pure talent........................

I would certainly classify Prince as a major artist of the late twentieth century, but I must admit some disappointment with how this brilliant career developed or failed to develop over time.  His great period was his early one, from the late 1970s to the mid-1980s, when he created a brand-new sonic landscape and used the emergent genre of music videos as a flamboyant medium of performance art.  Musically, he downscaled Rick James' massive macho funk chords into a bewitching web work of intricate rhythm, intimate and sensual.  As a sexual persona, he borrowed transgender motifs from Little Richard and Jimi Hendrix and refashioned himself first as a half-naked s&m rent boy and then as an aristocratic dandy, dripping silk and lace. ...

     The news about Prince's death two weeks ago was announced while my "Art of Song Lyric" course was meeting.  We were in fact doing the period from James Brown through soul, disco, and funk.  I was incredulous when I got back to my office and saw the shocking headline on the Drudge Report.  At our next class, I immediately showed Prince's "Kiss" video (1986) to demonstrate what pure talent looks like.  What a low-budget masterpiece that beautifully edited video is - nothing but dance, gesture, seductive rhythm, and witty warmth.

-Camille Paglia, The Death of Prince from Provocations:  Collected Essays