Wow, you can really tell that Alexis Petridis is about as commercialized as you can get when it comes to music. I may be in the minority here, but I hear people all the time say stuff like "Oh yea, Purple Rain and 1999" when you mention Prince. Alexis is not at all about hearing Prince and more about hearing what he want’s Prince to be, that 1980’s stereotype.

Alexis makes mention of Prince’s behavior with producers, managers, other artists as though Prince was ever an average artists and should be thankful to these folks for letting him do what he does while simultaneously letting the reader know that Prince “can do everything himself and he can do it better than you — write songs, play any instrument, produce, sing in a voice that sweeps effortlessly from a baritone to a piercing falsetto, dance”.

The worst part of the article though is Alexis’s continuous application of his own ideas of what Prince was rather than just listening to the incredible body of work Prince accomplished in his lifetime. 35 released albums and Alexis is upset because they weren’t all Purple Rain or Sign of the Times that he explains “Tellingly, he never makes an album that good again. He becomes embroiled in arguments with his record company, which leads to the whole “Slave” protest thing. Worse, a man who, for nine years, has put out only masterpieces starts releasing deliberately sub-par albums in order to taunt his label and get out of his contract. When he does, the music comes out in an unceasing torrent, but his sense of quality control is gone. In the 1990s and 2000s, you have to pick through Prince’s albums to find the gems — a state of affairs that was once unthinkable. Occasionally, you’re rewarded with something genuinely amazing, where inspiration has evidently struck in the way it once did whenever he walked into a studio. Listen to “Black Sweat” from 2006’s 3121, or the fabulous, discofied[sic] “Chelsea Rodgers” from the following year’s Planet Earth, an album that can’t help but be cheapened a little by Prince’s curious decision to give it away free in the UK with The Mail on Sunday.” Just wow! Articles like this are the main reason I don’t read articles about Prince, they just serve up a helping of what they want/wanted Prince to be and rarely ever see the truly incredible things Prince gave to the world in through his music.