Sly vs Prince : Who's the best ??

prince

No contest, Prince.

Prince of course.

I find that slys songs sound the same. But, there u go. People say all prince sounds the same too.

Prince. Though I do wonder what would have happened if Sly had remained drug free.

death.....

btw: without sly, there would be no prince..hence my refusal to answer this question..

sosgemini said:

Preach
[Edited 8/1/05 1:29am]

sosgemini said:

no... prince had the gift in him (with or without sly)

kpowers said:

bullshit....prince is a genius at "borrowing" previous used idears and perfecting them....if it wasnt for "every day people" there would never be "1999".....prince himself has admited that was the vibe he was going for.....

now, this is all IMHO...but if there wasn't sly i highly doubt prince would have achieved the same career he had..sure, he might have had a couple hits...but, who the fuck knows?

sorry to burst peoples bubbles....but i look at folks like TTD, P. Rushen, Ashford & Simpsons (solo), heck even wendy and lisa...and i see artist that are wonderfully talented that never achieved major longterm success.....i cant help to keep that in perspective and realize if prince hadnt had the influences he had....hadnt "gunned" to match or meet these folks, he never would have achieved the career he had..and would all be fans of a forgotten star who could have been...

trust, i know...im a huge wendy and lisa fan...and the path their career led them amounted to zero popular success...one different turn could have changed all that...thus i understand that one different turn could have turned prince into an obscure ttd-like powerhouse...

MsLegs said:

right on !!!! sly is the fonkiest dude ever!!!!!

let me qualify ashford and simpson..i know they are leagonds...yet when they attempted to go solo...they had one hit and then flopped....thats a telling example there.

kpowers said:

However, Sly influenced P a great deal with his innovative brand of Funk. Now, as the Org Funkologist , you know that I got to speak the truth on the funk. Old School is where its at no doubt.

I'll handle this the way I handled to george clinton comparison and compare them level by level

Singing-both are great versatile singers. I think Prince has a better falsetto (but sly isn't lacking in that department, he just doesn't use it often or in a normal way) and sly has a better bass voice (think, family affair, I Hate to Love her). Also sly is a lot more unconventional a vocalist, growling, scatting, shrieking, hissing, mumbling, yodeling in all kinds of crazy-genius eccentric ways, and his voice is more appealing than prince's, who was definitely an acquired taste for me.

Songwriting-Sly was the first eclecticist in funk and paved the way for every artist that attempted to recombine the splintered branches of the R&R/R&R family tree including Stevie, P-funk, EWF, the Isleys, hell EVERY R&B act of the 70s practically and of course Prince too. He infused elements of guitar rock, gospel, jazz and just pure pop into Funk and thus refined the formula laid down by James Brown. Apart from not having a virtuoso (or rather, loud-solo inclined) lead guitarist, Sly and his band were superior to nearly EVERY one of his immitators/successors. His music is some of the must perfectly distilled expressions of joy and hope and unity ever made, and while he recycled himself a few times, he certainly had a great variety of tunes and the ones he did recycle were of the calibur that genre-inventing pioneers like Chuck Berry could've made their entire careers out of. After doing all this, he took funk to it's deepest, darkest and most impenetrable with There's A Riot Going On and Fresh, which were so rhythmically complex people are still scratching their heads today. Prince is a great eclecticist as well, but he wasn't a genre-defining force the way sly was, and he had more uncredited partners in the creation of his music.

Production-As I said regarding George Clinton, Prince is destined to lose just because he made music in the 80s, and even helped influence the production aesthetic of the 80s which I think has aged poorly compared to that of the 60s and 70s. Even beyond the 80s though, I think prince often has too flashy or too artificial sounding/feeling production, overusing synths or drum machines which occasionaly produces a great fusion of electronic and organic, but sometimes causes the organic element to be lost. Sly always brought out the feel he was going for very well, whether it be bright and joyous or toxic and murky, and he was almost always tasteful, even when he would sometimes milk a gimmick for everything it was worth (think double tracked fuzz bass, but I love that sound anyway).

Musicianship/Instrumentalism-I'll call this one a draw since it's very hard to determine. We all know Prince is a great guitar player, and has at times played pretty impressively on drums, keys and bass. Sly on the other hand, is more difficult to determine because he could and would play all or most of the instruments himself (his engineer has said so and that it was basically a matter of whether or not someone else in the band could lay the track better than he could, which varied from time to time). Since sly's liner notes don't specify, we don't know which parts are played by who most of the time but ALL of the bass and drums parts on Fresh and Riot are great and at least some of them are sly himself. He may not like to do a flashy, Hendrixian guitar solo, but he's a great at rhythm and riffing, or at playing more understated and lyrically (ala Keith Richards meets Curtis Mayfield), and sly certainly plays a mean organ and piano. Beyond that Prince is not known to play any other instruments while sly is a great harmonica player (probably my personally favorite next to Stevie), and is speculated to play horns as well (he did major in trumpet performance, and there is that clarinet I mentioned in the other thread that nobody knows who played). Overall, I think I'll call it a tie since Sly plays/ed more instruments while prince is a certified virtuoso on at least a couple

jacktheimprovident said:

As the Org Funkologist , I can dig what ya saying b/c its definitely on the one.
[Edited 8/1/05 8:55am]

right on... (and legs)
i think u need to share that funkologist title because i make my living being ...lookin...and living FONK !!!

SLY!!!!!

jacktheimprovident said:

1, Prince is technically a better singer.
2. Because he came earlier, Sly has the advantage of being the groundbreaker, but I think Prince has shown himself to be a more adept songwriter in terms of styles, going deeper into some of them. Of course, that does not make the more important songwriter. Sly came first and did all these seminal songs.
3. I would say Sly did much better considering Prince's work in the 90s, but Prince gets points for humanizing lynn machines -- you can't discard him for his contribution to the 80's sound when he was one of the few examples of this sound's potential for being personal.
4. No way this a tie -- with Prince, it's not a question of him maybe playing this or that bit. You know he did and he did on stage too on occasion -- plus he is the better live performer by a mile.
[Edited 8/1/05 9:11am]

sosgemini said:

-----
Ashford and Simpson had more than one hit but, I must agree no Sly no Prince.

DorothyParkerWasCool said:

[Edited 8/1/05 12:06pm]

Aerogram said:

1.I'm not so sure about that, I think there are definitely things that sly could do with his voice that prince couldn't and vice versa. I'm not claiming to be an expert on vocal technique, but I think the question is more ambiguous.
2.I agree for the most part. I don't think that prince's greater stylistic range makes him better since he had the benefit of nearly two decades of popular music that sly didn't, and prince didn't exactly master everything he tried, nor is eclecticism the only measurement of songwriting prowess. We also have no idea what kind of music Sly's been making since his commercial absence, but reports from those who've heard it say it may turn a few heads if it was ever released.
3. I agree with what you're saying, I think prince definitely used drum machines in a very innovative and humanized way, but I think he would've sounded better if his career occured a decade or so earlier and the overall sound of much of his music is a major turnoff to most people I've tried to turn on to prince, I haven't had the same problem with Sly. Incidentally Sly was perhaps THE first person to use drum machines on his recordings.
4.Again, I think the question is more ambiguous than you realize. Bootsy Collins, who is himself a multi-instrumentalist virtuoso and one of THE bass masters says that Sly is the most talented musician he's ever worked with, and Bootsy's worked with Eddie Hazel, Junie Morrison (who was making one-man funk jam albums before prince's career started), Mike Hampton, Buckethead, Bernie Worrell (and he must have met and jammed with prince at SOME point) and many other instrumental wizards. Larry Graham, who was proficient on drums, guitar, saxophone, and harmonica as well as being a master of the bass considers Sly the true leader and the greatest talent in the Family Stone. Esteem from his colleagues aside, I know that Sly can play more instruments than prince and that the only instrument that I know for sure Prince can play better than Sly is the guitar, and even that I'm not entirely positive about.

DorothyParkerWasCool said:

What I don't understand is why people get irritated by a little dispute or conflict of opinion. I think it's healthy and normal for people to disagree and to argue, otherwise they aren't really thinking. Exercising critical thought and using comparative analysis to do so is a GOOD thing. Now I can see where you're coming from about perhaps the methods of comparing or the desire to name a "best" out of sly or prince being somewhat silly, but I don't have any problem with a little confrontation of viewpoint, hell I relish in it, and quantifying or comparing things is part of how we define the world around us.

jacktheimprovident said:

I agree with your point, but some people in this thread are not assessing things critically. Your posts have made sense becasue you are dissecting their abilities and not taking shots at either in your informed assessment. I don't mind that at all. I despise these threads because they generally become mean spirited by people on various sides of the discussion. Some get huffy because they feel one gets too much credit, while others will feel that the person they like is not being taken seriously enough. My point is this, I do not mind comparing the two, but when the talk centers on putting one down to build up the other, the conversation becomes juvenile. That's not critical thinking, thats a dick measuring contest.

Cats like Prince and Rick James picked up the ball where Sly dropped it off.

sosgemini said:

So..... you're saying Sly is Prince's real daddy?

sosgemini said:

I don't mean to pick on you, but that's ridiculous. Unlike the others you mentioned, Prince is one of the greats because of his vision. It takes more than the talent these folks you mentioned have to be huge. There is no alternate universe where TTD, Wendy and Lisa, and Ashford and Simpson of all people are great on the level of Prince. You're kidding yourself if you think that. I do agree that Prince had help-- hell we all have help just to make it past birth-- but it's more than chance and luck. It's by design that Prince is who he is.

As for the question. That's really unanswerable to be honest. Let's put it this way. There's nobody I've heard of, save for maybe Jimi, that I'd say is better than either of these two. Of course, you could argue that too.

whodknee said:

They'll never be another Sly or Prince. Tough question. Sly fucked his career up cause the drugs became to important to him,he just didn't give a shit.

They have both made an incredible contribution to music . That question will be left up for music history to decide.