I'm feeling a bit cheated that he's just releasing just the sanitized but obviously suggestive songs, and likely banking the explicit dirtier (and extended?!) versions in the vault.

He should treat his adult fans like adults who are fully aware of good and evil and can compartmentalize smutty nastiness without having it damage our psyches any more than the stuff we already see in the reality of day to day life. Art can reflect life without sacrificing its quality or becoming bad or evil; indeed, if anything, censoring his art degrades its quality, compromising it with other — external non-artist influences and mores.

If he's gonna do that, he may as well just sing The Sound of Music and call it a day.

Prince's audacious controversial creativity is what has made his best song so fun, meaningful and powerful. Though I realize he's probably making a subtle statement about so much pop music that relies on dirty gratuitous smut and violence to be interesting and turn a profit.

What I don't understand is how he chooses what to censor. On the HitnRun album alone he's very inconsistent. The sound dips when he says 'ass' and 'bitch'. Yet on 1000 X's and O's he talks about making love to someone "blindfolded, gagged and bound". Ass and bitch are not exactly hardcore curse words. I might understand if the sound dipped on motherfucker or cunt. They are words that I can see being censored. But bitch and ass? Come on. Since when did Prince albums get made with a PG rating? Also, if he's censoring that, then how come he talks about blindfolding and gagging someone.

I've been saying this for years. There is no rhyme of reason to what gets censored.

If someone is anti-swearing then the answer isn't to censor the swear words. The answer is to stop writing songs with swear words in. Simply changing "Fuck" to "Duck" is idiotic.