The quality of his body of work would still mark him as the greatest artist of all time!

Discuss.

^^^Prince isn't considered the Greatest artist of all time!

How would he be considered THE GREATEST, if the world only heard his B sides, Unreleased and Protégé material?

I'm not talking about what he's "considered" to be by the masses. But thanks for clearing up the spelling of protege. I knew it didn't look right.
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I think discussing wether Prince is the greatest artist from an overall talent and skill set point of view is a valid debate. I'm making no conclusions however. I'm then thinking how large his body of work is and how much of his best work is not on his official albums. His B sides, protege material, side projects, and known unreleased songs etc when put together still contain a volume of work that eclipses most other artists and would therefore still be worthy of one of the greats.
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Most fans here, I think, when asked to name thier top 20 Prince songs would include a number of examples from these lists. Without even adding it up,there must be what 15 - 20 albums worth of material that fit into these categories.
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Without these, we'd have no Erotic City, A love bizarre, Dance Electric, all the Time material, Madhouse, She's always in my hair, How come U don't call me anymore.....I'm just touching the surface. We'd still have triple the output that MJ ever put out.
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It's not about what people consider on mass because the masses haven't experienced it. It's about critical appraisal of the work. More people have experienced McDonalds than Le Gavroche. Does that make McDonalds more worthy of the 3 Michelin stars?

^

I hear ya, But,

There's two perspectives :

The Fans &

The General Public..

A lot of what (we) think is amazing & groundbreaking..

Sounds like 80s cheap watered down funk to oldschool lovers..

I know some highly respected and successful musicians that can't stand any

of the tunes that (we) love-

The general consensus that i have gotten from people who aren't diehard Prince lovers

is that he's made a few Great tunes (In the 80's) but most of his stuff

lacks substance ie:

"i like having sex and praising myself for being the baddest"

So, (IMO) its a difficult subject to discuss objectively-

If you worded it:

If Prince had only ever released his B sides, protoge material and his best unreleased songs. Would he be the greatest artist of all time to US PRINCE fans?

That i could comment on..

And my answer would be no..

James Brown,

Sly Stone, &

Jimi Hendrix would come before Prince & I'm a huge Prince fan.

[Edited 5/31/13 18:16pm]

EMPEROR101 said:

^

I hear ya, But,

There's two perspectives :

The Fans &

The General Public..

A lot of what (we) think is amazing & groundbreaking..

Sounds like 80s cheap watered down funk to oldschool lovers..

I know some highly respected and successful musicians that can't stand any

of the tunes that (we) love-

The general consensus that i have gotten from people who aren't diehard Prince lovers

is that he's made a few Great tunes (In the 80's) but most of his stuff

lacks substance ie:

"i like having sex and praising myself for being the baddest"

So, (IMO) its a difficult subject to discuss objectively-

If you worded it:

If Prince had only ever released his B sides, protoge material and his best unreleased songs. Would he be the greatest artist of all time to US PRINCE fans?

That i could comment on..

And my answer would be no..

James Brown,

Sly Stone, &

Jimi Hendrix would come before Prince & I'm a huge Prince fan.

[Edited 5/31/13 18:16pm]

Very true. Prince's one man band approach to his recordings often meant they were lacking real funk. Back then I thought Prince understood that to be true as well, so he was uncofortable with the funk label. The upside is that Prince kind of created something like a one man genre. If you think about it, it's kind of cool.

Even if he had released all that stuff he'd still only be the greatest to you, popular opinion en mass will never side with a person like P.

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It's generally accepted he's great live but on record he's been lacking for the past 20 years with no hits, even including protoge material and his best unreleased songs he's nowhere.

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A good song is a good song and would go to No1 or top 20 regardless, he's just not been anywhere near it in years.

[Edited 5/31/13 19:04pm]

bober said:

I agree with the last bit for the most part but that doesn't taint the work from the 80s.

A lot of what (we) think is amazing & groundbreaking..

Sounds like 80s cheap watered down funk to oldschool lovers..

I know some highly respected and successful musicians that can't stand any

of the tunes that (we) love-

thats some straight up BS there

looking at objectivelly...Prince alongside the beatles hendrix etc is universally lauded..

all have had detractors but critically speaking Prince has been wanked off over by critics and musicians alike

shit every "respected" musician is lining up to bestow praise on prince

miles davis,santana,bono,mos def,q tip,jay z,dr dre,joni mitchell etc etc

so lust does have a point

lust said:

The quality of his body of work would still mark him as the greatest artist of all time! Discuss.

To me, yes

Hendrix and the Beatles dont have 5-10-15 commercially released albums that nobody but diehards either know about or care about.

jonylawson said:

A lot of what (we) think is amazing & groundbreaking..

Sounds like 80s cheap watered down funk to oldschool lovers..

I know some highly respected and successful musicians that can't stand any

of the tunes that (we) love-

thats some straight up BS there

looking at objectivelly...Prince alongside the beatles hendrix etc is universally lauded..

all have had detractors but critically speaking Prince has been wanked off over by critics and musicians alike

shit every "respected" musician is lining up to bestow praise on prince

miles davis,santana,bono,mos def,q tip,jay z,dr dre,joni mitchell etc etc

so lust does have a point