"Prince is a victim of what i call the Bowie Effect: an artist who has has such a sustained streak of brilliance early in his or her career that all subsequent work, regardless of quality, will be found lacking in comparison. Granted, it will be well nigh impossible for Prince to top the heights of his 80's work, but strong albums like 1997's New Power Soul, 2001's The Rainbow Children, and now Musicology show that the man is far from washed up."

'This first paragraph from a review summarises everything about Prince.
Everything he does is compared to everything he has done, there is no merit given to what he is doing now.

If people stop comparing and judge what he's doing when he's doing it, then I believe he is without peer, the sheer volume of his work , the standard, the unpredictability, there is no one that can compare(no pun) to what he is doing at the moment.

Why does everyone criticise what he does and what music he puts out. Us Prince fans are without doubt some of the luckiest people around, such a varied catologue, over 25 years of work plus too numerous bootlegs to count, yet we can't be satisfied.

Yes , I have some cd's that I prefer to listen to more than others , but I don't hate the others, I love listening to all my Prince cd's (including all the 90's releases) and I think some people should stop the hating and sit back and appreciate and enjoy what he has and will keep giving us.

I know some people will disagree with my point of view , that's fine and I will like to hear what people's view on this matter is, is there to much hating, expectations to high because of past work or should we just enjoy what we have.....
[This message was edited Tue Jun 1 19:57:08 2004 by NPS319]

NPS319 said:

why shouldn't we? there ain't a single piece of art in the world, musical or otherwise, that's never been criticized.

there ain't a single person in the world, famous or otherwise, who hasn't been criticized in some way.

criticism is part of the artistic process, as well as part of living. deal.

Handclapsfingasnapz said:

Harsh but true

Sorry, but, New Power Soul (actually from 98, not 97) could never be called a STRONG album. A few good tracks, but a weak album is what we have there.

The others mentioned I agree are strong, though.

.
[This message was edited Tue Jun 1 20:03:07 2004 by mrdespues]

You know, even though I agree with what you're saying basically, this topic is SO tired!

Someone needs to post the "meatloaf again" pic.

I didn't say that his work shouldn't be scrutinized, just that it should be compared to what is around at the moment and not to be compared to his back catologue which everyone seems to do.

NPS319 said:

that falls right back on the points i made above. every artist's work is compared to what they've done in past times, too. it's all in the game.

the funny thing about most recent work by ANYONE is, it gains credibility with time. it's easy to harsh on something that came out over the past five years, but in twenty years, will we see that same work in the same light? in some cases, maybe. in other cases, hmmm, we don't really know, do we?

case in point - in 1994, i thought prince's "come" album was pure crap, save for maybe one or two interesting or fun songs. today? i think it's freakin' brilliant. one of my absolute favorites. one day i just got bored and decided to give it another chance, and i was amazed at how interesting and intense it is.

now, i'm not saying that in a few years i'll completely rediscover the brilliance that is, say, "1999: the new master(bation)", but i guess my whole point is that i've noticed, where i'm concerned anyway, that one's ear can kinda change over time, and when we distance ourselves from the newness of something, we can hear something a bit different.

just some thoughts...

mrdespues said:

good thing you cleared that up, since that difference makes such a big impact on what the writer was trying to say, but failed miserably because he was off a year.

NPS319 said:

this is true. just over the weekend madartista and i were saying how we were so used to being spoiled with the fact that he always had aftershows and this weekend he didn't have any. we have been spoiled.