We had talked about Prince production values in the past and the negative comment is that Prince

isnt a good producer because he produces other artist in

the same way he do es it for his albums.

But isnt that sound the reason people

want Prince to produce them?.

When you hire Timberland or Nile Rodgers you

want those guy to give you their

signature touch,you dont call Nile to make your

record sound like Metallica.So Prince did what he was asked to do,give his sound.

Regarding Prince as a producer i find Prince to be a

great producer with some misses of course.

I love the sound he gave to his records and records

by other artists.

But he can do a rushed work sometimes like NPS or ruin

a classic record by too much rapping Diamonds and Pearls or non stop sax soloing by Eric Leeds.

this are the albums with the best production for me

1999 Purple Rain and The Rainbow Children.

Special place goes to Dirty Mind a great example

of less is more style of production.

i think that recent protagee albums by Tamar,Andy and Bria are very

underrated in terms of production.

Also it seems that Prince nowdays is a much better at producing organic analog sounding production

and then cringe worthy electronic music attempts

which is strange because 1999 is a groundbreaking electro funk production.

Prince is not underated as a producer, everyone knows how good he is and what potential he stores. Only problem with him as opposed to other producers is, his style can sometime appear overbearing and its probably the reason why I can't think of anyone who has approached him to produce a recording. Yes all producers have a stamp on music that is their own but a huge part of production is giving the artiste room to breathe and I don't feel that with him, what we get is "written, arranged, produced by..." which has proven over time to be a hindrance to sales outside of Princeworld.

The other issue with production is that music styles, tastes and the way we discover music change over the years but unfortunately some producers don't, hence the reason some are no longer in demand and I think Prince fell into that category a long time ago.

It's very likely that Prince won't produce any album unless he owns its masters, and this probably explains why he "retired" from giving songs to others in 1994.

I'm not sure I understand the OP's original post, it's very confused and confusing in the way it's written.

Prince was one of the most sought-after composer/producer between 1984 and 1993.

What people need to understand is that Prince was never a "producer" in the classical sense of the term. As Alan Leeds once pointed out a producer is someone that goes in the studio with an artist, tries to bring the best out of them and to create an artistic environment that makes sense for them. Prince hardly ever did that, occurences of him being in the studio with the people he "produced" are very exceptionnal (Tevin Campbell comes to mind IIRC, and I guess he also produced Come 2 My House, GCS2000 and Superconductor that way). Usually Prince will offer one or several songs that he believes fit somewhere in the artist's "universe", send a tape and simply let them rerecord the vocals over his instrumental track (leaving it untouched or overdubbing it as they please) or rerecord the whole song. Even his protégés: he would give them tapes and tell them "sing on that and try to sing as close as u can as I sang on the guidetrack", then he'd leave and come back on the next day to listen to the result and decide if it fits with what he wants. Unless they're his own band, people he feels comfortable working with and over whom he'll always have the last word in the end, Prince doesn't like being in the studio with other people, and he's not comfortable being "at the service" of someone else's artistic vision, which is actually what producers usually are. This led Sandra St. Victor to withdraw from collaborating with him: she wanted to be in the studio together and he made it very clear to her that what he wanted was to toy with her demos on his own, not to work "with" her. Prince recorded God Is Alive in the studio with Mavis, then he let her go to Memphis with her own producers and just sent them tapes to toy with, without being involved in the final recording process. When Martika asked him to co-compose songs for her he just took her lyrics notebook, composed 5 songs out of it, then sent her the tracks to sing over and overdub: they never even met again after their first meeting when she gave him that notebook. Only on a very few times (The Sex Of It is one of these, it seems) did Prince compose a song with a specific artist in mind, usually he'd just take stuff from the vault that he thinks fit and send it.

So was Prince a good producer? That doesn't really make sense as a question because on most occasions he just wasn't a producer at all. And on the few occasions he was, he just did it under the condition that he could took over (listen to GCS2000 and Superconductor: Larry and Andy composed all the songs and nonetheless both albums just sound exactly as another Prince album). Another good example is that Aretha Franklin & James Brown song Prince "remixed" in 1989. He just took the vocals from that (quite mediocre) track and turned it into an amazing 10 mn Prince funk jam with Eric and Atlanta, he made it "his" song, literally (I think he was also trying to make a point of the fact that he was now much more funky than mighty James Brown himself, and that besides the respect he had for these 2 giants, that's why he put so much effort in a mere remix).

Prince is a wonderful composer and producer in the absolute, and what he does is absorb other artists into his own artistic vision, never be at the service of theirs. Is this good or bad? It's neither, it's just what it is and he's been quite good at it I must add ^^ Tamar and Bria aren't artists he "produced", they're just session musicians filling the role of the singer on Prince records.

skilletnomicrowave said:

Prince is not underated as a producer, everyone knows how good he is and what potential he stores. Only problem with him as opposed to other producers is, his style can sometime appear overbearing and its probably the reason why I can't think of anyone who has approached him to produce a recording. Yes all producers have a stamp on music that is their own but a huge part of production is giving the artiste room to breathe and I don't feel that with him, what we get is "written, arranged, produced by..." which has proven over time to be a hindrance to sales outside of Princeworld. The other issue with production is that music styles, tastes and the way we discover music change over the years but unfortunately some producers don't, hence the reason some are no longer in demand and I think Prince fell into that category a long time ago.

How do you know if anyone has appraoched him or not? You cant say that with any authority...

databank said:

...Another good example is that Aretha Franklin & James Brown song Prince "remixed" in 1989. He just took the vocals from that (quite mediocre) track and turned it into an amazing 10 mn Prince funk jam with Eric and Atlanta, he made it "his" song, literally (I think he was also trying to make a point of the fact that he was now much more funky than mighty James Brown himself, and that besides the respect he had for these 2 giants, that's why he put so much effort in a mere remix).

...

Which track are you talking about? "Get On Up?"

theblueangel said:

databank said:

...Another good example is that Aretha Franklin & James Brown song Prince "remixed" in 1989. He just took the vocals from that (quite mediocre) track and turned it into an amazing 10 mn Prince funk jam with Eric and Atlanta, he made it "his" song, literally (I think he was also trying to make a point of the fact that he was now much more funky than mighty James Brown himself, and that besides the respect he had for these 2 giants, that's why he put so much effort in a mere remix).

...

Which track are you talking about? "Get On Up?"

http://www.princevault.co..._Your_Love

The entry above doesn't credit Eric and Atlanta but they're all over the place.