One thing that made me a big fan of Prince was his ability to create genious beats.

On records like 1999, Purple Rain and Sign he created 'magic' out of quite dated drummachine: The Linn
On his work with Clare Fischer he combined clevery arranged electronic beats (little melodies on itselve), with the aucoustics of strings and orchestra.
On records like 'Camille', The Black Album and Batman he brought us simpler, but very hard beats that did 'work' with the darker, funky nature of the songs.

On the other hand: there is some terrific 'real' drumming to be found on Princes records. During the period 1980 - 1983 he showed his own skills: sobre, but urgent 'new wave' drums on When You were Mine, delicate funkieness on Lady Cab driver and Irrestesible Bitch.
From 1984 he brought in other drummers on record: Bobby Z and Kirky J were the weakest in my opinion, the first not being very subtle and technically skilled, the latter sounding to dated and simple.
I know much of you admire John Blackwells drumming: I agree, technically its probably the best drummer Prince ever had. But i do find him to "flashy" and to "jazz-like" for Princes music.
Sheila E. did show (especially live) a great synergy with Prince, but my favourite Prince drummer is Michael Bland. His sobre but tight drumming brings a kind of urgency, rawness to records like the Gold Experience and Chaos and disorder.

So, what do i prefer: drummachines or real drums? Well, what about a new record on which Prince creates a new, revolutionary sounding drummachine sound (maybe using old 'devices', like he often does) and uses this as a skeleton for some inspired funkjams and psychedelic pop-songs, and at the same time bringing in Michael Bland in again, and give him much 'space' on some rockier tracks?

i prefer a real drummer

It's like what Miles said, "When Prince wants to make love to his woman, he doesn't hear violins, he hears drums and shit." Well. that's close to what he said.
I agree with all that you said and just perfer Prince on the drums.

Riverpoet31 said:

I AGREE, DAWG! EASILY, Mike B. was Prince's BEST DRUMMER! -- HANDS DOWN! And I prefer a set to a machine any day.

well.....erm.....on the other hand:
- If i was your girlfriend
- Mia Bocca
- Screams of Passion

Those were 'machines', but genious sounding ones....

i prefer the drum machine to anyone but Michael B.

the drum machine, I want the drum machine

Not to take away from the energy & talent & etc etc of a real drummer, but: damn I love(d) that drum machine!!

Not to brag, but on housequake.com you can find a link to an old prince.org discussion about Prince using the Linn... an interesting discussion among 'musicians' trying to achieve what Prince did with his Linn-drummachine...a very interesting read