Although Little Richard hardly gets any props and even my grandmother knows Prince praises Hendrix, the Beattles, Rolling Stones, James Brown, Santana, Sly, George Clnton/P-Funk and even U2's grooves down cold — it's amazing that as much as Prince verbally praises Stevie Wonder and covers his songs, that it's hard to clearly hear Stevie Wonder's signature sounds in m/any big Prince written/produced songs. Some of Stevie's social conciousness comes through — quirkily, but not on any groovy stellar songs. Erykah Badu's lyrics deliver more clear unflinching accessible socially concious messages that reflect Stevie more than Prince.

Happy to be corrected, if you can enlighten me. ...

Are you kidding?

What about 'Black Muse'?

There are many examples... even 'Vicki Waiting' is Stevie influenced.

I always thought Do Yourself a Favor was Wonder-like and that Witness 4 the Prosecution shares a few things with Superstition -- I'd say Stevie's influence is more integrated into his own style it's almost unnoticeable, like on a couple of his lighter ballads.

[Edited 1/9/16 10:10am]

He seems to revere Larry more. Stevie hasn't been around him much.

Prince has never travelled to Africa to visit him.

NorthC said:

When For You came out, lots of reviewers compared it to Stevie Wonder.

I agree. The whole "For You" album is Wonder-flavored.

I think "Black Muse" off the current record sounds like a Stevie Wonder song.

Giovanni777 said:

thebanishedone said:

The influence is there but vocal styles are very different so thats way you dont notice it and Stevie is much more complex ans skilled musicisn than Prince. I LOVE Prince more but i know who is better musician

Wow, careful here. It will always be easier to worship the almighty sixties and seventies, as if the eighties made everything musical fall apart, which is, in large parts, true.

Stevie Wonder's masterpieces came in a particular time and are a direct result of his environment. It's going to sound disturbing, but it's easier to become a skilled multi-instrumentalists when looks and moves are clearly not part of the show. Prince spent a great deal of his time becoming a showman. He also spent a great deal of his time on his side projects.

Stevie comes across being a subtler and more refined musician because his compositions are full of 11th and 13th chords, chromatic scales, etc.
Prince's goal was to play rock'n'roll through a black music filter.
So of course, power chords and the usual pop song structure sound more basic than Stevie.
But Prince's electronic sparseness is nowhere to be heard in Stevie's music.
One point of Prince's strategy was to make fun music out of electronic instruments.
Stevie could not do Something In The Water, Irresistible Bitch, Erotic City or Shockadelica.
Stevie is not sensual.

We're talking about two very different animals here, and you cannot throw your "I know who is a better musician" just like that.
Prince innovated just as much, maybe more.
Everything on "Fulfillingness First Finale" could be on ""Music Of My Mind" or "Song In The Key Of Life", but "Alexa de Paris" is light-years away from "Bambi", "Sign Of The Times" the song is light years away from "Controversy" the song.

Having saying that, I consider Stevie's albums musically a bit more profound as well.
Could it be because they were entirely played by hand?
Prince has always been so in a rush to record, that when the Linn came out, it was for the better and for the worse.

Prince did a lot of sketches and put them on albums.
Stevie took his time and did paintings.

Prince had a Motown view about the Minneapolis Sound, to put out as much as possible in minimum time. And the looks and moves took time too.
Stevie, because of its blindness, had a much more profound relationship to the sound and the instruments, and it's the reason his golden period is still the landmark for today's producers (basically everything today is trying to sound like the seventies and/or Stevie).

And well, Stevie displays more soul, but that again may come from an inner world that's much deeper that someone who's preoccupied of its reflect in the mirror.

Yeah, Stevie sounds more deep, spiritual and politically concerned than Prince.
But Prince's main goal has always been fun.
When it comes to musicianship, you have to be pretty careful : Jamiroquai can redo Stevie, George Michael can duet with Blige, everyone can put up a syncopated distorted Rhodes, but no one can do Prince without sounding caricatural.
I have yet to hear a good Prince reprise. That tells you something.

I think you misjudge Prince as a musican because, compared to Stevie, there's a lot of junk to go through before you can make a selection of gems.
With Stevie's music, the selection is already made for you.
But to underestimate what Prince brought to popular music is too easy a mistake.

thebanishedone said:

Stevie is much more complex ans skilled musicisn than Prince. I LOVE Prince more but i know who is better musician

I love them both, but I can't agree. I don't know how you personally came to this conclusion, but I suspect the reason some people share your opinion is that they focus too much on Prince's best known work. Also perhaps that his musicianship is often associated with his guitar soloing, which is terrifically famboyant and fun, but far from his musical forte artistically.

Prince's prolificacy not only covers many genres, but also ranges from the simplistic and superficial to work of great complexity and subtlety. Sometimes all this occurs in the same song. U Got the Look is essentially I IV V power chords, but the coda would not be out of place on an ambitious jazz-fusion album. Songs like Condition Of The Heart, The Grand Progression, Around The World in a Day, Do U Lie, Damn U, The Question of U, 3 Chains of Gold, Strays of the World, and dozens more, demonstrate great harmonic sensibility. Love it or hate it, no one could rightly accuse The Rainbow Children of being musically simplistic. There are many passages on the One Nite Alone (studio) album that are well beyond the work of a "pop" pianist/songwriter. The last third of U're Gonna C Me is one fine example among many. Prince also sometimes creates complexity upon a simple base. This is very much a funk sensibility. The Lovesexy album is largely like this, with repetitive bass-riff-grounded grooves, underlying a plethora of explorative and expansive musical ideas. Above all else, Prince's vocal harmonies are breathtaking in their uniqueness and musical finesse.

[Edited for typos]

[Edited 1/10/16 6:05am]

[Edited 1/10/16 8:33am]

[Edited 1/10/16 8:35am]

PlusSign said:

Sometimes all this occurs in the same song.

Another example of this I meant to mention, among his prominent work, is Sometimes it Snows in April. The versus are engaging but simplistic pop-ballad writing; then the chorus has those sublime chromatic shifts.

jaawwnn said:

Different artists doing different things. Prince didn't have to be Stevie cos Stevie already existed. Both of them have songs the other would or could never do.

Can you cite an example or two of Stevie songs that Prince could never do?

PlusSign said:

jaawwnn said:

PlusSign said:

Can you cite an example or two of Stevie songs that Prince could never do?

Not into conversations about what chords prince does and doesn't know. What I'm saying is Prince could never do a song like Superstition without everyone saying it sounds like Stevie Wonder; we can't think our way around the context of prince being aware of Stevie's work from the start. Prince writing a James Brown homage in 2004 (musicology) isn't the same as James Brown writing Superbad in 1970.

I completely agree with you about this. It isn't valid to have a discussion about innovation or really any kind of "artistic merit" without acknowledging context. But this isn't really what I understand the thread to be about, even though it may be more interesting.

jaawwnn said:

Btw not giving out to you PlusSign, I just find comparing Stevie with Prince a silly exercise.

Perhaps, but when it's done, some very silly things are often said about Prince's level of musicianship.

dandan said:

Prince is a very very different animal. I really couldn't imagine Stevie being capable of creating something like Darling Nikki, Something in the Water, If I Was Your Girlfriend. There's so much going on in this recordings, so many ideas and there's still intricacies many of us have not even digested yet. Yet at the time they sound sparse in that typical prince way. I could imagine Prince doing any Stevie song to be honest.

Stevie's probably the better piano player. But as a total package, Prince has more going on I'd venture to say. When you put everything together, a lot of the time I can't even follow it. And that's the essence of funk music. Everybody plays their part around the one, and it can sound simple on its own, but when it comes together it's ever-evolving and exceedingly complex. And the amazing part about P is that he does it all by himself for the most part. "Music Is Alive" by Sly and them really breaks down what it's all about.

And there's the ingenuity of his songs. Darling Nikki is what is blowing my mind this week. I don't even understand what's happening in that song.

bonatoc said:

thebanishedone said:

The influence is there but vocal styles are very different so thats way you dont notice it and Stevie is much more complex ans skilled musicisn than Prince. I LOVE Prince more but i know who is better musician

Wow, careful here. It will always be easier to worship the almighty sixties and seventies, as if the eighties made everything musical fall apart, which is, in large parts, true.

Stevie Wonder's masterpieces came in a particular time and are a direct result of his environment. It's going to sound disturbing, but it's easier to become a skilled multi-instrumentalists when looks and moves are clearly not part of the show. Prince spent a great deal of his time becoming a showman. He also spent a great deal of his time on his side projects.

Stevie comes across being a subtler and more refined musician because his compositions are full of 11th and 13th chords, chromatic scales, etc.
Prince's goal was to play rock'n'roll through a black music filter.
So of course, power chords and the usual pop song structure sound more basic than Stevie.
But Prince's electronic sparseness is nowhere to be heard in Stevie's music.
One point of Prince's strategy was to make fun music out of electronic instruments.
Stevie could not do Something In The Water, Irresistible Bitch, Erotic City or Shockadelica.
Stevie is not sensual.

We're talking about two very different animals here, and you cannot throw your "I know who is a better musician" just like that.
Prince innovated just as much, maybe more.
Everything on "Fulfillingness First Finale" could be on ""Music Of My Mind" or "Song In The Key Of Life", but "Alexa de Paris" is light-years away from "Bambi", "Sign Of The Times" the song is light years away from "Controversy" the song.

Having saying that, I consider Stevie's albums musically a bit more profound as well.
Could it be because they were entirely played by hand?
Prince has always been so in a rush to record, that when the Linn came out, it was for the better and for the worse.

Prince did a lot of sketches and put them on albums.
Stevie took his time and did paintings.

Prince had a Motown view about the Minneapolis Sound, to put out as much as possible in minimum time. And the looks and moves took time too.
Stevie, because of its blindness, had a much more profound relationship to the sound and the instruments, and it's the reason his golden period is still the landmark for today's producers (basically everything today is trying to sound like the seventies and/or Stevie).

And well, Stevie displays more soul, but that again may come from an inner world that's much deeper that someone who's preoccupied of its reflect in the mirror.

Yeah, Stevie sounds more deep, spiritual and politically concerned than Prince.
But Prince's main goal has always been fun.
When it comes to musicianship, you have to be pretty careful : Jamiroquai can redo Stevie, George Michael can duet with Blige, everyone can put up a syncopated distorted Rhodes, but no one can do Prince without sounding caricatural.
I have yet to hear a good Prince reprise. That tells you something.

I think you misjudge Prince as a musican because, compared to Stevie, there's a lot of junk to go through before you can make a selection of gems.
With Stevie's music, the selection is already made for you.
But to underestimate what Prince brought to popular music is too easy a mistake.

I agree with you - Stevie has more focus in many regards because he has tighetr parameters to work in.

Prince on his own, needs an EDITOR to filter, organize and compile everythin into structures for consumption - which as fate would have it, is what record labels doooooo lololol

masaba said:

[Edited 1/10/16 9:01am]

[Edited 1/10/16 9:01am]

Stevie has a lof of wall-sized masterpieces in a few rooms, but Prince has an entire museum filled with large and small scaled pieces and small gems.

bonatoc said:

Prince did a lot of sketches and put them on albums.
Stevie took his time and did paintings.

Stevie and Prince's development were very different.... Stevie had to deal with growing up in public, but was making tons of money as a teenager. Prince was more street, so everything was more of a fight to get his way.

Either way, they both absorbed a lot of styles but each style is distinctly theirs.

appleseed said:

Stevie has a lof of wall-sized masterpieces in a few rooms, but Prince has an entire museum filled with large and small scaled pieces and small gems.

bonatoc said:

Prince did a lot of sketches and put them on albums.
Stevie took his time and did paintings.

No doubt.

I hope Prince is influenced by Stevie's recent tour.

Both are great artists.