"Think about it, Prince grows up this poor black kid on a march to nowhere in a nowhere white town, and when the news announces 'Prince has died' - there have been princes for 10,000 years, there must be princes in Saudi Arabia and Europe and Africa right now - nobody said 'Prince who?' The color purple has been part of the universe since the Big Bang. Prince dies, they bathe global monuments in purple, nobody says, 'Why?' I think from a racial point of view, from a class point of view, it's such a profound achievement. You know, this guy is the one genius that every other genius says is a genius." - Van Jones
Personally I feel that HITnRUN Phase One is a much better album. It's modern, hip and sounds fresh, outside of the trashy track 1. He was still on top of his game musically even at the end. RIP America's best singer songwriter, ever.
Nah. He hadn't been for a good 20 years by that point. But, in the end, so what? Prince composed more material at his peak than most artists do in a lifetime.
Prince & Van Jones were actually fairly good friends (one of only 20 invited to his private memorial service). I imagine he has more insight into the man than any of us.
My girlfriend came home with a purple silk pillowcase the other day, and slept on it for the first time last night. I can’t help but think this is what it must have been like being in bed with Prince.
It's true that from 1999 onwards, his albums went a bit all over the place but there was some fabulous music peppered across them - and live, he was better than ever as a musician.
IMO, Prince started to become less interesting as a recording artist after 1988 - and especially after 1995. I love the whole 1980-88 run, and I like the 1989-1995 period - well, "Come" leaves me a bit cold, but it's okay. After that... spotty city! More mediocre/bad than good. As for the concerts, I saw Prince about 20 times between 1984 and 2015. 1988 was the clear peak, though 1984 and 1993 were good. After that... spotty city again. A few of the shows were pretty good, but a lot were pretty mediocre - at least by Prince's standards. I remember at one show during the long 2007 O2 run, he kept bragging about how great he was. I thought "stop telling us you're great and prove it!" 25 years ago, Prince was in my top 10 artists - maybe top 5 - but the combo of mediocre post-1995 albums and shows really knocked him out of that ranking...
It's true that his earlier performances were more efferverscent, more physical but as the various Montreux shows showed, either as a guitarist, chef d'orchestre, singer, whatever, he was still untouchable (and this is nothing to do with personnal taste/preference).
Maybe you saw too many and it made you blasé. Whatever, I'm jealous as hell because the purple yoda never came near my neck of the woods.
Well, that 1988 tour set a high bar! It's still my go-to pick for "best concert I ever saw" period. I agree that some of my attitude is due to "over-exposure" - someone who'd never seen Price was way more likely to be impressed by his post-1996 shows - but if "blase-itude" explained it, then I'd be as down on the dozen or so other artists I've seen 20+ times, too. I think Prince eventually just coasted on his reputation - both in the studio and on stage. Like I mentioned, he liked to boast about his greatness but he rarely seemed that interested in proving his status. And don't get me started on those shows with Larry Graham!
From what I've seen (and saw myself, though only twice) his instrumental virtuosity never went down hill. He always had a very jam oriented live show and that continued throughout his career. He just wasn't breaking any new ground in the studio after 1995 or so (some would say before that). He also kept recording at the same pace in his creative slumps as he did at his peak, which made it a bit more noticeable. Still, there are some really good Prince songs from 2000 on.
I think '3121' was by far his Best Album Post 2000, although found Plectrum Electrum pretty good, so one Good FUNK Album and one Good Rock Album. I still need to buy 'Art Official Age' though, as skipped buying that Album at the time. Also, never saw Prince in Concert, but based on his Studio Albums, I preferred the NPG Band to the Revolution, but YMMV.
You're probably right about 3121 - it has a good feel to it overall, and is probably the best of his "comeback" albums in the 2000s (Musicology, on the other hand, I found to be a total bore).
