This one's for the Journo's and non-fans in particular

So many clamouring voices, so much band-wagon jumping....

After 6 (1998 – 2003) years of self-imposed exile from the mainstream pop and media circus and circuit Prince is back.... Hmmm.... well to many of us he never really went away.
There are a few points I want to pick up on that I feel the need to voice after having read many, many prince articles over the past few weeks.

First of all many commentators and writers point to a decline in Prince's success at the early 90's.... This is wrong. Diamonds and Pearls and the Symbol album both did very well, he had a number 1 with cream in the US and D+P is the 2nd best selling Prince album in the UK. Symbol album also did quite well then in '93 Hits came out followed by Come 1994 (No. 1 in the UK) and the following year (1995) was the Gold experience which eventually followed TMBGITW which was a world-wide mega hit. Even Gold reasonably did well as a single.
Between then and 1997, when the promotion work and plugging of the Emancipation triple album stopped abruptly, Prince had been kicking around the charts and the media.

Agreed that Emancipation didn't do the same sales and have same wider impact than almost all of his previous pieces of work... I have deliberately not mentioned The Black Album, Chaos and Disorder and Girl 6 and the Vault as they were seemingly released with the sole purpose of fulfilling his 10 album deal with WB. Nevertheless the inferior quality of materiel on them did disappoint some fans.
It's also during this time 1996 / 1997 that Prince was having difficult times with aspects his personal life... which IS irrelevant ... but the music didn't stop....

After 1997 Prince wasn't in decline.... He chose to plough a different furrow. He started building the NPGMC... If he was still signed to a record company and releasing albums in the normal way then I'd agree but he wasn't ....

This period in time also signified a FUNDAMENTAL shift in Prince's music. This is the turning point. There was one quote, which still appears in my mind now... and when ?'d about his music Prince stated that he now "tries to resolve his songs in a positive way"... in particular he was talking about the song "The Holy River".... and this effect has ran through to today and still stands strong.
Next up:
There is no ultimate Prince album.
Prince has too many gems covering too many years...

When Around the World in a Day came out it was considered patchy, weird and very weak. The same was said about Parade, Sign and Lovesexy. All them are really good albums with some totally amazing tracks. Batman was weak, Graffiti Bridge very patchy (but with three drop—dead, ten-out-of-ten, amazing tracks). D+P was a very strong if slightly long album. A return to patchy with Symbol then two more strong albums with Come and Gold (if the latter was remixed one time too many).

My only point of empathy with any ? of major decline would be Prince's "Rave un2 the Joy Fantastic" this was an album hyped on the back on the successful re-re-re-release of 1999 as a single.... and 'Rave ...' did badly. It was a release on a major but it didn't happen.
Why?
Because there were no songs that leapt out and said Prince is great....
Then we crawled in2 the new millennium with The Rainbow Children and last years NEWS
(And b4 any of u reply and say... what about Crystal Ball, u missed that ... no I didn't but I will address it soon...)
Rainbow Children is an album for musicians. Especially Jazz musicians. It is so heavily drenched in Jazz that it's overpowering, even more so that it's religious undercurrent. This and NEWS were not released immediately to the world via the normal way... initially they came out via the NPGMC so again the ? of decline is irrelevant.

Remember that Prince chose to go down a different path. The non-record industry path.

So this flows onto the much debated and well-trodden route of the 'quality' of Prince's music. For a while, especially during early 90's music journalists generally stated that the golden era of Prince was '80 to '84.... Dirty Mind to Purple Rain.... even when Sign of the Times was released, and SOTT is now considered by most music journo's 2 b the ultimate Prince album. Then after a while, in the mid-late 90’s the golden era is considered to be Purple Rain to Sign of the Times.
It changes.
And it changes again.
With a little bit of retrospective perspective we can get a better picture.

Like someone wisely stated in a post elsewhere on these forums... Every '....' album is a return to the form that made '' great.

or even

.... A sad and pathetic excuse to remind everyone what once made '' great.

Then you have the fans that are so hardcore that every utterance, every release and every iota of creativity from '' is true, complete and utter genius.

Despite this there is also the need for a bit of clarity and honest journalism from the fans side of the case too..

Any artist will experience some sort of peaks and troughs of creativity. Including Prince.
Since "the decline of Prince... from the early 90's" as so many commentators have put it .... the claim is that Prince's quality of music has diminished....

This is nonsense.

Come, The Gold Experience and Emancipation all have some work on them that ranks up there with Prince''s best ... no butts... Crystal Ball, released 10+ years after the title track was laid down has its moments, most notably the title track itself.
This takes the quality-ometer up to 1998. Even then there is one utterly stunning Prince track available on the New Power Soul album, the hidden "Wasted Kisses".

Quality finally does take a down-turn in the previously mentioned "Rave... " album and most of the tracks that were available for download from the NPGMC were desperate ghosts of Prince.... so the quality-ometer has only dipped from 1999 to 2003 and even then that’s only being harsh on the Rainbow Children, reasoning it mostly for Jazz aficionados.

Prince is great. We cannot and should not 4get that. But he is not the only that's great and he definitely is not the greatest. There is no greatest.
For sheer innovation and brilliance Radiohead's Hail to the Thief is one of the most striking albums of the past few years; Outkast's 2Album opus, especially BigBoi's less talked about Speakerboxxx is the NPG album Prince could only dream of making; Ben Harper is doing amzing cross-over powerful music;
These are a few examples that its not just Prince that can be really great.

Also I find that Prince's constant harping on about getting back to real music slightly too much…. Who really cares what form the musical arrangement takes as long as the tune / melody are interesting… everything should be subservient to making a good song, not a mere tokenistic bemoaning of how the landscape of modern pop music has expanded / changed. An interesting thought for you - some of the instruments on the NEWS album such as the Santour (middle-eastern instrument), were programmed and not real Santour playing - a bit hypocritical, don’t ya think?
Keyboards are great if used in the right way... even Prince knows that.

With all this in mind and with a sense of hope and dread I listened to Musicology. The first thing to say is that it's musically consistent with Prince's positive resolution ethic still. There is no pop-gloom of She's Always in my hair or the sheer driving filthiness of Pheremone or the jaw-dropping epicness of Crystal Ball or the even the simplistic genius of Sign o the times.... But there are quite a few songs that are easy to listen to and enjoyable coupled with one awesomely arranged song, the low key Dear Mr Man (which has nothing to do with Roger Hargreaves). Musicology is a safe Prince album, a good but not great album. It fits neatly (if a little too safely) underneath the Symbol album in any sort of list.

The Rain has long since passed and many, many songs have been released that are greater in everyway. This is not the end or the beginning or the lowest trough or highest peak in Prince's creativity... For a man so often synonymous with superlatives.... Musicolgy is not a sum of the man..... only the man is the sum of the man ... everything is just a reflection of an aspect.... long may Prince continue to dish out the odd moments of genius... hopefully people / journos / media / fans can ease up on the sound bites, the unrivalled idolisation and chill and enjoy good music and a thoroughly enjoyable world tour.

(Thank u 4 reading this rambling writers late-nite tinkerings)

Hey, Persian, thanks for your thoughts about media criticism of Prince's career. A few things jump out:

1) Not all journalists who criticize Prince's music are non-fans. And, while the depth of their devotion to his music might be questioned by hardcore folks, they often know his music well enough to speak to what makes an album consistently good or consistently lacking.

2) Critics issue their opinions, nothing more. Your commentary included your opinions about Prince's albums, songs and career decisions. That's no different than what critics are paid to do.

3) Prince is not the first artist with commercial success to take on aspects of the music industry. A number of artists -- Aimee Mann, Don Henley, Alanis Morrisette, Courtney Love and Ani Difranco jump to mind -- have been extremely vocal about various facets of the industry and how it should change. Difranco stands as the most prominent example of someone who has been successful as an independent artist.

I think the overall tone of your commentary points to how you wish Prince could've gotten better press coverage in the past decade or so. I don't think the basis for that is found in pop critics' unfamiliarity with trends in the business of music, music composition, or the history and evolution of rock music. The person responsible for it was Prince, plain and simple.

If you check back in your commentary, you make a lot of excuses for him and the manner in which he released material. And, fans normally are sympathetic to their favorite artists. But, it's not a journalist's job -- even one who's a pop critic and enjoys a bit more subjective license -- to be sympathetic.