Many critics and fans would say that Lovesexy was the last truly great Prince album.

If you only listened to Prince's music released after Lovesexy....do you think he'd still be your favourite ever artist?

Post Lovesexy, nearly 25 years of music to enjoy, would Prince still be your favourite ever artist?

Why bring Lovesexy into this?

Lovesexy was the last truly great Prince album

Lovesexy over Sign of the times

If you only listened to Prince's music released after Lovesexy....do you think he'd still be your favourite ever artist?

now thats a hard one... maybe

In all honesty, no.

But I don't necessarily see Lovesexy as the "cut-off album" in these things. Batman is fine for it is and some of the best songs from the DF sessions are on GB. Then again, there have been many albums after those that have been better than those two (at least "as albums").

But as far as the overall "ethos" goes, Prince lost a lot of his "brilliance" and "coolness" after Lovesexy. Like, his sense of style just went for the worse (and I'm not talking about the way he dresses up).

BobPaisleyPark said:

Many critics and fans would say that Lovesexy was the last truly great Prince album.

If you only listened to Prince's music released after Lovesexy....do you think he'd still be your favourite ever artist?

Post Lovesexy, nearly 25 years of music to enjoy, would Prince still be your favourite ever artist?

Well Batman is good, Diamonds and Pearls is fantastic, Love symbol is good , Gold is AMAZING, after that the rest of stuff up to 3121 is subpar or decent. Musicology is okay and 3121 is great. The inbetween musicology and gold there are a few songs on each album here and there are good(but personally i love the Come album). Idk if he'd be my favorite definitlely top 10. Keep in mind the first Prince albums i listened to starting wen i was about 6-7 were the black album, Come, and TRC so i didn't know Prince had songs like 1999, little red corvette yadda yadda till i was atleast 10. So i was hooked by Prince's non 80s stuff. But yes Prince's music overall was better in the 80s but his career after the 80s is definitely worth noting.

BobPaisleyPark said:

Many critics and fans would say that Lovesexy was the last truly great Prince album.

If you only listened to Prince's music released after Lovesexy....do you think he'd still be your favourite ever artist?

Post Lovesexy, nearly 25 years of music to enjoy, would Prince still be your favourite ever artist?

Well Batman is good, Diamonds and Pearls is fantastic, Love symbol is good , Gold is AMAZING, after that the rest of stuff up to 3121 is subpar or decent. Musicology is okay and 3121 is great. The inbetween musicology and gold there are a few songs on each album here and there are good(but personally i love the Come album). Idk if he'd be my favorite definitlely top 10. Keep in mind the first Prince albums i listened to starting wen i was about 6-7 were the black album, Come, and TRC so i didn't know Prince had songs like 1999, little red corvette yadda yadda till i was atleast 10. So i was hooked by Prince's non 80s stuff. But yes Prince's music overall was better in the 80s but his career after the 80s is definitely worth noting.

Very interesting question!

I'm not sure if he would be or not - there's certainly a lot of great material to be found in there, amid all the lacklustre stuff. However, I can say that I probably never would have come to these albums in the first place if not for the fond memories of 78-88.

So, it's possible he might have been among my favourites, but not likely, since I probably would have only heard the songs in the Batman movie, Gett Off, 7, and The Most Beautiful Girl in the World.

I should note that I became a fan because of the 1990s stuff because that's what was current when I was a teenager myself (Come, TGE etc. - that stuff blew my mind in all honesty). It's just that I started to prefer the 1980s stuff as time went by.

yes. in fact, I like most of his albums post-Lovesexy better than that one. I think Lovesexy, overall, as an album is fairly weak.

Became a fan post D&P and to be honest didn't start delving back really untill 94-95ish... I had more bootlegs than official albums for a while.

It was the 90's LP's and Maxi singles that had me hooked so in all honesty yes,

However when I did look back Whoa what a bounty of goodness

Good quesion. Id say no.

yes, even so i beleive no one can match his musical versatility of musicianship.

most of my favorite albums are post 1991

I have 2 be honest, after 1992 with the exception of the Gold Experience and Lotusflow3r I mainly only listen to my favourite tracks from the newer albums instead of all the way through because there's just too much filler IMO. I still have him in my top 10 artists from then on but I have a significantly larger interest in his best work from 1978-1995 than I do in most of it since then. (Of course some of his tracks like Colonized Mind and Black Sweat I like just as much as his songs from that era.

Probably not.

Very interesting question. So, the first album would be Batman, which is decent, at least as good as For You. And the SNL performance of Electric Chair was awesome. But then bad rapping on D&P and Love Symbol would have stronger impact on my feelings. The thing that was great about Prince from For You to Lovesexy was the freedom, inclusiveness, and daring of his lyrics. Post-Lovesexy his first few albums had that daring, but he quickly become more conservative, especially since 2000. That would probably limit my view as much as anything else.

But who would replace him as number one?

Funkadelic & Parliament?

Possibly, but their best work was either before I was born or when I was so young that I didn't know about it. To really be a favorite, it helps if you grow along with the artist, in real time.

The Clash? Bob Marley?

Same problem.

The Police & Sting?

Maybe, but since 1990, I've been much more intro soul, funk, and R&B, than rock. So my interest would've faded.

Erykah Badu?

Luther Vandross?

The Fugees, Lauryn Hill, Wyclef, and Pras?

Pearl Jam?

Sade?

I really can't find anybody who's as creative, funky, fun, and sometimes inspiring as Prince. I'll have to think about it more.

Interesting question.

He would probably not be my favorite artist, but neither any artist that came after 1988 would be in his place.

I'm a big fan of black American music, specially jazz and rnb, so, to know that he would still have created four very good albums excluding some fillers (D&P, Love Symbol, TGE, Come), two very interesting more conceptual/experimental albums (TRC, LF), and dozens of amazing songs that show a wide range of genres (jazz, soul, rnb, rock, pop, funk, electronic, the Minneapolis sound - that still would have surfaced), I think he'd probably still be my favorite artist post-1988, but not one of my favorites of all time, which are all from older times.

Comparing his production on that period - from 1988 on - to the best there was in the same period for rnb - Erykah, Dangelo, TLC, Beyoncé, Kelis, Lauryn - he still would've been the greatest for rnb, maybe just equalled by Lauryn, IMO. About other genres, there came new classics in rock, like Nirvana and Radiohead, both of which I like, but for me, rock n roll glory is enclosured between the 50s and 70s.

Just one observation, for me, Batman can surely belong to that golden sequence of classic albums, the break was given by Graffiti Bridge in 1990, not Batman in 1989.

[Edited 1/13/13 20:00pm]

BrazilianOnRaspberryBeret said:

Just one observation, for me, Batman can surely belong to that golden sequence of classic albums, the break was given by Graffiti Bridge in 1990, not Batman in 1989.

A major point of contention around here! I thought Batman was a creative falloff, but I was able to comfortably blame the 'Batman Machine'. Graffiti Bridge, on the other hand was all Prince's doing and harder to defend.

No, but he's not my favorite artist anyway. He is top 5 though, and still would be if everything up to Lovesexy was obliterated. I became a fan in the 2000s; it was one of his 2000s albums that made me a fan; and my favorite period in his career is 1994 - 2003.

Lovesexy def wasnt his last (best) album.

But during the 90's I definitely gave up on P and started following other artists like....

Early 90's - Oasis/Pulp/Brit Pop

Mid-Late 90's till now - Foo Fighters

Duran Duran, much like P have ALWAYS been there, but more recently, they both have released so-so albums.

Mind you, DD's last one was farken

YES.

Considering LoveSymbol is my favorite album

To be honest no,

Mainly as there are some good and even great songs after Lovesexy, there are very few classics he wrote in this period. All of his classic and best music is from that 1980 to 1988 period. I think his creativity just dried up and he sold himself a bit short by that stage.

Okay Gold Experience, 3121 and Lotusflow3r are great albums but not classics like Dirty Mind, 1999, Purple Rain, Parade and SOTT. Also because quality control was much higher in this period, whereas starting with Batman, more filler enters most of his albums and he's not so careful in the qc department. There's no way a song like Lemon Crush or Face Down would have made it to Parade or 1999, he would have flicked it off to a marginally talented protege.

Even the proteges in the earlier period outstrip the later ones, Vanity 6, The Time, Jill and Sheila versus Ingrid Chavez, Carmen Electra, Robin Power, Tony M and TC Ellis - no way!!!!!

Simply Prince had nothing more to give after 1988, he went from being the trend setter to a trend follower, hence why my favourite post 1988 artists are people like Madonna, TTD/Sananda Maitreya and the Red Hot Chili Peppers although all 3 only really ruled the 90s and then faded off a bit (The Chilis last great album was 2002's By the Way.

I generally don't have a favourite post 2000 artist as I like hardly any of the music after that date.

Adorecream said:

To be honest no,

Mainly as there are some good and even great songs after Lovesexy, there are very few classics he wrote in this period. All of his classic and best music is from that 1980 to 1988 period. I think his creativity just dried up and he sold himself a bit short by that stage.

Okay Gold Experience, 3121 and Lotusflow3r are great albums but not classics like Dirty Mind, 1999, Purple Rain, Parade and SOTT. Also because quality control was much higher in this period, whereas starting with Batman, more filler enters most of his albums and he's not so careful in the qc department. There's no way a song like Lemon Crush or Face Down would have made it to Parade or 1999, he would have flicked it off to a marginally talented protege.

Even the proteges in the earlier period outstrip the later ones, Vanity 6, The Time, Jill and Sheila versus Ingrid Chavez, Carmen Electra, Robin Power, Tony M and TC Ellis - no way!!!!!

Simply Prince had nothing more to give after 1988, he went from being the trend setter to a trend follower, hence why my favourite post 1988 artists are people like Madonna, TTD/Sananda Maitreya and the Red Hot Chili Peppers although all 3 only really ruled the 90s and then faded off a bit (The Chilis last great album was 2002's By the Way.

I generally don't have a favourite post 2000 artist as I like hardly any of the music after that date.

You mention Parade. "Do U lie?" is not filler? Is it not 1986's "Wedding Feast"- a haughty, little, tongue in cheek of a song?

skywalker said:

Adorecream said:

To be honest no,

Mainly as there are some good and even great songs after Lovesexy, there are very few classics he wrote in this period. All of his classic and best music is from that 1980 to 1988 period. I think his creativity just dried up and he sold himself a bit short by that stage.

Okay Gold Experience, 3121 and Lotusflow3r are great albums but not classics like Dirty Mind, 1999, Purple Rain, Parade and SOTT. Also because quality control was much higher in this period, whereas starting with Batman, more filler enters most of his albums and he's not so careful in the qc department. There's no way a song like Lemon Crush or Face Down would have made it to Parade or 1999, he would have flicked it off to a marginally talented protege.

Even the proteges in the earlier period outstrip the later ones, Vanity 6, The Time, Jill and Sheila versus Ingrid Chavez, Carmen Electra, Robin Power, Tony M and TC Ellis - no way!!!!!

Simply Prince had nothing more to give after 1988, he went from being the trend setter to a trend follower, hence why my favourite post 1988 artists are people like Madonna, TTD/Sananda Maitreya and the Red Hot Chili Peppers although all 3 only really ruled the 90s and then faded off a bit (The Chilis last great album was 2002's By the Way.

I generally don't have a favourite post 2000 artist as I like hardly any of the music after that date.

You mention Parade. "Do U lie?" is not filler? Is it not 1986's "Wedding Feast"- a haughty, little, tongue in cheek of a song?

Not really, the songs sounds quite nice, has a good melody and fits in the feel of the movie quite well, it has the continental feel of the album too? Okay I may have gone too far by saying none of those classic albums have filler, they may have some light filler, but not the point where all the filler dominates the sound like on albums like Newpowersoul, disc 3 on Emancipation and Chaos and Disorder.

I think its a matter of opinion too. The closest tracks to true filler in this period would be jams like Dance On on Lovesexy and Tambourine on ATWIAD, but even these songs have some charm and atmosphere on them compared to Jughead and Lemon Crush.

Tambourine and Do U lie fillers!!!??? Never, 2 of Prince's best!

'Post Lovesexy - is Prince your favourite artist?'

Prince is to me a dinosaur, from the good old days,

just like The Beatles, Pink Floyd, Supertramp, Depeche Mode, U2, etc.

I love "old music", basically from the 70s and 80s, in case of the Beatles the 60's.

Prince is still among my fave artists, but:

Prince's studio output since The Gold Experience isn't that great, imho.

yep,

if he had stopped with Lovesexy, I would not have been a Prince fan.

I strongly protest!! Do U Lie, Lemon Crush, Tambourine and Dance On: none of them are fillers!