Rightly or wrongly there are genres of music associated with being black (jazz, blues, R+B, funk, soul, reggae, gospel) and music associated with being white (rock, pop, pyschedelia, indie, punk, the various forms of metal, opera/classical)

You may disagree with my analysis but if you see some truth in what I'm saying do you think he produces music that would be considered "black" or "white" better?

Personally I think his best ever period musically was from !980's Dirty Mind (a fusion of rock and punk) right up to 1988's Lovesexy (ethereal music very influenced by The Cocteau Twins an exceptional indie band from Scotland).
Albums 1999 and Purple rain are very pop/rock orientated. ATWIAD is pure 1960's Beatlesesque pyschedelia as is Parade but that is laced more with stringed instruments.
The song Sign of the times is very indie sounding and appeared in the Indie set's bible The N.M.E top 20 songs of the 1980s and featured in John Peel's festive 50 for the year 1987.
All these songs and albums from this period would contain music from the genres that are considered white.

I think when P's music starts to suffer is when he created the N.P.G and started incorporating more black styles into his music, most disastrously his forays into rap and hip hop.
Trying to be a "serious" black artist caused his work to suffer (IMHO).
P does rock and pop better than rap or hip hop.
His endless R+B efforts pale compared to his few attempts at punk or psychedelia.

What do you all think?

ernestsewell said:

The bigger picture is not that music is "black or white!" The fact is that labeled music is called "black or white" by being labeled "R&B or Rock & Roll." That was the beginning of the "genre-fication" of music. My son talks about all these sub-genres now that I've never heard of... Rock music, just like R & B
was based on Black music--so I don't get the "White/Black" division. Sounds like a throw-back to the 50s--before my time! There is a division in music, all right, but that started going on decades ago...by music corporations like Sony and company! I grew up listening to radio stations which played both so-called "Black and White" music. This whole construction just sucks!

Well..If you are refering to R&B and Rap as "black", and Rock and Pop as "White"...
Ill have to vote for White.
Im really partial to his rock n roll. To me his "black" sound always sounds forced, except for his r&b ballads. From 1978- 1995 he seemed so relaxed and natural. (with the exception of a few songs) He was a crossover artist and it fit him well.
After that, he seemed to after the black audience more. I never understood it, because he already had a huge black following! He seemed like he was forcing himself to develope a sound and a voice that would accomplish that.
Listen to Purple Rain, Little Red Corvette, Rasberry Beret, Diamonds and Pearls, Cream, 7, Gold, Endorphine Machine... These songs just seemed to flow naturally from him.
Then you had Tracks from New Power Soul, Chocolate Invasion, 3121, MPLSound.. etc....it just seemed so UN-natural.

xlr8r said:

I didn't know music had races.

He's very good with the orange music...


Bullshit thread...

mike3121 said:

As do I.

I'd love him to reform the Revolution, make an album with them and tour. The N.P.G (in all their various forms do nothing for me musically) and the musicians he has worked with during the last 5 years and more also don't seem to have brought out the best in him (just my opinion).

A return to his pop/rock days of yore would please me greatly. Nothing to be ashamed about in producing pop, Prince does it better than anyone.

Bullshit thread...

Do you really believe Prince's earlier shows were prodominately a black audience 1/2 of his band was white starting out and..
NPG is seriously NOT his roots

Do you really believe Prince's earlier shows were prodominately a black audience 1/2 of his band was white starting out and..
NPG is seriously NOT his roots

Too long to quote

OldFriends4Sale said:

Talk about revisionist history: Yes, Prince's earlier shows were predominately black audiences. I attended the "Fire It Up" Tour, and the crowd was about seventy percent black. The first two albums were played exclusively on black radio. Outside his hometown, which was only three percent black at the time, Prince was marketed to the traditional black enclaves: Detroit, Chicago, DC, where, by the way, Detroit was the first city to play his music regularly. In fact, Prince did not get much notice from white audiences until he started lying about his mixed race heritage so that Dirty Mind could be played on white radio. And even then, the crowds were not equally mixed with whites and blacks until the second leg of the 1999 Tour with MTV giving regular airplay to "Little Red Corvette." So to say that NPG or soul or R&B music are not Prince's roots is just wrong.

Additionally to say that when Prince produces soul or R&B styled songs that it sounds forced is definitely in the ear of the beholder, but just to list a few: "Soft & Wet," "Baby," "So Blue," "I Wanna Be Your Lover," "I Feel for You," "Do, Me Baby," "Still Waiting," "International Lover," "Free," "Adore," "Insatiable." I could go the other way and say that when Prince produces more whimsical, Eurocentric styled ballads, like "Do U Lie?" or "Some Times it Snows in April" that they sound a bit bland and forced to me, but that's the problem with labels. The vocal performance/delivery in "Do U Lie?" especially towards the end infuses soul sensibility, making it difficult to classify it as anything other than a Prince song. That's the genius of Prince. He amalgamated sounds so well that they defied categories. The fact that people on this thread argue whether "Little Red Corvette" and "When Doves Cry" are "black" or "white" songs says two things. Prince is a genius, and that some of us have some unresolved cultural, racial, gender issues.

Furthermore, most great artists are experimenters, so we can only discuss R&B and Rock or Black and White music in vague theory. Prince wanted to be free, but he knew he had to write some hits to be free. It was a conundrum that he was willing to embrace, publically, "I wanted a hit album. It was for radio rather than for me, and it got a lot of people interested in my music. But it wasn't the kind of audience you really want. They only come around to check you out when you have another hit. They won't come to see you when you change directions and try something new. That's the kind of audience I wanted." (Hill, Prince: A Pop Life) And to this quote from 1981, I'll concede that Prince was probably referring to his R&B audience because traditionally R&B audiences tend to be a bit conservative in their tastes. (The R&B folks can kill me for that gross stereotype), but traditional or mass black music tastes are also tied to socio-political circumstances of community where there is safety in numbers. However, I'm sure that it was quite a shock to Prince to find that his liberal white audience wasn't so open-minded or liberal when he started writing songs like "We March," "Sacrifice of Victor," or The Rainbow Children or evening singing the Staple Singers "When Will We Be Paid?" So Prince wanted to be a hybrid, but he was also heavily influenced by black artists: James Brown, Sly Stone, Jimi Hendrix, George Clinton, Larry Graham, and Stevie Wonder. When Prince started hanging out with legends, he wasn’t hanging out with Paul McCarthy or Eric Clapton or Robert Plant. Yes, the respected them, but when Prince wanted to, began to connect with a musical legacy and heritage, he connected with black artists, mostly because Prince saw from these black artists that a black man could free himself from the confines of American racism and create music that was judged on its merit. But to say that Prince's roots are Rock and not R&B is absurd. And, by the way, it was music critic Nelson George who said Prince plays more like Santana than Hendrix, not Prince, himself.

This thread isn't stupid, but it is inflammatory. Because Prince has been a master at being a hybrid, he has attracted fans from all walks of life that have their own racial, cultural, gender, or aesthetic investment in him. So, these types of threads or discussions open the flood gates for fans who like one particular style of Prince's music or persona more than the others to vent their hatred for the other styles. While I am an African American male who claims to love equally all styles of music that Prince creates (btw I don't listen to enough rap music to judge good rap from bad rap so Prince's rapping has never bothered me), I am annoyed by the fans who keep posting they want Prince to reform the Revolution. This bothers me for two reasons. One, I like what he has created since he disbanded the revolution. Two, something in me thinks that it is just certain white fans who don't like that Prince desired to be more tangibly black oriented. Miles Davis, in his autobiography, stated the same about how white critics hated his and Hendrix’s music when they had a mostly black band or moved toward more "traditional" black music. Now, I don't know if the fans who want Prince to reform the Revolution are driven by race sensibility or aesthetic sensibility, which is why I never raise the issue on those other threads, but racism and art are complicated things and race sensibility often informs aesthetic sensibility in some way or another, and Prince knew this from day one--he used it, manipulated it, and still plays it. Whether it adds to or distracts from his music, again, that's in the ear of the beholder. But to say that Prince's roots don't run deep into traditional black music (and yes, I know that Rock is just electrified Blues), is denying the obvious. And I would have to wonder, what would make someone deny the obvious. It's like claiming to be a Christian and having a picture of a blond haired, blue-eyed Jesus on your wall. Either you have not read your Bible like you have claimed, or you have read it and have decided to ignore the truth of his race for some socio-political reason/ideology.
[Edited 4/3/10 19:34pm]

OldFriends4Sale said:

Talk about revisionist history: Yes, Prince's earlier shows were predominately black audiences. I attended the "Fire It Up" Tour, and the crowd was about seventy percent black. The first two albums were played exclusively on black radio. Outside his hometown, which was only three percent black at the time, Prince was marketed to the traditional black enclaves: Detroit, Chicago, DC, where, by the way, Detroit was the first city to play his music regularly. In fact, Prince did not get much notice from white audiences until he started lying about his mixed race heritage so that Dirty Mind could be played on white radio. And even then, the crowds were not equally mixed with whites and blacks until the second leg of the 1999 Tour with MTV giving regular airplay to "Little Red Corvette." So to say that NPG or soul or R&B music are not Prince's roots is just wrong.

Additionally to say that when Prince produces soul or R&B styled songs that it sounds forced is definitely in the ear of the beholder, but just to list a few: "Soft & Wet," "Baby," "So Blue," "I Wanna Be Your Lover," "I Feel for You," "Do, Me Baby," "Still Waiting," "International Lover," "Free," "Adore," "Insatiable." I could go the other way and say that when Prince produces more whimsical, Eurocentric styled ballads, like "Do U Lie?" or "Some Times it Snows in April" that they sound a bit bland and forced to me, but that's the problem with labels. The vocal performance/delivery in "Do U Lie?" especially towards the end infuses soul sensibility, making it difficult to classify it as anything other than a Prince song. That's the genius of Prince. He amalgamated sounds so well that they defied categories. The fact that people on this thread argue whether "Little Red Corvette" and "When Doves Cry" are "black" or "white" songs says two things. Prince is a genius, and that some of us have some unresolved cultural, racial, gender issues.

Furthermore, most great artists are experimenters, so we can only discuss R&B and Rock or Black and White music in vague theory. Prince wanted to be free, but he knew he had to write some hits to be free. It was a conundrum that he was willing to embrace, publically, "I wanted a hit album. It was for radio rather than for me, and it got a lot of people interested in my music. But it wasn't the kind of audience you really want. They only come around to check you out when you have another hit. They won't come to see you when you change directions and try something new. That's the kind of audience I wanted." (Hill, Prince: A Pop Life) And to this quote from 1981, I'll concede that Prince was probably referring to his R&B audience because traditionally R&B audiences tend to be a bit conservative in their tastes. (The R&B folks can kill me for that gross stereotype), but traditional or mass black music tastes are also tied to socio-political circumstances of community where there is safety in numbers. However, I'm sure that it was quite a shock to Prince to find that his liberal white audience wasn't so open-minded or liberal when he started writing songs like "We March," "Sacrifice of Victor," or The Rainbow Children or evening singing the Staple Singers "When Will We Be Paid?" So Prince wanted to be a hybrid, but he was also heavily influenced by black artists: James Brown, Sly Stone, Jimi Hendrix, George Clinton, Larry Graham, and Stevie Wonder. When Prince started hanging out with legends, he wasn’t hanging out with Paul McCarthy or Eric Clapton or Robert Plant. Yes, the respected them, but when Prince wanted to, began to connect with a musical legacy and heritage, he connected with black artists, mostly because Prince saw from these black artists that a black man could free himself from the confines of American racism and create music that was judged on its merit. But to say that Prince's roots are Rock and not R&B is absurd. And, by the way, it was music critic Nelson George who said Prince plays more like Santana than Hendrix, not Prince, himself.

This thread isn't stupid, but it is inflammatory. Because Prince has been a master at being a hybrid, he has attracted fans from all walks of life that have their own racial, cultural, gender, or aesthetic investment in him. So, these types of threads or discussions open the flood gates for fans who like one particular style of Prince's music or persona more than the others to vent their hatred for the other styles. While I am an African American male who claims to love equally all styles of music that Prince creates (btw I don't listen to enough rap music to judge good rap from bad rap so Prince's rapping has never bothered me), I am annoyed by the fans who keep posting they want Prince to reform the Revolution. This bothers me for two reasons. One, I like what he has created since he disbanded the revolution. Two, something in me thinks that it is just certain white fans who don't like that Prince desired to be more tangibly black oriented. Miles Davis, in his autobiography, stated the same about how white critics hated his and Hendrix’s music when they had a mostly black band or moved toward more "traditional" black music. Now, I don't know if the fans who want Prince to reform the Revolution are driven by race sensibility or aesthetic sensibility, which is why I never raise the issue on those other threads, but racism and art are complicated things and race sensibility often informs aesthetic sensibility in some way or another, and Prince knew this from day one--he used it, manipulated it, and still plays it. Whether it adds to or distracts from his music, again, that's in the ear of the beholder. But to say that Prince's roots don't run deep into traditional black music (and yes, I know that Rock is just electrified Blues), is denying the obvious. And I would have to wonder, what would make someone deny the obvious. It's like claiming to be a Christian and having a picture of a blond haired, blue-eyed Jesus on your wall. Either you have not read your Bible like you have claimed, or you have read it and have decided to ignore the truth of his race for some socio-political reason/ideology.
[Edited 4/3/10 19:34pm]

OldFriends4Sale said:

Talk about revisionist history: Yes, Prince's earlier shows were predominately black audiences. I attended the "Fire It Up" Tour, and the crowd was about seventy percent black. The first two albums were played exclusively on black radio. Outside his hometown, which was only three percent black at the time, Prince was marketed to the traditional black enclaves: Detroit, Chicago, DC, where, by the way, Detroit was the first city to play his music regularly. In fact, Prince did not get much notice from white audiences until he started lying about his mixed race heritage so that Dirty Mind could be played on white radio. And even then, the crowds were not equally mixed with whites and blacks until the second leg of the 1999 Tour with MTV giving regular airplay to "Little Red Corvette." So to say that NPG or soul or R&B music are not Prince's roots is just wrong.

Additionally to say that when Prince produces soul or R&B styled songs that it sounds forced is definitely in the ear of the beholder, but just to list a few: "Soft & Wet," "Baby," "So Blue," "I Wanna Be Your Lover," "I Feel for You," "Do, Me Baby," "Still Waiting," "International Lover," "Free," "Adore," "Insatiable." I could go the other way and say that when Prince produces more whimsical, Eurocentric styled ballads, like "Do U Lie?" or "Some Times it Snows in April" that they sound a bit bland and forced to me, but that's the problem with labels. The vocal performance/delivery in "Do U Lie?" especially towards the end infuses soul sensibility, making it difficult to classify it as anything other than a Prince song. That's the genius of Prince. He amalgamated sounds so well that they defied categories. The fact that people on this thread argue whether "Little Red Corvette" and "When Doves Cry" are "black" or "white" songs says two things. Prince is a genius, and that some of us have some unresolved cultural, racial, gender issues.

Furthermore, most great artists are experimenters, so we can only discuss R&B and Rock or Black and White music in vague theory. Prince wanted to be free, but he knew he had to write some hits to be free. It was a conundrum that he was willing to embrace, publically, "I wanted a hit album. It was for radio rather than for me, and it got a lot of people interested in my music. But it wasn't the kind of audience you really want. They only come around to check you out when you have another hit. They won't come to see you when you change directions and try something new. That's the kind of audience I wanted." (Hill, Prince: A Pop Life) And to this quote from 1981, I'll concede that Prince was probably referring to his R&B audience because traditionally R&B audiences tend to be a bit conservative in their tastes. (The R&B folks can kill me for that gross stereotype), but traditional or mass black music tastes are also tied to socio-political circumstances of community where there is safety in numbers. However, I'm sure that it was quite a shock to Prince to find that his liberal white audience wasn't so open-minded or liberal when he started writing songs like "We March," "Sacrifice of Victor," or The Rainbow Children or evening singing the Staple Singers "When Will We Be Paid?" So Prince wanted to be a hybrid, but he was also heavily influenced by black artists: James Brown, Sly Stone, Jimi Hendrix, George Clinton, Larry Graham, and Stevie Wonder. When Prince started hanging out with legends, he wasn’t hanging out with Paul McCarthy or Eric Clapton or Robert Plant. Yes, the respected them, but when Prince wanted to, began to connect with a musical legacy and heritage, he connected with black artists, mostly because Prince saw from these black artists that a black man could free himself from the confines of American racism and create music that was judged on its merit. But to say that Prince's roots are Rock and not R&B is absurd. And, by the way, it was music critic Nelson George who said Prince plays more like Santana than Hendrix, not Prince, himself.

This thread isn't stupid, but it is inflammatory. Because Prince has been a master at being a hybrid, he has attracted fans from all walks of life that have their own racial, cultural, gender, or aesthetic investment in him. So, these types of threads or discussions open the flood gates for fans who like one particular style of Prince's music or persona more than the others to vent their hatred for the other styles. While I am an African American male who claims to love equally all styles of music that Prince creates (btw I don't listen to enough rap music to judge good rap from bad rap so Prince's rapping has never bothered me), I am annoyed by the fans who keep posting they want Prince to reform the Revolution. This bothers me for two reasons. One, I like what he has created since he disbanded the revolution. Two, something in me thinks that it is just certain white fans who don't like that Prince desired to be more tangibly black oriented. Miles Davis, in his autobiography, stated the same about how white critics hated his and Hendrix’s music when they had a mostly black band or moved toward more "traditional" black music. Now, I don't know if the fans who want Prince to reform the Revolution are driven by race sensibility or aesthetic sensibility, which is why I never raise the issue on those other threads, but racism and art are complicated things and race sensibility often informs aesthetic sensibility in some way or another, and Prince knew this from day one--he used it, manipulated it, and still plays it. Whether it adds to or distracts from his music, again, that's in the ear of the beholder. But to say that Prince's roots don't run deep into traditional black music (and yes, I know that Rock is just electrified Blues), is denying the obvious. And I would have to wonder, what would make someone deny the obvious. It's like claiming to be a Christian and having a picture of a blond haired, blue-eyed Jesus on your wall. Either you have not read your Bible like you have claimed, or you have read it and have decided to ignore the truth of his race for some socio-political reason/ideology.
[Edited 4/3/10 19:34pm]

1725topp said:

I totally enjoyed reading your post

OldFriends4Sale said:

Talk about revisionist history: Yes, Prince's earlier shows were predominately black audiences. I attended the "Fire It Up" Tour, and the crowd was about seventy percent black. The first two albums were played exclusively on black radio. Outside his hometown, which was only three percent black at the time, Prince was marketed to the traditional black enclaves: Detroit, Chicago, DC, where, by the way, Detroit was the first city to play his music regularly. In fact, Prince did not get much notice from white audiences until he started lying about his mixed race heritage so that Dirty Mind could be played on white radio. And even then, the crowds were not equally mixed with whites and blacks until the second leg of the 1999 Tour with MTV giving regular airplay to "Little Red Corvette." So to say that NPG or soul or R&B music are not Prince's roots is just wrong.

Additionally to say that when Prince produces soul or R&B styled songs that it sounds forced is definitely in the ear of the beholder, but just to list a few: "Soft & Wet," "Baby," "So Blue," "I Wanna Be Your Lover," "I Feel for You," "Do, Me Baby," "Still Waiting," "International Lover," "Free," "Adore," "Insatiable." I could go the other way and say that when Prince produces more whimsical, Eurocentric styled ballads, like "Do U Lie?" or "Some Times it Snows in April" that they sound a bit bland and forced to me, but that's the problem with labels. The vocal performance/delivery in "Do U Lie?" especially towards the end infuses soul sensibility, making it difficult to classify it as anything other than a Prince song. That's the genius of Prince. He amalgamated sounds so well that they defied categories. The fact that people on this thread argue whether "Little Red Corvette" and "When Doves Cry" are "black" or "white" songs says two things. Prince is a genius, and that some of us have some unresolved cultural, racial, gender issues.

Furthermore, most great artists are experimenters, so we can only discuss R&B and Rock or Black and White music in vague theory. Prince wanted to be free, but he knew he had to write some hits to be free. It was a conundrum that he was willing to embrace, publically, "I wanted a hit album. It was for radio rather than for me, and it got a lot of people interested in my music. But it wasn't the kind of audience you really want. They only come around to check you out when you have another hit. They won't come to see you when you change directions and try something new. That's the kind of audience I wanted." (Hill, Prince: A Pop Life) And to this quote from 1981, I'll concede that Prince was probably referring to his R&B audience because traditionally R&B audiences tend to be a bit conservative in their tastes. (The R&B folks can kill me for that gross stereotype), but traditional or mass black music tastes are also tied to socio-political circumstances of community where there is safety in numbers. However, I'm sure that it was quite a shock to Prince to find that his liberal white audience wasn't so open-minded or liberal when he started writing songs like "We March," "Sacrifice of Victor," or The Rainbow Children or evening singing the Staple Singers "When Will We Be Paid?" So Prince wanted to be a hybrid, but he was also heavily influenced by black artists: James Brown, Sly Stone, Jimi Hendrix, George Clinton, Larry Graham, and Stevie Wonder. When Prince started hanging out with legends, he wasn’t hanging out with Paul McCarthy or Eric Clapton or Robert Plant. Yes, the respected them, but when Prince wanted to, began to connect with a musical legacy and heritage, he connected with black artists, mostly because Prince saw from these black artists that a black man could free himself from the confines of American racism and create music that was judged on its merit. But to say that Prince's roots are Rock and not R&B is absurd. And, by the way, it was music critic Nelson George who said Prince plays more like Santana than Hendrix, not Prince, himself.

This thread isn't stupid, but it is inflammatory. Because Prince has been a master at being a hybrid, he has attracted fans from all walks of life that have their own racial, cultural, gender, or aesthetic investment in him. So, these types of threads or discussions open the flood gates for fans who like one particular style of Prince's music or persona more than the others to vent their hatred for the other styles. While I am an African American male who claims to love equally all styles of music that Prince creates (btw I don't listen to enough rap music to judge good rap from bad rap so Prince's rapping has never bothered me), I am annoyed by the fans who keep posting they want Prince to reform the Revolution. This bothers me for two reasons. One, I like what he has created since he disbanded the revolution. Two, something in me thinks that it is just certain white fans who don't like that Prince desired to be more tangibly black oriented. Miles Davis, in his autobiography, stated the same about how white critics hated his and Hendrix’s music when they had a mostly black band or moved toward more "traditional" black music. Now, I don't know if the fans who want Prince to reform the Revolution are driven by race sensibility or aesthetic sensibility, which is why I never raise the issue on those other threads, but racism and art are complicated things and race sensibility often informs aesthetic sensibility in some way or another, and Prince knew this from day one--he used it, manipulated it, and still plays it. Whether it adds to or distracts from his music, again, that's in the ear of the beholder. But to say that Prince's roots don't run deep into traditional black music (and yes, I know that Rock is just electrified Blues), is denying the obvious. And I would have to wonder, what would make someone deny the obvious. It's like claiming to be a Christian and having a picture of a blond haired, blue-eyed Jesus on your wall. Either you have not read your Bible like you have claimed, or you have read it and have decided to ignore the truth of his race for some socio-political reason/ideology.
[Edited 4/3/10 19:34pm]

Rightly or wrongly there are genres of music associated with being black (jazz, blues, R+B, funk, soul, reggae, gospel) and music associated with being white (rock, pop, psychedelia, indie, punk, the various forms of metal, opera/classical)

You may disagree with my analysis but if you see some truth in what I'm saying do you think he produces music that would be considered "black" or "white" better?

Personally I think his best ever period musically was from !980's Dirty Mind (a fusion of rock and punk) right up to 1988's Lovesexy (ethereal music very influenced by The Cocteau Twins an exceptional indie band from Scotland).
Albums 1999 and Purple rain are very pop/rock orientated. ATWIAD is pure 1960's Beatlesesque psychedelia as is Parade but that is laced more with stringed instruments.
The song Sign of the times is very indie sounding and appeared in the Indie set's bible The N.M.E top 20 songs of the 1980s and featured in John Peel's festive 50 for the year 1987.
All these songs and albums from this period would contain music from the genres that are considered white.

I think when P's music starts to suffer is when he created the N.P.G and started incorporating more black styles into his music, most disastrously his forays into rap and hip hop.
Trying to be a "serious" black artist caused his work to suffer (IMHO).
P does rock and pop better than rap or hip hop.
His endless R+B efforts pale compared to his few attempts at punk or psychedelia.

What do you all think?

Rightly or wrongly there are genres of music associated with being black (jazz, blues, R+B, funk, soul, reggae, gospel) and music associated with being white (rock, pop, pyschedelia, indie, punk, the various forms of metal, opera/classical)

You may disagree with my analysis but if you see some truth in what I'm saying do you think he produces music that would be considered "black" or "white" better?

Personally I think his best ever period musically was from !980's Dirty Mind (a fusion of rock and punk) right up to 1988's Lovesexy (ethereal music very influenced by The Cocteau Twins an exceptional indie band from Scotland).
Albums 1999 and Purple rain are very pop/rock orientated. ATWIAD is pure 1960's Beatlesesque pyschedelia as is Parade but that is laced more with stringed instruments.
The song Sign of the times is very indie sounding and appeared in the Indie set's bible The N.M.E top 20 songs of the 1980s and featured in John Peel's festive 50 for the year 1987.
All these songs and albums from this period would contain music from the genres that are considered white.

I think when P's music starts to suffer is when he created the N.P.G and started incorporating more black styles into his music, most disastrously his forays into rap and hip hop.
Trying to be a "serious" black artist caused his work to suffer (IMHO).
P does rock and pop better than rap or hip hop.
His endless R+B efforts pale compared to his few attempts at punk or psychedelia.

What do you all think?

xlr8r said:

I didn't know music had races.

NastradumasKid said:

come-on guys we all know what he meant when he said "black" or "white" music