Comercial vs Underground

Synthetic vs Authentic

Polished vs "Raw"

Risky vs Playing safe

Prince is not just one of these things, often a mix between all of it. Where would you put your favourite Prince albums?

Example:

I think Dirty Mind sounds a bit less polished than his other works, but it's pretty comercial in it's structure of songs. And his visual style was clearly a statement and a way of getting recognised. But on the other hand. Is this done because he wanted to sell albums only? Or would he do this if it was not to be a big hit? Is sometimes being comercial in such a controversial way big risk taking? His visual style, his lyrics, his way of performing a song... For some it would be an artistic suicide to act in similar way. Prince pulled it off by actually believing in what he did imo. The instrumentation is pretty authentic on DIrty Mind compared to most of his other releases. The sound engineering though is making acoustic elements like the drums appear much more in your face than an actual drumset does in reality. Old 60s 70s rock of bands like Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple would have a more "authentic" sound on their drums. Ever since the disco arrived, less dynamics was preferred. It makes all the elements seem fairly high in the mix, and everything sounds "modern" and louder.