Nasalhair said:

Then don't bother commenting on it.
[Edited 3/9/06 13:15pm]

Novabreaker said:

Hey, that adds a lot to the discussion. Thanks for taking the time to make that comment.

if he really was trusted to produce himself on For You then he did a really good job.
The same can be said for most of his early stuff.Up until ATWIAD the production is just about perfect.

Prince varies from being an excellent producer to having massive oversights and errors of judgement as a producer. I think perhaps his main problem is having his own studio. Many would say that since he's had the availability of a studio at all times, his production work has suffered.

I personally feel he should spend more time developing the actuals songs, and less time on the production, however i think his temptation is to work on the songs as he records and produces them. If he was still recording in hired studios, I believe his albums would be a lot more immediate, and the songs wouldnt be drowned in his over inflated production.

I've been thinking about this Prince as a producer thing and have been wondering if producer is the wrong word in this instance. Perhaps we should be looking at it more as Prince being an artist.

Obviously there will be some common themes amongst some of his techniques but as far as the overall sound of each album goes, they are all quite different. Let's think about this list for a minute:

Dirty Mind
1999
Purple Rain
Around The World In A Day
Lovesexy
Come
Gold Experience
New Power Soul
Emancipation
The Truth
The Rainbow Children
NEWS
3121

Obviously it's not an exhaustive list but which of those albums sounds like any other on the list? Are there other producers that can lay claim to such a wide ranging body of work? Like them or hate them you can't deny the variety.

I think can produce some excellent work, but he seems to come and go in phases. He often likes the extremes. Sparse on some, over production on others.

For You and Prince are totally over produced. Then he flips to almost demo quality for Dirty Mind, Controvery and 1999. He then seemed to ramp it up a bit for PR to Lovesexy.

and so on.....

I think there are some key milestones in his production, be it good or bad.

The move to quick dirty production home recordings (aka Dirty Mind)

The first full released album with all of the Paisley equipment in full working order, leading to the "clean" production of Batman.

The massive change in time spent, equipment and production style with Emancipation.

As far as 3121 goes, I think it does suffer from over production, far more than Musicology, but it would make sense, as he seems to have spent more time on this album than any other in his career.

Saying that, it still sounds good.