One thing as a music fan and lover that I am finding disturbing is the way people toss the word genius around as a lightweight term. I'm seeing some artists/performance now-a-days being labeled a genius when they're not worthy of the title. So I'm interesting in what the orgers have to say about the term genius. Define genius. Who do you think deserves the title genius? Who do you think are true innovators???

For the example of innovator...I like to think of an innovator as a person that has done or created somethng that has never.. I REPEAT...NEVER have been done before. My mind goes back to what Joni Mitchell said about LIL MAN in a Rolling Stone interview back in the 80's. She said that Prince is a terrific hybrid of a lot of great artists that have come before him but she says that she doesn't consider him to be an innovator. She said that an innovator.."changes what came before". She said that Jimi was an innovator. Miles was a (sound)innovator. Some people (and musicians) feel that Prince really isn't a genius . However, Robert Plant feels that he is a bona fide genius.
There's much debate about Prince as an musical artist. Is he truly an innovator? Truly a genius? Or is he just a super great musician. He is amazing at talking alot of different styles and genres and merging them. Does that constitute genius???

In my opinion, I would like to add someone else to Joni's list of people whom I feel are innovators and geniuses...Sly Stone. Sly's sound and use of rhythms were very original. His small body of work may be small. But within that small body of work. His three albums STAND, THERE'S A RIOT GOING ON and FRESH still sound fresh and are still inspiring musicians to this day.

I don't even need to say much about Miles. He was a furious trailblazer in his field, so much that after his 1991 death, the jazz community stalled in its' tracks. For so long they looked to Miles for leadership and to clues as to where jazz would be going next. His two albums KIND OF BLUE and BITCHES BREWinfluenced genres outside of jazz. Rock musicians and critics list these two albums as works of genius and innovation.

So what defines a genius and who should be labeled as genuiuses. Who do you feel should be labeled as genius that are not? Who do you see being labeled as innovators and geniuses when the title doesn't befit them? What albums do you feel are TRUE works of genius and innovation.

It is my hope that this will be a good discussion about the subject at hand. Ok orgers, let's discuss.

Citing Miles and Sly is quite accurate. Both were innovators. Miles was a genius - no doubt. Citing Kind of Blue and Bitches Brew as the specific albums that displayed his genius and innovating is also correct.

In terms of Prince, he is easily both these things. While he is a hybrid of Sly, Jimi, James Brown, Smokey Robinson, Marvin Gaye, Santana, Miles, and a bunch of other artists, Prince is also an original. THe mix of musical genres has never been done so deftly by any artist. Purple Rain is a landmark album and a masterpeice. No one sounded like that before. All one has to do is listen to "When Doves Cry" to know that.

THe genius part is easy. Show me someone who is as prolific at composing all that music, producing, performing onstage, and playing all those instruments with relative consistency over 20 years and I will show you a fucking genius.

I do believe that Prince is both a genius and an innovator.


~did I just say something positive about Prince~

Prince is blessed with great talent!

I would like to be very careful with those terms...
But, take a listen to:

When Doves Cry
2NigsUnited4WestCompton
HOUSEQUAKE
Lovesexy
Electric Chair
Days of Wild
Get Wild
Sexy Mf
Beautiful Strange


just to name a few. How would u define those masterpieces?
Is there enough innovation inside them?

Besides that: Don't 4get that with all due respect to the great masters such as Sly and Miles at their time the music business was quite different. Just think about The Beatles. They were basically the first to release POP SONGS. So it was quite easy to create something that is consider innovative and all-time-classic. Nowadays music is done by producers that are following market researches. Creating a demand for a certain type of song, etc. I think you could say that it is quite different, maybe even more difficult to be innovative and geniusly today. If you really go into details you can say that almost every song in the last 20 years has some portion of repetition in it. Because when it was released there was somebody checking that it fits the demand of the consumer. And we all know that most consumer don't buy innovative music. They buy what they are told to...

To my opinion it is basically the same as when people are claiming that MJ is a genius because he has sold xxx millions of copies. In that case nobody seem to care about the quality of the records. Only numbers are important.

I personally do not buy music that I don't like. Plain and simple. I don't care about so called superstars. To be honest "Bitches Brew" is a master piece, but it is also very tough to listen to. In very rare cases I find the right situation where I put it in the player, although I love Miles. Besides that I doubt that most people who own Bitches Brew can really appreciate the value of this record, because it is beyond their understanding of music. The music industry has grown us like that...

I read somewhere that either Jam or Lewis said that Prince wasn't an innovator.

They compared him to a sponge, saying that when he worked with you (or start to focus on a certain musical style), you could feel that he was sucking everything you knew out of you. And when that was over he'd be better at it than you were!

While i think some of that is true...for example, his guitar work isn't innovative. It's very distinct...yes...but it's not innovative, i also think that he has been an innovator. Just listen to his use of the LM1! Now there's innovation!!

gen·ius Pronunciation Key (jnys)
n. pl. gen·ius·es

Extraordinary intellectual and creative power.
A person of extraordinary intellect and talent:
A person who has an exceptionally high intelligence quotient, typically above 140.

A strong natural talent, aptitude, or inclination: has a genius for choosing the right words.
One who has such a talent or inclination: a genius at diplomacy.

Prince has all of these qualities...so yes,i guess he is a genius.

in·no·vate Pronunciation Key (n-vt)
v. in·no·vat·ed, in·no·vat·ing, in·no·vates
v. tr.
To begin or introduce (something new) for or as if for the first time.

This is more difficult...Did prince introduce something new? The instrumenst where already there, music was already there. He put stuff that was already there together in a diffirent way then others did before him. I dont know if that makes him a innovator.
Is a cook who put diffirent kinds of food together(food that already excist) an innovator?
i a painter who mix colours an innovator?
I am not sure about that.

He’s composed The Glamorous Life
He has written all the songs of the J Jones Paisley Park album, include My Man ( I couldn’t believe that a man could write a song like this one, the feminine point of view is so proeminent..)
Sign of the Times
Power Fantastic (I know.. thanks to Lisa)
Dionne
He plays all the intrument on Play in the sunshine….
If I Was Your Girlfriend
His ability to be great in blues (The Ride) & techno (The Future, Human Body), rock’n roll (Delirious), funk (Erotic City, Joint 2 Joint), pop (So Far So Pleased) …
He’s not considered like a great innovator because popular dance music is not a “serious”, “noble” kind of music, like jazz for ex, imo.

"is a painter who mix colours an innovator? " That's what the impressionnists did, they brought another "point of view" on Nature ( they didn't "invent" new colours,I guess that Van Gogh was probably not the firt man to paint sunflowers either..but no one did it like him before...).

jnoel said:

I'm sorry but Prince is awful at techno music. He needs to stay away from techno because he will never get it right.

Cool topic, thanks...


To me an innovator creates something that has never been done before.

A genius also creates something that has never been done before, but something that nobody esle could ever have thought of, which is also something that is going to change the course of his art.

Using these definitions, I think Prince is an innovator just as much as Sly (hey, 1999 has influenced other artists just as much as There's a Riot did in the past), but he is no genius. This has always been my view on our little purple man, which does not change the fact that he is my favorite artist.

I think Jimi (re-invented the way people play guitar), Coltrane (modal jazz), Louis Armonstrong (impro in jazz), Charlie Parker (be-bop), James Bown (invented a whole music style named funk), John Lennon (invented pop, although this is debatable) are real geniuses, because they did not only create somthing new, but also something almost unthinkable that changed the whole course of music history (once again this is unrelated to my own tastes: I don't listen to Lennon or Louis Armonstrong for instance).

I would be much more moderate for Miles (I have 95% of his output, I love him, so no diss here): he has been a great innovator, a trend-setter choosing the right musicians at the right time, but I would not necessarily call him a genius. I think he never did anything nobody could ever think of, and none of his periods seems to have changed the course of music history (except perhaps the Bitches Brew period, but even this is debatable), unlike Coltrane.

Don't know where to put Stevie or Zappa...probably in between...They might not have had enough influence on their art to be labelled geniuses, but from a purely innovative viewpoint, I would rate them pretty high.

1999 may be the album from which prince may be labelled a genius. It is not my favorite, but it is really something never seen before, never imagined by anybody at that time, and that still influences the whole house/funk scene 20 years later.

On the other hand I think Sign O'The times has always been a bit over-rated. It does not sound that innovative today, it is more a great mix of different styles. Interestingly, a friend of mine (musician) recently got into prince. He did not really know anything but the hits before. And from his listens he thought that Parade and 1999 were the best albums. Probably because they sound so modern even today...

Rhondab said:

I do believe that Prince WAS both a genius and an innovator.

I think Prince may well be considered a genius, if you preface that distinction with the word "musical." Then again, as he's proven, even geniuses can be off sometimes.

Rhondab said:
---
I do believe that Prince is both a genius and an innovator.

---



I do believe that Prince WAS both a genius and an innovator.










Come on people, our brother 915 asked us to DEFINE, DISCUSS and CONCLUDE on innovation/genius. So please make an effort!!! What does this "I do believe he is a genius" means? What if I told you "I do not believe he is a genius"? Well, what a fuckin'discussion!

This topic makes me want to believe even more in one of my favorite Mottos, if you can't say something nice don't say something at all. Music inspires we live to learn you can take it however you want to take it and still be your own person. There isn't any separation with music all of it is alive and when you can relate to the style of music it becomes a part of who you really are. Anything we do has already been done to think it is to do it so nothings new but the word new its self.

jnoel said:

I love Van Gogh. But he was not an innovator.
Maybe we all thinking wrong, maybe we should not c art as an invention. Art is more then that. Its something we cant pronounce. Its the feeling u get when u hear or c art.
Prince is just great, when i hear his music he gives me a feeling that no other modern artist or band gives me.

But i dont think he really invented something new. Back in the late 7ties early 8ties lots of bands/artists where experimenting with drumcomputers and syntesizers. Prince was one of them. 1999 was great...
But there where other ppl 2...like "this world of water" from New music...and what about Ultravox...and Yazoo..
And that song called "fade to gey". ( i dont know the band s name). They all had hits around 82. That was the new sound those days. It was the sound of that time. The sound of pop music changed back then. Prince did not invent that sound. The ppl who invented the syntesizers did.
But he is a genius, and he made masterpieces . His sound back than was great...

"Fade do grey" Visage.. , ah someone should start a thread about 80s techno-pop.. I think that the real innovators here were Kraftwerk.., and I can't see no british techno pop song as great as "1999".

Dictionary.com says...
gen·ius Pronunciation Key (jnys)
1.

a. Extraordinary intellectual and creative power.
b. A person of extraordinary intellect and talent: “One is not born a genius, one becomes a genius” (Simone de Beauvoir).
c. A person who has an exceptionally high intelligence quotient, typically above 140.

2.
a. A strong natural talent, aptitude, or inclination: has a genius for choosing the right words.
b. One who has such a talent or inclination: a genius at diplomacy.

3. The prevailing spirit or distinctive character, as of a place, a person, or an era: the genius of Elizabethan England.
4. pl. ge·ni·i (jn-) Roman Mythology. A tutelary deity or guardian spirit of a person or place.
5. A person who has great influence over another.
6. A jinni in Muslim mythology.


in·no·vate Pronunciation Key (n-vt)
v. in·no·vat·ed, in·no·vat·ing, in·no·vates
v. tr.
To begin or introduce (something new) for or as if for the first time.

v. intr.
To begin or introduce something new.

innovator

\In"no*va`tor\, n. [Cf. F. innovateur.] One who innovates. --Shak.

A genius is someone who could invent a device to make a sandwich appear immediately after sex...an innovator is one who could utilize, make use of the sandwhich while having sex.

jnoel said:

Visage,that was the bands name...thank u
And u yes, i agree, 1999 is better then the British techno pop. The british techno pop sounded kinda cold. 1999 has more feeling. Maybe cause u can dance on it.

"Prince is a terrific hybrid of a lot of great artists that have come before him but she says that she doesn't consider him to be an innovator". I'm ok with the "terrific hybrid .." definition

joecoco said:

Interesting post joecoco. Hey, I may make a compilation of the songs you listed. Listening to these songs back to back should make for some interesting listening...INDEED!!!

BLACKMF said:

Good post BLACKMF. When I think about how original and forward-thinking the song "When Doves Cry" was, it makes me wonder whether Joni(even though I respect her as an artist) has ever heard the song before. This was one of the most daring original songs of the entire 80's decade. You really had to be around in 1984 and know what the musical climate was like then, to really comprehend how bold and original "When Doves Cry" was. It's kind of hard to grasp how daring it is now looking back in retrospect in this current musicial climate. That song floored me man when I heard it that day on the radio back in 84',the day it debuted here in on Atlanta radio stations.It was one of the songs where people talked about til no end... the next day. People couldn't believe what they had heard. it. More later...

BattierBeMyDaddy said:

Battier is always quick to whip out the dictionary on y'all. Hey girl

Prince is a creater he made a new sound and changed music forever which makes him both a genius and a innovator

utopia7 said:

NOW UTOPIA7 I CAN TALK WITH TOTAL AGREEMENT

THANK U


Well I have to speak up again ...dang it

A Genius for the term of the word scientifically is as follows:

A GENIUS in the dictionary http://www.dictionary.com is and I QUOTE THIS...for everybody...
#2 A strong NATURAL talent, aptitude, or inclination...and has a genius for choosing right words.

NOW IF THAT DOESNT SUM UP PRINCE then I truly dont know what does..

SO genius dont meen INNOVATOR HELLO???

and GODBLESS the CHILD ...who has their OWN...CReative TALENT...that is NATURAL to share...

ignorance causes dilussion step out of it and GET N2 the light...

GODBLESS everyone and GODNITE.

with Love honor and respect

SingMia~Arjuna

PS. TRC is genius

Eheieh Asher Eheieh

Genius = real smart guy.
Innovator = real smart guy with balls.