a great thing about his royall badness ,
is that he tends to push
his music to a higher level.

please write your example of prince pushing himself to a higher level.

mine exaMPLES ARE :madhouse,rainbow children,news excpectations.

also 1999 album-with that one he opened the ground for the future sound of many artist as fatboy slim,daft punk,basement jaxx.

on purple rain album he dared to record 8 minute long balLAD thaT was totaly diffrent then anything else in that period -purple rain.

when everybody went on the journey of drum machines in 1991 he throw his drum machine in the can.

and i also have the theory that production of the rainbow children album is his best ever and so ahead of its time.

its organic but very well produced.

But what is the definition of a "higher level"?

Is it a higher level of complexity?
A spiritually higher level?
Something that hasn't been done before?

Let's say you have spent all your life making music that's complex, experimental and very serious. For such a person, "pushing the boundaries" could perhaps be to make very simple, commercial music...

I think most musicians strive to push their own boundaries, rather than what anyone else might (or might not) have done before. Therefore, it's very hard for an artist to be considered "progressive" for a long period of time, since your work is often a reaction to your previous work.

hmmmmm for me i feeel he was pushing more of these boundaries back in the day, in the albums between 1980 to 1992. I think in those days his albums were quite varied and progressive , he was always doing something different, he was unpredictable.
Maybe he has done since that period also but for some reason it doens't seem as significant.

thebanishedone said:

what about 'i wanna be your lover'
'head'?

i definately see some daft punk in prince's work from early as 1979

OskarKristio said:

Exactly!

Because the unpredictability becomes predictable in itself.
We're expecting him to do the unexpected!

So for Prince to do something unpredictable today would be to make, let's say, a traditional country & western album... Probably not very "progressive" at all, musically speaking, but definitely unpredictable in relation to his previous work and to our expectations.

So it really depends on how you look at it...

RealMusician said:

Yeh i do see what you mean, but hmmmm how can i explain it, its like at some point maybe post Lovesymbol its like he started kinda doing what everybody else was doing, not exactly...but for eg he started gettin in on the homeboy rap vibe a bit, Kaos and Disorder was released during the grunge era, the album cover was very grungy and negative plus a bit of a return to guitar driven songs to fit in with the guitar band scene of that time. but then again in general i think the 80's was more interesting period for contempory music compared to 90's anyway
so even if he was doing stuff like others during the 80's i probably would of dug it more.
i think NPG could of been a 80's album from its style and sound, but it wouldnt have been as good as the majority of the those 80's albums he did.