that photo was meant to be uplifting.

stanleylieber said:

:hotair:

stanleylieber said:

Of course, the reality is that a good portion of what became the Black Album was written and recorded for Sheila E's birthday party and Rock Hard was left over from Camille.

jtfolden said:

i don't think this contradicts what i said.

the tracks were selected for an assemblage that was meant to reflect that prince could make kick-ass 'black' music.

iloveannie said:

U sooo get me and my sarcasm

U can tell some people on this thread were not breast fed as children

Linn4days said:

I'm white, English and male and I must agree that if it wasn't for that blinding soloing at the end of Let's Go Crazy I'd probably have missed Prince altogether.

LondonStyle said:

Well, first of all, people do hear the new stuff from time to time and generally speaking they don't like it. But my point is more to question the idea of a generational difference in how P's music is perceived. In my experience both older and younger people agree that P's best music was in the '80s.

And by the way, Bruce's music gets very little airplay either, but it's still respected (and sells well) because he is still able to produce work that stands toe to toe with his best stuff. Bob Dylan has also produced some great work in his old age and been rewarded for it (though like Prince and Bruce he receives very little airplay). I'm not a fan of U2, but certainly songs like "Beautiful Day" are as good as anything they did in the past. You can understand why they're still current. P on the other hand has made himself irrelevant by producing uninspired, forgettable music for the last 12 years.
[Edited 4/23/09 4:58am]

stanleylieber said:

Good Friday ! Lawd hold it right there !!!

Okay in all seriousness this is like telling a then 19 year old years ago ( myself) who just got into Jimi Hendrix's music. Means nothing because I wasn't at woodstock or get into Nina Simone or countless others past and present to discover.
These are just some of the artist whose life was IS music.

And years from now when we're all gone there will be someone stumbling along PRINCE music familiarizing themselves with old music which to their ears willl be new whether it's from 1979 or 2009.

The elitism must cease let the new fans circa 1998 enjoy their time learning his music.

utopia7 said:

Here, here. I love a lot of his old music and a lot of his new music. I don't waste tame worrying which is better, I like to view all his albums as one body of work that changes over time.

For instance, back in '95 when I heard the '1999' album, I wasn't that taken by it and didn't really care for his early stuff tbh, now it's one of my fave's but so is '3121' so I would never say prince isn't as good as he used to be.

It often has to do with when you became a fan. 94/95 is special to me as that's when I became a fan. It's different for everyone.
[Edited 4/23/09 5:29am]
[Edited 4/23/09 11:31am]

rlittler81 said:

the constant "oh the 80's was better than what he's doing now" constantly cracks me up cause 4 me it's just trying 2 pigeon hole a artist. let them b and discover new sounds and the like. if u don't dig it, fine, but the constant rehashes of how he did things then and spouting that it's because he's a JW now and it sucks, really means that it's the listerners problem with prince's life choices rather than his music.

prince's music is ONE long body of work that will continue 2 evolve as long as he decides 2 release his music. yes there r criticism that is warrented, we all have them, god knows i've xpressed them myself, but damn 2 constantly say things were better in the 80's really says more about a listener than prince

what if we start saying things were better in the early '90s

stanleylieber said:

doesn't matter it's still looking at one period of time over a 30 year career and comparing it 2 the others

L4OATheOriginal said:

do you like asparagus

SupaFunkyOrgangrinderSexy said:

A pretty good point here. My biggest complaint with 00's Prince albums is it seems pretty clear he comes up with 4 or 5 good new songs for a album and then fills the rest with stuff he has lying around in the vault. "Rainbow Children" may have been his last, fully realized album.

I wouldn't mind the from-the-vault stuff so much (it's not like the songs all suck)--Prince has always used older material to finish new albums--but it seems like he is no longer bothering to re-work the material to fit it with the groove of the new album.

Perfect example: "Planet Earth". There's a great, almost Revolution-era vibe to the tracks "Planet Earth", "Guitar", "Lion of Judah" and "Resolution". But so much of the rest of the stuff (even the good tracks like "Chelsea Rodgers" and "The One U Wanna C") don't fit in with the where the album is headed after the first two tracks.

At least "MPLSound" has a cohesive sound to it. It sounds like an album. Unfortunately, it's not a GREAT album. But at least it's cohesive-sounding.

Personally, I rather Prince release half-as-much material and make sure the albums all work as unit rather than just be a collection of new tracks.

stanleylieber said:

nope

L4OATheOriginal said:

but you like food, right?

keywhiz said:[quote]

SupaFunkyOrgangrinderSexy said:

It's interesting you say this, I was thinking Lotusflow3r fell into that category due to vault tracks from 04/05 being included, but then I looked back and realised Prince has done that a lot over the years. Sign 'O' The Times is made up of material that was meant for several albums, The Black Album had a track from 'camille', Lovesexy had 'When 2 R In Love' that had been placed on a different album, albeit an unreleased one. Graffiti Bridge had a few vault tracks too and The Gold Experience configerations crossed over with Come several times. Maybe it's 'cause it hasn't happened for a while that it seems so strange.

rlittler81 said:

Yeah, like I said, he's always used 'vault' tracks to fill out albums. It's just that in the past it seems he has re-worked the tracks more to fit in with the sound and feel of each album. Or, at the very least, chose tracks that fit better. Even a big, sprawling, disparate album like Sign O' The Times was sequenced in a manner that let the different tracks flow together better. I really like the way Planet Earth starts and how it finishes, but the tracks in the middle are just all-over-the-place. The problem with this is it really puts a lot of pressure on the individual tracks to be GOOD to hold the album up. A couple of the stronger tracks do this, but the weaker tracks just let the whole album down. Because they don't fit in with the initial sound of the album, they tend to stick-out like sore thumbs then they might otherwise.

Compare this to an album like Around The World In A Day which, admittedly has some weak songs. But since they all fit with the flow and sequencing and sound of the entire album, the weak tracks are allowed to be "texture" to the overall album rather than tracks that must live-or-die on their own.

Just my opinion, of course. Your mileage may vary.

stanleylieber said:

nah cause i eat like a parakeet u want some birdseeds or something?

L4OATheOriginal said:

but god created everything -- it's one body of work. so it doesn't make sense to arbitrarily take one piece of creation and say it's better than another. you have to look at everything as a whole.

for example, why say that prince is a better musician than some other musician?

stanleylieber said:

but i'm not one that just views his work as just a slice of pizza instead of the other 11 slices in that pie

L4OATheOriginal said:

i think you'll find that most so-called haters in fact are judging it as an entire body of work, which is why some people find the later material to be lacking. literally, they find it to be lacking in comparison with the rest of the work.

one common refrain amongst anti-haters is that if you took a modern prince album and released it under a different name then everyone would praise it as a work of genius. the premise behind this claim is that people judge prince unfairly because they hold him to the standard of his previous work.

you're asking to have the argument both ways: we're not supposed to compare prince's new work to his old work but we're also not supposed to focus on the new work alone because it's a total body of work and should be judged accordingly.

i'm going to use a story problem here because i think it will illustrate the situation clearly:

let's say you hate anchovies. you order a pizza. it's a great pizza, but half of it is covered with anchovies. judging the pie as a total body of work, you'd have to conclude that the pizza is a lousy pizza. examining it piece by piece, you'd be able to acknowledge that everything but the anchovies is great. putting the anchovies in context -- observing that they are part of a larger tapestry -- would presumably do nothing to make them taste better. since you hate anchovies.

my question to you (the hypothetical you from the story problem) is:

why do you hate the pizza chef?

stanleylieber said:

That's quite interesting. GB, D&P and 'Symbol' are low in my estimation, however what he recorded in the 93/94 period equals my second fave era of his.

Might be he'd dropped the attempts at intergrating rap into his music, might be he was angry with WB and was reaching and pulled some good work out of himself.

My big problem with his latest work is the modern (awhile back!) slang he's using. He sounds silly as a 51yr old trying to sound like a young guy. He isn't, i see no need for this, and if someone 'young' who is a fan can justify why a man as old as their dad wants to sound like that, well, i'm all ears.

Just makes me cringe.

Would Stevie or Mike come out with that? doubt it. Why Prince? who is he trying to appeal to? silly man.

stanleylieber said:

no on is saying i'm hating the artist far from it..but as a artist myself, y would i continue 2 offer up the same music over and over when i'm letting my audience determine what is good art and what is not? yes i would like someone 2 dig my vibe, but didn't jimi meet mad resistance when the whole gypses thang came about? now it's being hurled as masterpieces. i'm not saying everything prince offers up is gold (planet earth) but damn i'm not looking at his new album saying IT BETTER B ON PAR WITH PURPLE RAIN OR SIGN O' THE TIMES DAMMIT..nor am i saying the last great thing he did was 20 years ago either.

i look at his work as a continuing voyage and there maybe bumps in that road but the car is STILL moving. and i plan on riding this vehicle until the wheels fall off, or if i choose 2, tell him 2 pull on the side of the road and let me out of this ride. which some have done and that's fine. but where one got out of the bus and some hoped on board in their sted, they or anyone shouldn't b forced 2 hear the ones that got off way be4 2 still chasing the bus saying hey u should stay here with us cause everything u have done after u dropped us off sucks.

imo when prince is retired and no longer makes music, THEN and ONLY then should we look at his work and say which era was best ..cause the food is still in the oven cooking

L4OATheOriginal said:

in that case though how can you even determine whether you like an individual song or not?

stanleylieber said:

okay ..step away from the bar ..seriously cause now ur babbling

L4OATheOriginal said:

no offense, but your logic doesn't hold up. i'm just showing you how and why. there is no indication that prince's music is intended as a unified body of work. 'prince music' is not a novel released in installments. it's a series of compositions that are sometimes carefully assembled into concept albums and are sometimes assembled into random collections of songs and sometimes are not collected at all.

comparisons between eras are just as valid as comparisons between albums or songs. you advance the comparison between 'planet earth' and other albums but reject the comparison between one time period and another. i'm just saying that according to your own argument that approach doesn't make any sense. if prince's music can only be judged as a complete body of work, and prince is not finished creating that complete body of work, then you should reserve judgment on 'planet earth' until the complete body of work is completed. to do otherwise is to invalidate your own argument.

i'll bet i haven't talked you into liking 'planet earth,' though, have i?

for many people, modern prince music is to them as 'planet earth' is to you.

based on your stated argument, both perspectives are equally valid or invalid.