In my opinion, Prince's musicianship has declined because he's exhausted his musical vocabulary.
He doesn't have any thing "new" to say because he hasn't learned music theory. So, instead of
Prince using his wondrous talents to push the boundaries of pop music forward and outward, we
applaud him recently for producing albums that are reminiscent to his earlier, classic work. In the
realms of jazz and classical music, my artistic heroes pushed the boundaries and standards and
the artistic mores of their genre forward and outward (Mozart, Beethoven, Wagner; John
Coltrane, Thelonious Monk; Miles Davis). They accomplished this because as they matured, they
were able to use concepts learned by achieving some type of consistent music education
whereby they could newly contextualize their art. Music theory enables a composer to rely on
theoretical constructs in addition to what is provided by the imagination. Prince has the same
talent these artists possessed but not the same musical education. Sadly, when you are mostly
an untrained musician who hasn't access to a decent foundation in music theory, you run out of
interesting things to say.

I am not suggesting that in order to write good music, you must be trained in jazz or classical.
This would be ludicrous. But I am suggesting that if you are serious about your craft, wouldn't
you want to learn everything about it? The greats I mentioned above learned all that they could
about their craft and it is not a coincidence that all of them had 1) a music education and 2)
access to some music theory. Your ear can only take you so far. When you run out of things to
say musically, if you've access to music theory, you learn how to formulate new musical
expressions (words).

Prince's popularity has declined because pop music inherently only allows for dominance for what
is equivalent to the lifespan of a gnat.

Toofunkyinhere said:

I personally rate Prince 92-96 up there with 80-88, he'd just lost his popularity by then.

i agree ....as close as u can get....

OldFriends4Sale said:

Like Alan Leeds said in the Slave Trade documentary... "He had his time, his time had passed... He was following trends not setting them, and with the output of his increasingly weird behavior due to the feud with WB his music was greatly ignored from the (mid 90's time period...) Untill he came back again full circle where he tours more succesfully today then he did back in his hay day."