shaped head of his?

EvilWhiteMale said:

Personally, I think Prince definately has it in him to produce some incredible music.

One of Prince's biggest faults right now is that he is content with his music. I think he's at his very best when he's trying to prove something. Purple Rain was written when he wanted to white-friendly anthom that would get radio play, and U got the Look was written (I think) to fool a friend of his into thinking that the song wasn't written by him.

He can't stay young forever. He's eventually going to look in the mirror and see the age spots. Then he'll go from content to mid-life crisis in o time at all, nd we'll get music that once again seeks to prove something.

We also need to remember, that the string of albums in the 80's (from Dirty Mind to LoveSexy) where mindblowing becuase they where new . We don't have "new" anymore. I'm not sure he could come up with anything that would surprise us the way those albums did. But he can come up with very good material again. And I have faith it will happen.

False.

But - Prince's current idea of what constitutes a "great" album isn't the same as mine so this is a rather subjective question, in my opinion.

On a sidenote, I feel that these days he's coasting by on autopilot as far as his musical creativity goes, and catering too much to certain aspects of his life I won't go into.

Hopefully one of these days he'll again get a fire in his belly that he won't feel he needs to tamp down or repress, and he'll let it out again on record.

papabeat said:

Great list. I've said it to Alex Hahn : don't bury a genius in his forties, especially not one who's addicted to his art. Prince records like others write diary entries, and even if each song is not a "classic", he is bound to continue to come up with great material... and he may well be around until a ripe old age like Tony Bennett. So even if Prince releases loads of so-so albums, the way he works makes it likely he'll release something close to perfection from time to time.

skywalker said:

Um, Lucas lost it a long time ago. Return of the Jedi anyone? A movie with a very promising first half hour that degenerated into an inane childish mess full of teddy bears and woodland barbecues. He sold out more than anybody else in history has EVER sold out and he more or less admitted as much. From a promising, innovative indie filmaker to a mega-corporate tech geek and toy whore. And c'mon, if you liked Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones that's cool...but they sucked big time , especially in comparison to the original trilogy (as hard as I just was on Jedi it was a masterpiece compared to the most recent two).

AAAAAannyway, back to Prince. Most great artists' legacies are based around a "prime" which usually doesn't last more than seven years. That doesn't mean they don't make good, or arguably even great material before or after the parameters of their prime, but few artists make consistently great, influential, relevant, important music for more than seven years. With Prince it was from 1980-1987 (dirty mind to lovesexy), for James Brown it was 1964-1970 (live at the apollo to sex machine), for Stevie Wonder it was 1970-1977 (Where I'm Coming From to Songs in the key of life), and the Beatles? Their entire recording career was really only seven years anyway. Prince is past his prime, but that doesn't mean he's incapable of making music ALMOST as good as what he made in his prime.