Wannabe by Spice Girls was obviously influenced by I Wanna Be Your Lover, they're both in the B major scale and have similar elements

Pop Life has a Britney Spears like beat to it that makes me think of songs like Baby One More Time and Stronger

Alphabet Street has an awesome rhythm that was similarily used over the years, but also by Hanson in MMMbop's bridge and the Moffats(the canadian version of Hanson) I'll Be There For You


or it could just be that he is an innovator in pop music, be it shit-pop or good pop music....

A Lot of people have been influenced by Prince, So?

wlcm2thdwn said:

there's even a song on backstreet's back that sounds very prince and was a guilty pleasure when my friend was playing the album, it's called 'if you want it to be good girl get yourself a bad boy' lol

alphastreet said:

Ohh, I loved that song! Brings back memories

The OP has a point here (unfortunately?)

You can draw a straight line from The Minneapolis Sound (the album 1999 especially), to Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis (who commercialised that sound, but with a bit of dignity at least), to those swedish producers of The Backstreet Boys and Britney Spears (I dont even know their names, but they just 'used' the sound to 'milk' the mainstream public).

And, i am not exeggerating here, Prince also started:

- The New Jack swing / early modern R&B movement (early nineties)
- The current Pop / hip-hop hybrid by The Neptunes, Missy Elliot, Gwen Stefani, Outkast and Timbaland
- The minimalistic electrofunk / electroclash movement (Peaches, Daft Punk)
- The neo-psychedelic movement (Lenny Kravitz, Worldparty)

and he has had an (indirect) influence on free postmodern spirits like Beck and Bjork.

Riverpoet31 said:

I used to listen to all that when it came out and think it sounds a LOT like michael, janet and prince's music and a ripoff of r&b music, way before I realized how the music industry has always used white artists to rip off black artists sounds, still happening today. But you would never catch me listening to that stuff, I was mostly into old school and a lot of the r&b and hip hop at that time

Riverpoet31 said: