I think it's almost always been there when Prince is mentioned or a new lp is being reviewed, but nowdays the word is used too much it seems the worlds full of the F___ERS when I don't think it really is.

Sometimes I forget how good he is, but then I'll listen to The Time or Jill Jones or somebody else he wrote songs for and it comes flooding back to me he has written some classics for other people which are better than most artists own body of work.

If you really want to answer the question look up what the word GENIUS means, so I guess it's from that very first moment he made music.

thedance said:

Just read the CD-booklet to "For You".

He is playing 27 instruments on that album....

Same ol' bullshit. Doesn't get true by being repeated over and over again. It's nonsense.

funksterr said:

Musical genius is a marketing phrase. And no one bought into the sales talk more than Prince himself. But if you look at it honestly, a lot of Prince's music is juvenile and profane. The music itself is rarely above a very basic rock and soul level, and where it does exceed common limitations, we now know he had major input from his hired bands. Prince is a hard worker and talented in many ways musically. From an industry stand point Prince may be the greatest executive producer in the history of music, because he consistently ties it all together into a finished product. But musical genius is definitely an overstatement.

best to forget about funksteer's statement. He has already been proven wrong. Appearently the likes of sign of the times, adore, the ballad of dorothy parkmer when doves cry etc are not great compositions but just profane swearing. And appearently other artists dont use other musicians

Nor has prince had "major" input from others, since he has written 99 percent of his best songs by himself.

Prince displayed musical genius on For You