I emailed La Times stallworth, Robert Hilburn, who has a habit of hating most of Prince's 90's albums. Surprised, he did email me back. Not much, but hoping this will start in a great email war.

"Hi paul....where did i say i'll no longer review prince? i don't agree with bob on those recent albums. i think they pale alongside prince's great work.....last one was certainly an improvement, but nothing like controversy or dirty mind or sign of the times in terms of originality and impact...would you really put the recent ones on the same level??"

Prince defending is a tough job.
"

comparing 'musicology' to 'dirty mind' is like trying to compare iggy pop's 'blah blah blah' to his work with the stooges. of course on the surface it pales by comparison, but taken on its own merits, it's got some good stuff going on for it. this is why i don't like writing or reading reviews - it's too easy to want to trap an artist in a box based on a specific era of their career. 'musicology' isn't as great as prince's 'glory days' material, of course not - but for what it was and is, it's not a bad little pop album. it's the first one in a long time that i've been able to listen to all the way through without wanting to hit the skip button.

I was talking about Gold and Emancipation, both great albums.

2freaky4church1 said:

emancipation is deeply flawed but certainly not without its strong points. i think the production on it is pretty cheesy and plastic, but there's some incredibly strong songwriting and some good ideas floating around over those three discs. i think i belong to the camp who believes it could be boiled down to one really amazing album, but as it is, it's kind of an interesting "sketchbook" of half-baked songs. just my opinion.

Gold was a great album.....

Didn't Prince take a shot at him on the Come On remix? Something about "just like his name He'll Burn"?