1. I am overplaying my nerd card here, but this is a bit like saying cops in Gotham City don't take Batman seriously because he's not a "real cop". He dresses up funny and doesn't use a gun so he is not a "tried and true police officer". Batman is above and beyond being a cop, he's on a whole other level. Same thing with his royal badness.

Prince is above and beyond just being a funk artist. He does not fit nicely into that old school funk box. He also doesn't get the credit that he is due from the old guard of the genre (same with the rock guitar worshipers). Of course "heavy hitters" in the Detroit Funk community don't take Prince seriously. He isn't just all about funk, so they count that against him and speak ill of him. It's seems like you do as well.

2.If you have ever seen Prince live you should know damn well that Prince has above and beyond when it comes to funk chops and musicianship. He can more than hang with people like Larry and George when they "take it to the stage". The thing about, Prince is that he could hang with people like Miles on stage also.

3.Listen to the first two albums by The Time. Understand who is responsible for the music. Then try to convince yourself about "The MYTH of Prince's Funk". Shit, George himself doesn't agree with you. 100's of people here have the interviews to back that up.

Bottom line: Besides your fellow purple heads on this site, I don't see anyone claiming that Prince is the "standard bearer for funk"? I don't think anyone really sees him as just that. That is too one dimensional and too narrow of a definition for Prince. That said, beating you chest about Prince being "unfunky" stinks of musical ignorance.

LONG ASSSS THREAD!

Because I'm lazy can someone recap for me, sumthing sumthing Prince not a true funk guy or something....

1. I am overplaying my nerd card here, but this is a bit like saying cops in Gotham City don't take Batman seriously because he's not a "real cop". He dresses up funny and doesn't use a gun so he is not a "tried and true police officer". Batman is above and beyond being a cop, he's on a whole other level. Same thing with his royal badness.

Prince is above and beyond just being a funk artist. He does not fit nicely into that old school funk box. He also doesn't get the credit that he is due from the old guard of the genre (same with the rock guitar worshipers). Of course "heavy hitters" in the Detroit Funk community don't take Prince seriously. He isn't just all about funk, so they count that against him and speak ill of him. It's seems like you do as well.

2.If you have ever seen Prince live you should know damn well that Prince has above and beyond when it comes to funk chops and musicianship. He can more than hang with people like Larry and George when they "take it to the stage". The thing about, Prince is that he could hang with people like Miles on stage also.

3.Listen to the first two albums by The Time. Understand who is responsible for the music. Then try to convince yourself about "The MYTH of Prince's Funk". Shit, George himself doesn't agree with you. 100's of people here have the interviews to back that up.

Bottom line: Besides your fellow purple heads on this site, I don't see anyone claiming that Prince is the "standard bearer for funk"? I don't think anyone really sees him as just that. That is too one dimensional and too narrow of a definition for Prince. That said, beating you chest about Prince being "unfunky" stinks of musical ignorance.

Same thing if Prince went head to head playing jazz vs. a true jazz band. Again, there's this myth that Prince CAN DO ANYTHING MUSICALLY. He's not quite the juggernaut that some of ya'll make him out to be.

ButterscotchPimp said:

violetblues said:

Prince may also be a ham sandwich

violetblues said:

Well basically, Butterscotch, the OP, saw in another thread a bunch of orgers claiming P to be the forefather of the funk or w/e. So he made this thread to see and discuss why others view prince as this great funk artist or w.e. And his own claim is that although he thinks a lot of P's songs are funky, they're not funk songs, in the purest sense of the genre. He also says people in the funk camp to take P seriously. Some people agree with what he's saying.

Then you have pretty much everyone else say P's songs are FUNK songs; just because they're not the funk off the past, P took some of its elements and evolved it or created his on style of funk. And some of them mention funk greats who have praised Prince.

So naturally its pages upon pages because grown ass adults cant have a simple discussion regarding P's funk and its pages of name-calling, bashing, sarcasm, misunderstandings, off topic opinions you know, typical online forum stuff.

MajesticOne89 said:

I don't know dude, I thought there was an impressive lack of name calling... only about 6 pages... the last 6 pages or so are pretty free of that stuff.

I'm really proud of you boys.

Is it just me, or is this a somewhat macho thread?

I have learnt that i am know nothing really about Funk, except that I definately have some in my cd colletion... except for JB, because some bastard stole it at a house party.

And ya'll got me dangerously close to starting another thread titled "The MYTH of Prince's Live Sets".

ButterscotchPimp said:

Please don't.

purplecam said:

The MYTH of BP's Musical Knowledge

ButterscotchPimp said:

Please don't.

purplecam said:

The MYTH of BP's Musical Knowledge

Graycap23 said:

Please. I've forgotten more about music than most people in here will ever know. I'll put my almost 20 years music industry experience and lifelong music and dj knowledge up against anyone's, anytime.

Graycap23 said:

Please. I've forgotten more about music than most people in here will ever know. I'll put my almost 20 years music industry experience and lifelong music and dj knowledge up against anyone's, anytime.

purplecam said:

I keep reading some of the ridiculous stuff i see on occasion in here, i'm not making any promises.

And ya'll got me dangerously close to starting another thread titled "The MYTH of Prince's Live Sets". Because here's yet another person that thinks that from a live standpoint would somehow wipe the floor with George or Bootsy in doing a "funk" set. Which is nonsense. Again, Prince is an amazing live performer. But i've seen what's behind the curtain of the "Great Oz". Which was why the last live set i paid for was Emancipation. Because i saw him live in Detroit and then later on that summer in Chicago and it was THE EXACT SAME SET. NOTE FOR NOTE. The parts that were supposed to be "improv" WEREN'T. Prince isn't as "off the cuff" live as he pretends to be. They practice that shit too. Which is why in a straight up battle with a crowd picking songs they wanted to hear, George and crew would kill Prince playing funk. He'd kill them of course playing just about every other genre, but playing funk no way. Same thing if Prince went head to head playing jazz vs. a true jazz band. Again, there's this myth that Prince CAN DO ANYTHING MUSICALLY. He's not quite the juggernaut that some of ya'll make him out to be.

BP

curious to know where you stand on some of the posts from savvy/murph/quaterwit

they all had some good points I thought

ButterscotchPimp said:

the only true MYTH of prince's live sets is this:

Is someone really free when ur audience keeps demanding u stay in the 80's?

L4OATheOriginal said:

what? why is it some of ya'll diehards always accuse someone of demanding he "stay in the 80's"? where the hell did that come from?

ButterscotchPimp said:

That is one tour

I don't think that this would hold true for every tour that he's done....
I know that is was true for the PR tour also, but I'm not sure that this is true of him throughout his whole career
Parade? O2 and the aftershows? 1999?
I haven't seen all of them, but enough to know that he's capable of some variation.
(that thread would be too upsetting)
emancipation was more than 10 years ago, and Prince was... something

ButterscotchPimp said:

U kill me with your lil labels. What do u call yourself?

Graycap23 said:

Sorry. As good as Madhouse is on a record, Prince going head to head vs. a jazz band live playing jazz is a no-brainer. He gets annhilated.

robinesque said:

Sorry, Robin.
Which ones are you referring to? This thread has gotten so long, and i've been occupied with other stuff? I know that me and Saavy and Murph have gone back and forth on a few topics already.

Oh, and for the record Butterscotch, if you try and tell me "Erotic City" isn't as FUNKY as anything you've EVER heard, you probably should take your ass down to Detroit City Hall and have your Funk Card revoked!

hell when he wants to be he's Hip-Hop too.

No one said he was the "king" of funk

okay let me help u out then
scarlet pussy is funky in it's beats, vocals and the guitar licks
fruit at the bottom is funky only in the chorus and it's mainly just vocals
there! satisfied now? u need ur bah bah now?

Keeping a genre alive would mean actually performing that style of music. As far as I know, P is still performing “funk” cuts live as well as recording.

I do not see the old funk mob doing too much recording these days and few bands are out on the road but they do not and well not ever have the showmanship that P has therefore, right now, he is the torchbearer for funk.

This thread demonstrates the obvious. You cant really describe or define P's stuff easily. Somebody said if you can describe it, it aint funky.

Prior to becoming acquainted to the bulk of the P discography, I had thought of him as a "funky artist" as opposed to a "funk artist".

ButterscotchPimp said:

I almost agree...

i do think that Prince does understand how to use space and how to take his time and strip something down. This is the hardest thing to learn, and he just gets it (when he gets too busy is when I have issues with his work). i don't think it would take much for him to learn. I don't think he has worked with enough jazz musicians to have been really exposed to the way it can be pushed...

this is going to sound ridiculous, b/c he worked with Miles Davis, but I think that his contact with the jazz world has actually been conservative. Because by the time records gets released and the bulk of people are ready for it (even alot of other jazz cats), the experimentation is over and someone else is pushing it in other directions.

When i listen to that stuff, I'm pretty sure that my ears prick up in reponse to prince contributions. they are great jams, but I feel sure that it is the Prince element which pushes it. The bulk of the material, while awsome had been done a hundred times before.

I have a secret desire for him to really emerse himself in the underground jazz and spend a year with the hundreds of young jazz musicians who never get around to releasing their material, because they are too busy jamming, drnking red wine and figure that not many people really like jazz anyway, so whatever. I think he could jam with them, i think he could hold his own, I think he could learn alot...

(you don't need to tell me it'll never happen.. I know, but i imagine the results would be incredible)

ButterscotchPimp said:

ok... one was #443 on page 15 : quarterwit.. I'll get back to you on the other..I think the other must have been savvy

I'll start here. As a teenager living in the North of England in the 80s, I heard Prince's music, and became a fan. Through his music, I discovered, among others, James Brown and George Clinton; now, in my mid-thirties, living in London, I play my DVD of Parliament's Earth Tour to everyone who comes around when we're getting ready for a night out. If it weren't for Prince, I'm sure I'd be playing them Kaiser Chiefs or something. So, I think he has in fact kept funk alive throughout the globe, despite not making strings of albums that faithfully reproduce the raw sound of 70s funk (which was, may I point out, as much to do with the production as the stripped-down instrumentation—production which bands on Daptone label in England are currently reproducing amazingly well).

His recorded output, as we have seen, is genre-defying. While James Brown is a funk artist, and John Coltrane is a jazz artist, Prince is capable enough a musician to dabble in these areas, and he enjoys doing so. "Now you can all take a bite of my purple rock", &c. He is an artist who can play funk, jazz, pop, whatever. While I am sure he could make funk album after funk album, he would get very bored doing so, I am sure. Fair enough. So we get eclectic albums sprinkled with rap or jazz or funk or whatever kind of music is in his head that month. Which is what we all love.

But when he plays funk, what I do know is that he's not faking it. His nose is still the same length after decades, you know? For me, he certainly *has* the funk. It's just not his entirety. He's not one-dimensional. And that's great, of course. He bears a standard for all the music he loves, and introduces new audiences to the principles of funk all the times, as he did for me all those years ago. Yay!

As for Wendy and Lisa, they're just great. They added a lot to his music, and I think those years were so successful because they challenged him in many ways—in ways which "only best friends can". I think he really needs that, and I think he has been surrounded by "yes-men" for too long, and tried to please too many people, and the wrong people—ie, people other than himself. Anyway, Wendy and Lisa, too, know funk. I have seen Wendy play guitar, and that's enough for me; I don't require their every album to be a James Brown pastiche. The difference that's crucial for me is between people who have it and those who don't, not between people who are it and nothing else and those who are it and many other things too.

Prince records I would describe as "funky", among others:

Love Or Money (sleazy!)
I Wish U Heaven (part III)
We Can Funk
La La La He He Hee (that bass!)
Tamborine (can't understand why this song isn't more popular)
Kiss

If you limit your definition of "funk" enough, then Prince won't fit in there at all, of course. But, being Prince fans, we're about opening up boundaries, broadening our horizons, aren't we? Yes, Prince's own funk is not the tightly-controlled aggressive sex-funk of James Brown, nor the cartoonish, psychedelic anything-goes funk of Parliament (are they not different enough in themselves?); it's quirky, high-pitched, experimental funk born of all the things that came before it and funnelled through a small (but so is dymanite!) guy from Minneapolis. Again: Yay!

But, really, funk is something you have, not something you play. And Prince has it; of that much I'm sure.

Prince is a footnote in funk. I paint funk with a little bit of a broader brush stroke but there are so many funk artists that are lesser known that have a bigger foothold in the genre. I think popularity is used as an excuse for execution.

ThirdStrike said:

George Clinton's version of Erotic City was funkier than Prince's without even trying to be.
If Erotic City is your pinnacle of funk, then you need to get out of the "City" more.

purplecam said:

Yes you can. Musical gumbo. A mesh of different elements of various genres. There. Its described. Easily.
Dreamshaman32 said "he's the ultimate derivative artist who happens to work his ass off." I like that. Let's go with that as a definition of Prince as an artist.

robinesque said:

This is the case with most of us who are fans of funk. A long time ago, I said there are funk fans on here and there are Prince fans. I'm a funk fan and always have been. Prince has a place in there for making some funky songs. He does NOT have a spot at the head of the table.

Prince is not a pure funk artist. He's funky sometimes. He has not "mastered" funk nor has he "surpassed" funk just because he delves in other genres and is a proficient musician. People who know funk don't have to explain it to other people who know funk. We just know. Some of you are getting frustrated that ButterscotchPimp isn't giving you ammo to argue with but he has actually stated his case well and those who know funk don't need a thousand references to get what he is saying. People keep trying to take this off-topic and stir it in other directions. That's very typical on here. No one has said Prince isn't funky or is less proficient on an instrument. That is NOT the topic. The topic is FUNK and where Prince stands in the scope of FUNK, not all of that other stuff. Stay on topic, please. To the others whining about the debate, if you have nothing to offer other than the complaint of the existence or validity of the existence of the thread, why don't you just BOUNCE?
Prince is funky. He is not "funk".