The one musician Prince thought was “priceless”
Many artists get judged on how well they can play the guitar. Others get judged on how well they can sing. Then, you have other artists judged on their lyricism, songwriting ability and their vision. Not Prince. Prince was his own beast. There wasn’t just one facet to his musicianship: he was able to perform and create in a way that highlighted all of his different talents.
Because of his innovative approach to music, many people hold him in very high regard in the musical world. He remains an inspiration for forward-thinking artists who want to go one step further than just making music and instead, want to create their own worlds within sound.
Of course, just because Prince was an innovative thinker, that doesn’t mean he didn’t have his list of inspirations. When you’re such an individualistic artist, a lot of people struggle to understand where you came from, but in Prince’s case, he just looked at the same thing everyone else did from a different angle, re-shaping funk and soul music in his own twisted, beautiful image.
Questlove puts it best when he talks about how Prince viewed James Brown’s work and drew from it. “Think about James Brown. Prince certainly did, as did every funk and soul artist of his generation,” said The Roots drummer, “But Prince was brilliantly perverse in the way he absorbed James Brown.”
Questlove continued: “If James was about a tight crack snare and percussive horns as an extended rhythmic arm, Prince went the opposite direction — he made undeniable funk from a dud of a dead snare sound and the artificial horns of the Oberheim synthesizer.”
There were some artists who Prince adored so much, though, that even he couldn’t fathom the idea of tampering with their sound. One of these was Stevie Wonder. When Prince spoke about Wonder in an interview, he was short and sweet with his message, simply saying, “His insight is priceless”. The Purple One certainly has a point, as a lot of Wonder’s music, despite being written decades ago, still resonates as some of the most important music ever committed to the airwaves.
Allegedly, when Prince was making music, he liked trying to clear his head of any sounds that would change his record. His affiliation with Wonder meant that he knew he would be unable to listen to his music and not in some way end up incorporating it into his record. As such, he had to have a strict rule in the studio that nobody was allowed to play Stevie Wonder, regardless of whether this was during recording sessions or in between takes. Prince was adamant about having an individual unique sound, and if he listened to Stevie Wonder too much, he was concerned that wouldn’t be the case.
