>it don't transcend it, where people can just appreciate the
>brilliance.

if he didn't transcend it. granted, he is doing that on a SUPERBLACK platform, but often when I see him discussed, it's not usually in the terms of his Blackness. just in its brilliance. in fact, Stevie ends up being "the" R&B artist for a lot of people who aren't really into that genre.

on the flip, Prince's Blackness has almost EVERYTHING to do with why I think his music is genius. And not because he was doing "rawk" music, but because his music accurately (to me) reflects a possibility of one who is Black, who grew up someplace totally un-Black in MURRICA and absorbed all of that. the accounts of other artists who grew up in MPLS (most notably Jam & Lewis), who said they had to reach HARD to find some damn R&B and funk music over there, and largely depended on their circles paint that picture. And they came out of that and created something amazing. Prince, especially.

no one BUT Prince makes an "Uptown". or "I Wanna Be Your Lover" (and then flipping it the way he did on tours early in the '80s). or fuckin' "Controversy" or "1999". same dude throwing jazzy piano solos in the middle of a proto-house song like "Sexy Dancer". or "troll rock" like "Sister". the countless shit he didn't release.
if Prince came up anywhere else it wouldn't work.

his shit is closer to Todd Rundgren's oeuvre than it is anyone else's (that's another one I wonder about).