By shelz.

Segmenting and separating music, with its myriad styles, has been very cut and dry until recently. Even the more artistic musicians generally picked a genre and stuck with it as crossing sonic borders tended to raise eyebrows of existing fans and stoked the ire of critics who found such moves more business driven than artistically developed.  Prior to the fusion boom of the new millennium though, there were some artists who could traverse and combine style at will and one of the best was Prince Rogers Nelson.

Since the late ‘70’s Prince has been keeping his sound relevant by hop scotching through almost every style known to music.  He cites his influences as almost everything short of opera and country, and even that pair might be found in some of his recordings.  However, his undeniably cohesive mixtures have never been any better than on Purple Rain and Sign o’ the Times.

Prince released Purple Rain in 1984 evolving from one man band to leader of The Revolution.  This growth added a depth to his music and allowed for the live sections of the album.  He also ratcheted up the rock influence and squeezed in some definite pop elements yet still retained his trademark electro funk.  The sum of all those parts was a diverse, yet unified collection of sounds that satisfied almost every possible musical palette.  It also sold over 13 million copies in the US alone.

The album was an assortment of dirty sexual fantasy, divine suggestion, ass shaking reckless abandon, and overwhelmingly syrupy pop love.  Beneath those lyrical ideas were some of the most creative compositions the pop world had ever heard.  You didn’t have the listen any further than “Let’s Go Crazy” to realize Purple Rain was in a class by itself. The opening dirge-like intro morphs into an electro tweaked hard rock song, complete with an entirely out of tune piano solo (if you catch the extended version) which then acquiesces to one of the most famous and powerful guitar solos ever. And that’s just the first song. Needless to say, the eight songs that followed were just as brilliant.

Purple Rain is on just about every Best Albums of All Time list, and it ranks in the top 50 on several.  Amazingly enough, Sign o’ the Times ranks along side Purple Rain on most of those lists; on some it ranks even higher.

By 1987, Prince had ditched The Revolution, returned to one man band status and had a surplus of material he wanted to release.  Warner Bros balked at his idea of a 3 disc project, so he trimmed the fat and produced one of the best double discs of all time, Sign o the Times. He proved that you didn’t need a dense soundscape to produce a powerful recording, just listen to “It.” He also pushed the idea that cohesion isn’t always necessary as this album may be his most diverse to date.

It was obvious that the funk prodigy was thrilled about his liberation from the minimal musical compromise he must have been making with the folks in The Revolution. He took the best of the leftovers, stripped down epic composition to near nakedness and laid out a candid portrait of a world interrupted with Sign o’ the Times.  It was both emotional and stoic, pretty and ugly, happy and sad. He spoke of love, loss, casual sex, AIDS, religion, gangs, drugs and numerous other topics relevant to a decade that was beginning to acknowledge cocaine spoons and disco couldn’t solve anything.

Sign o’ the Times was the rawest, least polished of his releases during that time frame.  The frayed edges of the LP held all of the passion that he restrained during his collaborative efforts prior and all of the fervor he would have to suspend later during his creative fight with Tommy Mottola.  It’s overflowing with an energy that Prince hasn’t been able to replicate since.

However, one has to be better.  Do you prefer the rock pop electro fusion of Purple Rain or the stripped down power of Sign o’ the Times?  Baby, Prince is a star, but which album is the definitive proof? Speak on it.