Which is your favorite? And which do you consider the most prolific?

Going by recording dates:
I. 1981-early 1984
1. Controversy
2. 1999
3. Purple Rain
4. The Time
5. What Time Is It?
6. Ice Cream Castles
7. Vanity 6
8. Apollonia 6
9. Glamorous Life
10. Half of Jill Jones
11. Enough unreleased material for X # of albums

II. Late 1984 - 1987
1. Around the World in a Day
2. Parade
3. Sign o the Times
4. The Black Album
5. Almost all of Lovesexy
6. Romance 1600
7. The Family
8. Madhouse 8
9. Madhouse 16
10. One third of Crystal Ball (1998 release)
11. Half of Jill Jones
12. One third of Grafitti Bridge
13. Half of Pandemonium
14. Enough unreleased material for X # of albums

III. 1992-1996
1. Half of Symbol
2. Come
3. The Gold Experience
4. Chaos and Disorder
5. Almost all of The Vault
6. Gold Nigga
7. Exodus
8. Two thirds of Crystal Ball
9. Carmen Electra
10. Child of the Sun
11. Emancipation
12. The Truth
13. Kamasutra
14. Enough unreleased for 1 album or so
(Arguably this should be split into 1992-1995 and 1995-1996)

IV. 2000-2003
1. The Rainbow Children
2. The Chocolate Invasion
3. The Slaughterhouse
4. Xpectation
5. NEWS
6. One Nite Alone...
7. One Nite Alone... Live including It Ain't Over!
8. C-NOTE
9. Most of Musicology
10. Not much unreleased material known of

The 1992-1996 period is probably the most prolific, especially since album lengths at that point were much longer.

Favorite is really difficult. I'm gonna go with 1981 - early 1984. The quality was really high during this period. The music was funky and innovative. Periods II and III are also have some amazing music, but there are also some duds. 2000-3 has my favorite Prince instrumental CDs, and it has It Ain't Over!, but the lyrics in this period aren't too great.

The most interesting thing for me is how totally different these periods are.

1981-84 is my favorite.

Curious. Actually my periods are different:

For You - 1999 { beginning

Purple Rain - Lovesexy { gold

Batman - Gold Experience { the fall

Girl 6 - The very Best Of Prince { the "war"

The Rainbow Children - NEWS { indie

Musicology - 20ten {the clone

fabriziovenerandi said:

Interesting. I wasn't tryin to break down Prince's entire career into periods. I figured that was kind of obvious since my years leave a lot of gaps and given the subject line of the post. Rather, I was pointing out him as having several periods of extremely high productivity and other periods of more normal musician level output. You put Musicology - 20ten on your list, which I think was one of his least prolific eras.

Arguably the '81 to '84 & '84 to '87 could be one long, on a roll creative machine. Just saying.
[Edited 9/6/15 20:41pm]