>When you come into the game as a follower you will never be
>able to be a leader. His best move was focusing on the
>production side... if he really wanted to sustain a solo
>career he should have stayed away from the Prince look and
>sound.

that's part of the reason I liked that first album.

It didn't really sound (or look) like Prince at all to me.
Prince when that album dropped had taken to finally settling on his classic "Purple Bourgeoisie" look, and gotten off the whole "Rude Boy" look (the trench + underwear... LOL). He had actually started to sing in his real voice, too.

Andre was wearing regular clothes (a T-shirt and some jeans), playing some more "electro-funk" ("Get 'Em Girl"), some more straight head punk rock ("Ritz Club"), and pop music that was a little different from where Prince was going (he went underground, Andre went a little closer to what the mainstream was doing ala Jesse).

It could have come from the same place Prince did, but w/o all the pomp. Since it was a little scatterbrained stylistically without a really strong songwriting to tie it all together, it didn't hit like The Time did. Yet the first thing Prince did was make fun of the look on the low ("get out of those Blue Jeans, and those New Wave clothes...").

If he had stayed on that path he would have probably had a different take on his career...but NOPE!

- second album he looked like he went to Japan and saw some Super Sentai (read: Power Rangers) and came back to Minneapolis after recording Knight Rider background music

- third album, he basically gave in to Prince-isms full bore. Of course by 1985, the takeover of the R&B sound was complete, so no one really blinked. Didn't hurt that the lead single was a Prince song too.

...at least he found another run in the background, as a producer.