Is Prince a genius?

A few years ago the a New York Times reviewer stated that Prince was a musical genius equivilent to Mozart. Now I myself am not a Prince fan. Even before he became a Jehovah's Witness I was never a huge fan of him or his music. I recognize that the man has some talent and I enjoyed the movie "Purple Rain", but is he on the same level as Mozart or Bach?

Now I admit that I am far from being an expert on all things musical, but some how I just can't wrap my mind around the the concept of equating Prince to Mozart. Arguably what we call classical music was the popular music of it's day and people would flock to concerts to see the likes of Paganini, he even had groupies. By all accounts the boy gave a hell of a show. I have no doubts that if old Wolfgang or Ludwig B. were around today they hawking their wares on Itunes and selling CDs out of their trunks. Just imagine what Bach would have done with a 16 track studio and a rack of Moogs! Or what would Beethoven had gotten a timely shot of penicillin and never have gone deaf? The mind boggles.

I have also had discussions (arguments ) with Tupac fans that he was a genius and I'm sure that fans of all sorts of contemporary artists would make their cases. But still I'm not convinced. While these artists have with out doubt have a modicum of talent, they are just not Mozart material.

So what do you think?

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