Prince just turned 54.Purple Rain came out in 1985.That was 27 years ago!!

Do you feel old? I surely do.

The question is, who today represents that kinda social impact Prince had on us kid's of the 70's and 80's?

What movie's starring Black people, in the last 27 years has had the kinda cross-cultural impact on teen's like Purple Rain?

Hip-Hop is obviously leading the way but what hip-hop artist has had the kind of success that Prince had?

Tupac? Biggie? Kanye? Jay-Z? Lil Wayne?

I vote for Gabi Wilson to lead the turn around.Watch the Youtube video below.

http://youtu.be/gai24q82Fac

[Edited 6/8/12 17:36pm]

You really do love posting about Gabi Wilson.....

And the answer - No one. Prince is a one time thing, it won't happen again.

I can't say I feel old considering I'm a new time fan and fairly young. As in not even eighteen yet. In my opinion there is no Musician or Pop artist alive today who has a huge impact because nearly everyone in the industry today is non original.

Note I did not say EVERYONE but nearly everyone and by that I mean the artists that kids my age love to listen too, the mainstream popular ones.

In hip hop I would definetely go with Tupac.

Ceelo Green is the closest thing this generation has to Prince. And I say that at 41 years of age so, I watched Prince's whole ride. Like Prince, all of Ceelo's records sound very different from the next, often crossing different musical genres. . Like Prince, he isn't afraid to take chances. Like Prince, he plays several instruments and has nice vocal range. Like Prince, he'll put on something that another wouldn't dare. Like, Prince, Ceelo is not really as fully appreciated for his musicianship and song writing ability as he should be by the masses.

Oh, and hip -hop hasn't been cuting edge in years.

[Edited 6/8/12 20:31pm]

Age aint nuthin but a number.

I definitely don't feel old. I'm turning 21 next month

Do you feel old? no......only 39 years young and hoping to as fresh as Prince when I'm in my 50's.

The question is, who today represents that kinda social impact Prince had on us kid's of the 70's and 80's?

Social impact ...hmmmm.....Obama possible

What movie's starring Black people, in the last 27 years has had the kinda cross-cultural impact on teen's like Purple Rain?

I don't look at movies in colour code, but if I was to take a stab...I'd go with New Jack City with Ice-T, or The Colour Purple .with Whoopi Goldberg, Malcom X with Denzel Washinton

Hip-Hop is obviously leading the way but what hip-hop artist has had the kind of success that Prince had?

Define success.......as biggest money maker...then possible Jay-Z or Snoop Dog, or great albums....then Kanye West, or cross-over appeal ...then Eminem or just doing their own thang...like Methodman, or sticking power.. then we'll go with Ice Cube

I hope this helps you!

Can't think of anyone.

alexandernevamind said:

Prince just turned 54.Purple Rain came out in 1985.That was 27 years ago!!

Do you feel old? I surely do.

The question is, who today represents that kinda social impact Prince had on us kid's of the 70's and 80's?

What movie's starring Black people, in the last 27 years has had the kinda cross-cultural impact on teen's like Purple Rain?

Hip-Hop is obviously leading the way but what hip-hop artist has had the kind of success that Prince had?

Tupac? Biggie? Kanye? Jay-Z? Lil Wayne?

I vote for Gabi Wilson to lead the turn around.Watch the Youtube video below.

http://youtu.be/gai24q82Fac

[Edited 6/8/12 17:36pm]

Come back when you've mastered use of the apostrophe.

Old is in the state of the mind. I remember when P turned 30 and put out "Lovesexy". Even though it wasn't the epic days of 1984 I thought he still delivered the goods.

In the 90's he definetly inspired a new wave of artists..(we all know who they are so I won't name them)...and today his influence still shows. Miguel is one of the new artists' that comes to mind. His latest video kinda reminds me of "Little Red Corvette".

Like MJ, I think every generation that comes around will continue to be inspired and amazed by what P did.

I am a high school teacher. I teach just a few miles north of Minneapolis. I tell you something about cultural impact on teens today.

Teens today don't have anyone that means as much to them, as Prince/Michael/Madonna/U2 meant to teenagers in the 80's, or what 2pac and Nirvana meant to teens in the 90's.

Don't get me wrong, the teens today really are into current music, but the entire pop culture landscape is very disposable and fleeting. As popular as someone like Lil' Wayne or Lady Gaga are, teens today have about 1000 other things to distract them. They don't cling to these idols the way teens did in the past. Maybe it's because of social media, free music/videos quickly downloaded to an iphone, or the death of MTV promoting artists...whatever.

The point is that no one is making cultural impact on teens like artists of the 50's, 60's, 70's, 80's, 90's because people aren't all fed the same images/music/videos from the same few sources. Nowadays teens can lose themselves into very narrow, easily accessable, niches in pop culture. They don't have to do the modern day equivalent of listening to Bruce Springsteen, Boy George, and Stevie Nicks just to get to their fav Prince song. They just download the song/video instantly.

Now, as far as me feeling old? Nope. Prince is, like all great art, timeless.

The students at my school appreciate/dig Prince as much as my generation (as teens) dug James Brown, Jimi Hendrix, The Beatles, The Doors, George Clinton, and The Rolling Stones. The stuff that came before that is art. Meaning, they recognize the talent, and his songs can hit them the way they hit you when you first heard it.

I mean, I was a toddler when Controversy came out. You didn't have to be a teen to dig the everloving shit our of it.

[Edited 6/9/12 21:27pm]

Forgot the first part. Since I'm almost 30, I'm not old or really young (28) but I'm old enough to kinda remember when Prince was still having his heyday least critically if not commercially meaning right after Purple Rain.

Everyone's different, and the impact great artists have is for their originality, so comparing him to anyone else is pretty difficult. I can't think of any serious newcomers over the past 10 years who we can seriously compare him to.

If you look at not just his album catalog, but his live performances, you really have to think good and hard as to who today could possibly be this great. I don't think there is anyone.

I watched a clip on Youtube yesterday of his 86 Birthday show, and man does he and the band make everyone who ever dared take the stage over at least the last 30 years look incredibly amateurish. Prince and the band take great music, great arrangements, and created beyond great performances that no one today could possibly come close to today. He is/was that good.

I wonder what top current artists must think when they see such performances. Anyone in the music biz would surely have to bow down after witnessing such shows.

[Edited 6/9/12 20:34pm]

skywalker said:

I am a high school teacher. I teach just a few miles north of Minneapolis. I tell you something about cultural impact on teens today.

Teens today don't have anyone that means as much to them, as Prince/Michael/Madonna/U2 meant to teenagers in the 80's, or what 2pac and Nirvana meant to teens in the 90's.

Don't get me wrong, the teens today really are into current music, but the entire pop culture landscape is very disposable and fleeting. As popular as someone like Lil' Wayne or Lady Gaga are, teens today have about 1000 other things to distract them. They don't cling to these idols the way teens did in the past. Maybe it's because of social media, free music/videos quickly downloaded to an iphone, or the death of MTV promoting artists...whatever.

The point is that no one is making cultural impact on teens like artists of the 50's, 60's, 70's, 80's, 90's because people aren't all fed the same images/music/videos from the same few sources. Nowadays teens can lose themselves into very narrow, easily accessable, niches in pop culture. They don't have to do the modern day equivalent of listening to Bruce Springsteen, Boy George, and Stevie Nicks just to get to their fav Prince song. They just download the song/video instantly.

Now, as far as me feeling old? Nope. Prince is, like all great art, timeless.

The students at my school appreciate/dig Prince as much as my generation (as teens) dug James Brown, Jimi Hendrix, The Beatles, The Doors, George Clinton, and The Rolling Stones. The stuff that came before that is art. Meaning, they recognize the talent, and his songs can hit them the way they hit you when you first heard it.

I mean, I was a toddler when Controversy came out. You didn't have to be a teen to dig the everloving shit our of it.

[Edited 6/9/12 21:27pm]

I felt old when I heard the words to Joy In Repition change to "Four letter words will not be heard...up on this stage tonight." live.

I knew an era had passed, and we were all getting old.

skywalker said:

I am a high school teacher. I teach just a few miles north of Minneapolis. I tell you something about cultural impact on teens today.

Teens today don't have anyone that means as much to them, as Prince/Michael/Madonna/U2 meant to teenagers in the 80's, or what 2pac and Nirvana meant to teens in the 90's.

Don't get me wrong, the teens today really are into current music, but the entire pop culture landscape is very disposable and fleeting. As popular as someone like Lil' Wayne or Lady Gaga are, teens today have about 1000 other things to distract them. They don't cling to these idols the way teens did in the past. Maybe it's because of social media, free music/videos quickly downloaded to an iphone, or the death of MTV promoting artists...whatever.

The point is that no one is making cultural impact on teens like artists of the 50's, 60's, 70's, 80's, 90's because people aren't all fed the same images/music/videos from the same few sources. Nowadays teens can lose themselves into very narrow, easily accessable, niches in pop culture. They don't have to do the modern day equivalent of listening to Bruce Springsteen, Boy George, and Stevie Nicks just to get to their fav Prince song. They just download the song/video instantly.

Now, as far as me feeling old? Nope. Prince is, like all great art, timeless.

The students at my school appreciate/dig Prince as much as my generation (as teens) dug James Brown, Jimi Hendrix, The Beatles, The Doors, George Clinton, and The Rolling Stones. The stuff that came before that is art. Meaning, they recognize the talent, and his songs can hit them the way they hit you when you first heard it.

I mean, I was a toddler when Controversy came out. You didn't have to be a teen to dig the everloving shit our of it.

[Edited 6/9/12 21:27pm]

^^

Skylightt said:

Skylightt said:

I can't say I feel old considering I'm a new time fan and fairly young. As in not even eighteen yet.

Same here, I doubt anyone any time soon is going to have the same impact. In no small part due to society being desensitized to sexual stage antics and political/religous lyrics.

I think apart of the problem is that it is so hard to have an attatchmnent to modern musicians, I mean, back in the day music was an artistic statement (Don't hget me wrong I know there was a lot of crap released in the 70's-80's as well) but today even the political/religous tracks seem jaded and calculated. I just don't feel the singers anymore when they sing.

My dad was a teenager when Who's Next came out, and yet I still I identify more with Baba O-reilly than Teenage dream.

Bottom line, musicians care more about money and their careers and image at the expense of their artistic output. No-one is game to try something radically new because it just might not be commercially succesful.

On the other hand you have älternative music, which is a bit better but is still rife with people trying just as hard to be non-commercial as the mainstream industry has trying to be commerical. And although I haven't had a good listen to a lot of alternative music it is just as vague and disposable lyrically as the pop world.

I am deeply jealous of you oldies that got to wait for the followup to 1999 or Thriller, see real artists develop and experiment. Getting to read interviews where artists talk about their influences and what their next album is going to be like with less hype and more substance.

[Edited 6/10/12 1:00am]

2020 said:

Age aint nuthin but a number.

Really I agree, and especially if a Prince song comes on it's like magic and makes me feel ageless

When I think of how the majority of music these days is either slow or midtempo and extremely dull like the old days before the rock and roll era began, it makes me feel extremely young because I'm not into shit that my great grandparents would have loved.

alexandernevamind said:

Prince just turned 54.Purple Rain came out in 1985.That was 27 years ago!!

Do you feel old? I surely do.

I feel my age and my age is not young but that doesn't mean I feel old. It just means that life and all its experiences in those years now mount up. The things I've learnt, done, enjoyed and not enjoyed have resulted in new thoughts, new feelings of responsiblity and accountability which, while not absent when younger, they were just less in the foreground. Youth has an energy that drives us to experience. At a certain age, many things have been experienced and while we might never run out of new goals, experiences, dreams etc, we can at a certain age say, been there, done that, saying yes or no thanks with confidence and knowledge supporting those choices.

The question is, who today represents that kinda social impact Prince had on us kid's of the 70's and 80's?

Although times are different, there are still young kids crazy in love with new pop artists, e.g. Justin Bieber, Lady Gaga and those who think LMFAO are the coolest things since sliced bread.

What movie's starring Black people, in the last 27 years has had the kinda cross-cultural impact on teen's like Purple Rain?

As a poster mentioned I also don't see colour when I watch movies. But if you think of actors like Wesley Snipes, Eddy Murphy, Will Smith, Morgan Freeman & others I may have forgotten, their talents have long diluted any colour category barrier which might have existed.

Hip-Hop is obviously leading the way but what hip-hop artist has had the kind of success that Prince had?

I have no idea and here I show my age and the fact that I am not American. I know nothing about hip-hop except for the dancing, which I enjoy but cannot perform even though a good dancer, which again, shows my age. Yes there is hip-hop in EU but it's nothing like the US. In Europe and Asia, music lovers also follow their own language pop-stars.

I think it's important to remember that every generation, as it ages, looks back and says 'it was better before.' While there will always be some younger generation who prefer older music, everything moves forward and while the 'oldies' talk about what is lost, the 'newbies' talk about what is to be found. Not only in music but in everything.

Each new generation will do things 'their way' and the older generation's task is to give some kind of guidance. The crises that the world face have all been had before. The same societal issues have existed for centuries but the world is a complex place and they are not that easy to resolve. Each generation will invent though.

We might feel we do not have that many talented/creative artists today, (subjective) because of the internet transparency and mass amount available, but if you think in terms of how the net is 'created' by' we the people' then I think there's still a lot of creativity out there. It is only channelled differently. We might complain that pop music/electronic /hip-hop today has no 'substance' I guarantee that if all the youth of the 7 billion on the planet were surveyed we would be proven wholly incorrect. And besides we still have talents like Esperanze Spalding, Adele, Birdie and other who continue to pop up and show us that soul is still is very much alive. These and hip-hop artists have their followers, just as we in our youth followed newly found Prince.

skywalker said:

I am a high school teacher. I teach just a few miles north of Minneapolis. I tell you something about cultural impact on teens today.

Teens today don't have anyone that means as much to them, as Prince/Michael/Madonna/U2 meant to teenagers in the 80's, or what 2pac and Nirvana meant to teens in the 90's.

Don't get me wrong, the teens today really are into current music, but the entire pop culture landscape is very disposable and fleeting. As popular as someone like Lil' Wayne or Lady Gaga are, teens today have about 1000 other things to distract them. They don't cling to these idols the way teens did in the past. Maybe it's because of social media, free music/videos quickly downloaded to an iphone, or the death of MTV promoting artists...whatever.

The point is that no one is making cultural impact on teens like artists of the 50's, 60's, 70's, 80's, 90's because people aren't all fed the same images/music/videos from the same few sources. Nowadays teens can lose themselves into very narrow, easily accessable, niches in pop culture. They don't have to do the modern day equivalent of listening to Bruce Springsteen, Boy George, and Stevie Nicks just to get to their fav Prince song. They just download the song/video instantly.

Now, as far as me feeling old? Nope. Prince is, like all great art, timeless.

The students at my school appreciate/dig Prince as much as my generation (as teens) dug James Brown, Jimi Hendrix, The Beatles, The Doors, George Clinton, and The Rolling Stones. The stuff that came before that is art. Meaning, they recognize the talent, and his songs can hit them the way they hit you when you first heard it.

I mean, I was a toddler when Controversy came out. You didn't have to be a teen to dig the everloving shit our of it.

[Edited 6/9/12 21:27pm]

WORD!!!

I felt old when I saw Prince swap his Motorbike for a pushbike.

Time is a trick...

yes I do feel old.

And no one today is having an original cultural impact. Lady Gaga is just a Madonna clone, so she is having "cultural impact" but it is totally unoriginal.

imago said:

I felt old when I heard the words to Joy In Repition change to "Four letter words will not be heard...up on this stage tonight." live.

I knew an era had passed, and we were all getting old.

I'll let you in on a little secret that you will learn eventually. It doesn't matter what your chronological age is - in your head, you're always 25 years old. Sure, you know more now than you did then (hopefully). But in terms of your ability to love and have fun and feel happiness and sadness, you're always that young person you were.

The rude part is when you pass a plate glass window or a mirror, and you catch a glimpse of someone you'd swear was your mother (or father) - and it turns out, it's you.

That...and the way the bones in your feet sound like Rice Krispies when you get out of bed in the morning.