I think what makes it work is the moment - Prince stepping out in his outfit in front of a bunch of establishment white guys and just playing until his fingers catch on fire. Very much a "look, I can do THIS" thing, and for that aspect alone it's fun as hell to watch.

As a piece of music though, it does almost nothing for me except for the first 30 seconds and then a few bits later on. It doesn't "tell a story" in guitar solo parlance - doesn't build or climax, hits full wank mode with the sixteenth note hammer-on stuff only 30 seconds in, and after that it mostly feels like a technique display. And it's an impressive one, but let's be real, there are other guys that can do that, and more of them than you'd think. What I expect out of Prince as a musician - the soul, the controlled minimalism dotted with explosions of sound that take your breath away, the superb and quirky grasp of melody (that sometimes just pokes its head up for a few moments per verse on his funkier numbers, but other times generated some of the biggest hit songs of my youth) - it's mostly absent here, after a pretty solid beginning. It's a dude rummaging all over the neck finding different ways to freak a pentatonic scale (with a few modal highlights here and there - wish there were more of them).

Truthfully I always thought Prince was at his weakest as a guitarist. Not technique-wise, but just for producing music that blows me away. He can obviously shred, but if I might steal a popular OKP comparison, he's more singing than sangin'. One of his obvious models, Jimi, knew how to do both, and his solos were works of art. Prince's solos, I somehow never feel them like that.