To be fair, Prince should have been scared off by many of the act around today... any yet... the yearning to see him come back and go; "Y'all look at this, I haven't finished yet!" is too much to cast aside. It would be good if once the promise matched the output.

2freaky4church1 said:

Just stop!!!

BoySimon said:

Who is the world should he have been scared off by? I dare say that no one today matches the TOTAL PACKAGE that is Prince.

Name one. Name one who has risen to the level Prince rose to, with the actual talent that Prince brought with it.

funkaholic1972 said:

I've only heard a few songs on Emancipation(so no, I don't have it), but I've liked what I heard. I do have NPS and have grown to like that album. Don't see what the big fuss is over this one.

doctamario said:

Emancipation is another fine example of Prince beating a dead horse. The record was about 15 songs too long. There was a full 9-10 song classic Prince album hidden amongst a collection of cutting room floor tracks. It sounded like he was going to make a 3 disc record NO MATTER THE COST in creativity and artistic integrity. I was totally bummed. It was like watching a prom queen's dirty secrets getting broadcast as she's about to take the crown. Embarassing and baffling.
[Edited 9/27/05 15:18pm]

TheBigBang said:

I think Prince does have a lot of competition today, but not from established artists with great talent, but instead hundreds of one-hit wonders and one-good-album bands which are turned over at a ferocious rate. The current generation doesn't care so much about albums, they have a very short attention span, and they download catchy singles they hear off the radio, not the whole album. They want stuff that will make a strong ringtone for their phone. Prince can carefully craft his 'real' music all he wants, but unless he provides a catchy, thumping single, more than likely he's not going to get a look in - in the UK market at least.

Princes first naff album was Lovesexy and the next two also sucked, but Diamonds and Pearls was at least Ok. Symbol, Come sucked, they had some OK songs.
The Gold Experience was underrated, just listen to Pussy Control, Gold and Dolphin.
He fell down hill with Emancipation, but the album has some good jams and I think these songs are the best hes made.
1. The Holy River
2. Betcha by golly wow
3. Eye cant make u love me
4. One of us
5. Sex in the summer
6. One kiss at a time
7. Sleep around
8. Back in my arms.
Nut after those the rot has set in.

Heres my album ratings out of 10.

For You, 6 Prince 7, D.M 9, Controversy 8, 1999 -10, P.R. -9, ATWIADAY -5, Parade- 9, s.o.t. -10, Black - 7, L.s -4, Batman 3, G.B.- 5, D&P - 7, Symbol -2,
Come -1, Gold experience - 8, C& D - 1 Emancipation - 6 (Lots of 10s and 1s), The Vault - 3, Newpowersoul - 4, Rave until the Joy Fantastic - 3, Rainbow Children - 0 What the fxxk wasthat, Musicology - 4.
Does nayone want to rank his decline.
Also with and after S.O.T. Prince gained a tendency to wibble in his music.

Yes youre absolutly right, 87 was the hight of this guys creativity.

And all pop music critics (and record buyers in general) will back you up on this.

But.....
bring this up here with this bunch.....lol.

what a load of crap ..... Prince has never lost it

Quite simply he set himself such a high benchmark with classics like controversy,1999,PR,ATWIAD,Parade,SOTT & Lovesexy ..... ( i cant believe u dont like this ) that it was almost impossible to keep it going for another 17 years without the odd blip (NPS & C&D) ..... but.....

U have never heard the Black Album .....
Cindy C, Le Grind , Bob George ..... quality !!

Batman OS .....probably one of the best soundtracks ever to a blockbuster movie
D & P ..... in places excellent ..... just like GB
Symbol & Gold Ex ..... Top Notch
Crystal Ball is quality ..... yes i know theres alot of old stuff in there but even the newer tunes like Days of Wild & Interactive are cool
Come ..... I love the first 3 tracks
Chocolate Invasion..... excellent
TRC ..... half good half bad
Rave / Musicology..... some great stuff on here

Does that look like a list of some1 who's lost the plot ??

Most artists dont even release 3 good albums in there career ..... PRINCE HAS OVER A DOZEN CLASSICS !!!!!

I rest my CASE

mschirmer said:

The Steve Parke era was terrible. Parke might be good in other fields, maybe his comic books, I don´t know, but the covers he did looked ridiculous. Some Master P/ No Limits PixNPixels production looked better than that stuff.

Which is a shame because I think Prince is an artist who has always had very beautiful album covers up until shortly after Diamonds and Pearls.
Jeff Katz, Randee St.Nicolas, Jean Baptiste Mondino, Beaulieu and the guy who shot the Dirty Mind picture or the Purple Rain cover all created some classic album covers, and don´t forget SOTT or the one Prince himself did, 1999.

It´s surprising because Prince is so choosy when it comes to the visual aspect of his art.

KoolEaze said:

I think 1999 was his all time worst album cover. Nothing else comes close.

BoySimon said:

Sorry that I have to contradict, but Lovesexy (as much as I and many of his fans love it) indeed was some kind of career killer for Prince (commercially). I remember when the album came out and newspapers were full of reviews like "eccentric, ego-trip, too much" and stuff like that. In fact, most non-fans didn't get the point or the message of this album and just saw it as a over-the-top self-praise of a pop star who had the peak of his career years before.

Many say that the Lovesexy tour was the best ever, but as far as I know, it was a financial disaster for Prince, the concert halls were never sold out and the general public didn't really care about this tour. So, if Prince ever fell down commercially, it was at that time. He only regained some commercial success with Batman, D&P and in parts with and Musicology (the latter only in the U.S.).

But, if it was for commercial success, probably no one would be on this forum anymore. The quality is what counts. And Prince has made tons of good music, yes, also past 1988.

Btw, am I wrong on this or is it correct that both TGE and Emacipation sold more copies than Lovesexy? Anybody any info?

EmancipationLover said:

They didn't. Lovesexy sold millions in Europe alone.

And his tour was a great smash-hit over here, too! He played jam-packed stadiums!
[Edited 9/28/05 3:29am]

AlphabetST1977 said:

Your "case" is nothing but your own personal opinion.

scififilmnerd said:

Sorry, I wasn't able to find European sales online yet. For U.S. sales, wikipedia.org says 500,000 for Lovesexy, same for TGE, 2,000,000 for Emancipation (which is more than Parade and SOTT and equal with D&P and Musicology). Maybe someone can help with worldwide sales.

scififilmnerd said:

The Lovesexy tour was a huge success in Europe, and a bit of a failure in the USA, to recoup his losses from the USA part Prince was forced to do the Japanese leg even though initially he wanted to drop out and get on with the Batman project.

I think you always have to look at Prince from a global, not just a US, position. Lovesexy was the time America turned away from Prince but was the time when Europe really embraced him - so you get a lot of Americans saying Lovesexy was when Prince went downhill and a lot of Europeans saying the opposite.

EmancipationLover said:

According to The Vault, Lovesexy sold around 750,000 in the US but 1.9 million in the rest of the world and was Prince's biggest selling album apart from Purple Rain in Europe.

It says TGE sold 530,000 copies in the US; it doesn't mention world-wide figures.

Emancipation sold 570,000 in the US, but because it was a 3-disc set this was automatically tripled giving the misleading figure of around 2 million.

I think all this shows that Lovesexy was far from a commercial failure, the album or tour, from a global perpective.

2freaky4church1 said:

2freaky. Please get yo'self.

There IS NO Love Below without Prince. The record is a great achievement in and of itsel, but Prince's and Parliament's influences are so laughably obvious that Prince shouldn't be that intimidated.

If anything, Prince should have been flattered. Perhaps that's why he allowed OutKast to induct him into the RRHOF.

He's got stuff in his vault that blows Love Below away.

Hell, Love Below, from an artistic standpoint, is no better or worse than any of Prince's "second-tier" albums, like TRC, or for that matter, ATWIAD.
[Edited 9/28/05 8:31am]

namepeace said:

Uhh...shhyyeah!!!

del
[Edited 9/28/05 13:56pm]

scififilmnerd said:

Yes, true ..... but do you not agree that Prince has been pretty consistently awesome for over 25 years ? ..... if not than that is fair enough .

If i have one problem with P over the years it is the fact that he has been to prolific ,& this is the reason that some of the not so good stuff has been released

AlphabetST1977 said:

Sure I agree. He has released a lot of good stuff and continus to occassionally do so.

The difference is that in the eighties, one would enjoy every track on his albums. Now one (I) just like some of them, as it seems evident from your list that you do too.

So has he lost it? No, not completely. But it would seem that over the years he has grown less critical with what he releases.

If U feel Prince fell off or hasn't been the shit since '88 then why R U still buying his music 17 yrs later.

Tell me what's more sad:

A Prince fan who loves every album and still really digs his new stuff (as much as or more than ever) and thinks albums like New Power Soul are funky.

or

A Prince fan who only now casually enjoys his music and likes a couple songs off of each album, but who still hangs around prince.org all of the time to bitch and moan.

skywalker said:

What's wrong with the former? At least they enjoy his music.

doctamario said:

Nothings wrong with it. I asked which is more sad.

scififilmnerd said:

I guess u r right & it all comes back to him releasing 2 much at times BUT although 1999 & PR are undoubtedly masterpieces i never liked Computer Blue or Something in the Water ..... in fact although i would class myself as a massive P fan i cant say there are many albums where there is not at least 1 song that i'm not a big fan of..... , & there are 3 albums that i dont play very often ..... For You, Chaos & Disorder & NPS for the record .
I guess that last commnent actually makes me agree with you a little as 2 of them albums were released around 96-98 so i would have to agree that he had a little blip around that time

Sometimes i think he should just keep some of the tracks in the vault ,i honestly believe that many other artists never release there lesser tracks & if Prince did the same ,his back catalogue would be almost fautless

skywalker said:

I'm a massive Prince fan but would never defend everything he did , i mean Chaos & Disorder & New power sould are really not worth defending

I would also add that people who only listen to him & like the odd tune off an album shouldnt care enough to bitch ..... i think most of us care & love tons of his stuff from the last 25 years +, which is exactly y we bitch

So subjective, depends on who you ask. Warner Bros. thought he lost it when he did dirty mind. Some people think he lost it with the success of purple rain and the commercial concessions of it. some people think 1999 was something to be measured against Dirty Mind. We could go on and on because our guy has given us so much to discuss, personally I don't worry about it, I just keep up with him as much as I can and I know he's trying.

vainandy said:

I don't know about that Andy, we have some very bright people here with great critical faculties such as yourself. Because we have so many intelligent people on here, I love this site, we have enough thinkers to keep my interest anyway. makes me wonder if prince's fans are more intelligent than fans of other artists. You'll see plenty of irreverence on here and sarcasm and it's all good.