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At their absolute peak who was cooler between Michael Jackson and Prince?

K

karmaforgotme

Member
Renji_11 said:
Wasn't everybody wearing one glove and the thriller jacket in the 80's? As a kid I thought smooth criminal was the coolest thing ever. Prince was the one who seemed weird to me. Now that I am older I see how cool Prince was but I honestly didn't see any kids talk about Prince in the 80's.
Click to expand...

It is a case of the most popular cool vs. true cool. Hard to compare, but true cool wins every time in the end. And yes people were talking about Prince back in the 80's (I was in 7th grade when Purple Rain came out).
 
B

benzy

Member
82fda5526cfc494e31bd59d93a273835.jpg
 
M

Master Thespian

Member
Prince was miles cooler at literally any point of his life versus any point in MJ or anyone else's life. He was also a better musician.

But MJ was the better artist overall and was certainly more influential and iconic.
 
Fox Mulder

Fox Mulder

Member
Prince was always cooler.

Michael Jackson was bigger and has more iconic stuff, but was into carnival rides, arcade machines, monkeys, and child sleep overs.
 
V

Violence Jack

Member
Prince without a doubt was one of the coolest people on the planet.

MJ's prime was Billie Jean and Thriller, yet that MJ still came nowhere near Prince in terms of being a cool, slick mofo.
 
E

EdwardTeach

Member
Duane Cunningham said:
Well, enjoy these next, these are other Prince songs that could easily go in that slot instead:

Let's Go Crazy
1999
Little Red Corvette
Raspberry Beret
Kiss

The album cut of Purple Rain doesn't seem to be on YouTube, but here he is singing it at the Super Bowl ten years ago, still the coolest man in the entire stadium of 74 thousand people at age 47, in the most iconic Super Bowl performance of all time:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0iAisyQzw8c
Click to expand...

I would add:

If I was your girlfriend
I could never take the place of your man
When you were mine (frank Ocean's 'favorite song of all time")

To the list of great prince songs. Really the list is massive though.
 
P

phanphare

Banned
Master Thespian said:
Prince was miles cooler at literally any point of his life versus any point in MJ or anyone else's life. He was also a better musician.

But MJ was the better artist overall and was certainly more influential and iconic.
Click to expand...

as an artist Prince totally curb stomps MJ and it ain't even close

Prince was like if you took James Brown, Quincy, MJ, Jimi, and the color purple and mixed it all together in a blender and then had the prophets of all the religions bless it
 
L

Latvian Hitman

Member
V_Arnold said:
Point me towards some stuff, GAF.

I am 31 years old and have never heard of one single Prince song, like...ever.

I remember my childhood and watching MTV, I remember plenty of MJ songs, but not a single Prince song, ever. His attitude ever since has turned me off so strongly, I did not even bother looking for his work anywhere.

Where does one start?
Click to expand...

Buy the Purple Rain album. Profit. Immensely.
 
J

Jumeira

Banned
soundscream said:
And MJ was never cool. He was popular.
Click to expand...

Eh, I remember all the cool kids making reference to him or wearing his merchandise, girls would swoon if you moved like him. Back To The Future had a cool cameo too, I don't know maybe I was too young to notice Prince bit MJ was S rank of cool for me.

Remember the time and those effects, that music, Eddie Murphy. His work sent tremors around the entertainment world.
 
B

bionic77

Member
Ninja Scooter said:
MJ was "your kids want to dress like him" cool.

Prince was "your wife wants to have sex with him" cool.
Click to expand...
MJ was not as weird when Thriller came out.

That he could have a girlfriend was actually believable at the time the video came out.

Prince always had more sex appeal. The ladies he was getting in the 80s..
 
Duane Cunningham

Duane Cunningham

Member
Also, don't forget about Prince:

-He played his own guitar and is one of the best players of all time, despite that getting overshadowed by his other talents
-He NEVER stopped making albums - 39 studio albums, all the way up to his death
-He wrote all the songs himself
-He produced and edited basically everything himself
-On stage, he never stopped touring that whole time.
-Sometimes he'd collaborate with a choreographer, but not always, and when he did, he was extremely hands on. Many times, he'd do it all himself.
-All the stagecraft was his.


(this isn't "cool" stuff, per se, but just a reminder that the whole time he was being the coolest man on the planet, he was also working insanely hard)
 
Pagusas

Pagusas

Elden Member
Fluffernutter Pancake said:
How is this even a debate? MJ by a landslide
Click to expand...

I think it really depends on what you define as "cool".

Neither were "cool" to me. but I never found that frail/metro look to be "cool". I'd say ZZ Top was cooler than both, but that's just because I have different ways of gauging it.
 
M

mavo

Banned
Michael, i never thought of Prince as cool, just as a really weird dude, maybe because he was never really popular here in Mexico but he is just that really weird dude for me (and my mom is also a big MJ fan).

Michael is also a really weird dude, but the video for beat it is really cool.
 
I

III-V

Member
Zen Aku said:
Cooler. Prince

More popular. Michael Jackson.
Click to expand...

this is the only correct answer.

Michael Jackson was larger than life, bigger than the world for a time. Prince never had this.

But these two were never really competing, they were different.
 
entremet

entremet

Member
I remember everyone trying to Moonwalk. Prince didn't really have that moment.

It's a rather complex question. Prince definitely had more sex appeal, but I say this in hindsight as I wasn't thinking about sex appeal from a 30-year-old man as a straight male kid.

Prince was what your Mom thought was cool and maybe sex appeal had a lot to do it with.
 
C

Calm Killer

In all media, only true fans who consume every book, film, game, or pog collection deserve to know what's going on.
Cooler? Prince.

Best Artist - MJ, and it isn't even close.
 
F

Fuchsdh

Member
If we're talking the height of his fame, I don't think it's any question Michael Jackson was cooler.

But Price managed to retain that "cool" element far, far longer. To the point where if you were going to have people associate a name with "cool" of the two, it'd probably be Prince.
 
PJV3

PJV3

Member
Definitely Prince, I never got Jackson Thriller period onwards, he felt like something out of an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical, not cool at all.
 
N

NEO0MJ

Member
You know one undebatable thing Michael has that Prince never had? Height ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

mambadragon said:
I'm sorry you the only way you could say MJ was cooler was if you were born in the 90s or later.
Click to expand...

Wouldn't people born in the 90s+ have only been exposed to creepy Michael?
 
Q

qcf x2

Member
MJ at his absolute peak was more of a global phenomenon the likes of which may have never been seen before. BUT the question is: what is cool? Is it popularity? If so, MJ has that in the bag, no contest. Prince, though, has the lasting cool factor because he was decades ahead of most with his self-identification, which was an issue I think MJ struggled with. Prince is eternally cool because he lived the mantra of marching to his own beat, and he did it from the absolute beginning. He built his own world and he lived in it.
 
V

Version 3.0

Member
Even when Michael Jackson was considered cool - which he was, and deniers in this thread are either crazy or too young to remember - I personally never quite "got it". He's a great musician and singer, and I love his stuff, but his tough guy act with Beat It and Bad just made me laugh.

The rest of the world, though, bought it 100%. Michael was the coolest guy on the planet for a while there. So I guess Michael is the answer, due to that brief period of collective insanity. And shame on the world for that.

Prince, though, was effortlessly cool his whole career. Michael being a weirdo knocked him off the cool throne pretty fast. But even Prince doing the whole weird "my name is a symbol" thing never put a dent in his cool factor.
 
F

forrest

formerly nacire
V_Arnold said:
Point me towards some stuff, GAF.

I am 31 years old and have never heard of one single Prince song, like...ever.

I remember my childhood and watching MTV, I remember plenty of MJ songs, but not a single Prince song, ever. His attitude ever since has turned me off so strongly, I did not even bother looking for his work anywhere.

Where does one start?
Click to expand...

While there are tons of great songs and performances over his long career, this latter SNL performance of "Fury" still shows how much Prince can rip up the guitar at a moment's notice. Just love this song and performance as a guitar player. Enjoy!

http://uploadstars.com/video/654GHH8BA374

To answer the OP, MJ in terms of popularity around Thriller could probably never be touched even by Prince during Purple Rain / When Doves Cry era, but we aren't talking popularity. While Michael may be the King of Pop, Prince was easily the King of Sexy and Cool.
 
D

Dr.Acula

Banned
What would you say if your friend asked:

"Yo! There are two parties at the two ends of town, one's being hosted by Prince, the other by MJ, which should we go to?"

Trick question, your friend would never ask that, because they would have just said, "Prince is hosting a party, let's goooooo!!!"
 
P

pirateluigi

Member
Dr.Acula said:
What would you say if your friend asked:

"Yo! There are two parties at the two ends of town, one's being hosted by Prince, the other by MJ, which should we go to?"

Trick question, your friend would never ask that, because they would have just said, "Prince is hosting a party, let's goooooo!!!"
Click to expand...

Well that's because everyone loves homemade pancakes
 
B

Bobby Roberts

Banned
III-V said:
But these two were never really competing, they were different.
Click to expand...

I mean, Prince was basically competing with everybody all the time. The whole reason he went on that 1999 - Purple Rain - Around the World in a Day run was because he decided that it was time to fuck the pop charts up because the people ON the pop charts weren't doing it right.

Michael didn't really think of it as a competition, and Prince wasn't like, checking sales stats like "I'm gonna bring him down" but he was definitely hitting the studio throughout the 80s like "You motherfuckers ain't seen shit if you think this cornball is giving you something."

Michael used to think Prince was a big meanie.
 
Z

Zimbardo

Member
looking back at it all ...overall, Prince was way cooler.

but back in the day, when 'Thriller' was released ...it was hard to top MJ. that shit was huge ...and many kids thought he was the coolest thing going.
 
P

phanphare

Banned
I got a text from Prince’s assistant. That’s how things go in the Prince universe: You get a pre‑message saying that a phone message is coming later. But this time, the message said something different. It said that there was going to be a roller‑skating party that night, for Valentine’s Day, and that I should bring some cool people.

I was puzzled. What did Prince mean by “cool,” exactly? I wasn’t sure if he was trusting me with the word or with the concept. I texted back: “Cool?” It turned out they meant the people who were already with me: Mos, Talib, Jill, Erykah, Common. I started to line people up in my mind and called them to give them the news. I thought they would do backflips: a party with Prince? To my amazement, most of them weren’t up for it. Jill came backstage and told me that she was tired. Talib said that he needed to be in bed before midnight. I ran into Alan Leeds, who led me to Raphael’s dressing room, where Chris Rock and Eddie Murphy were sitting and talking. I went to my same pitch:

“Hey, guys, want to go roller‑skating with Prince?”

“Right,” Alan said. “I’ll be in the grave before I’m in skates.”

“Right,” Chris said. “Like I’m skating with these knees.”

“Right,” Raphael said. “I’m too old for that shit.”

I was confused and a little depressed. How good were these peo­ple’s lives that they could pass on Prince’s roller‑skating party? Only one man was brave enough—visionary enough—to see what lay before us, and that was Eddie Murphy. “This is historical,” he said. “For starters, I need to see if Prince can roller‑skate. I’m a comedian, and honestly, what’s funnier than that?”

Prince’s assistant texted me directions to a rink in Glenside, way out in the middle of nowhere. It was around one in the morning by the time we drove out there, and the place was empty, a bare rink, and I started to worry that I had the wrong place, or that I had been punked. Maybe Alan and Chris were in on the joke. Maybe they were all somewhere laughing. Then I saw DJ Rashida and some of her friends skating. “Hey,” I said.

“Hey there,” she said. They were so happy to see us that I started to feel bad that I hadn’t brought more people. “No,” she said. “Don’t worry about it. Prince likes to keep things intimate. A dozen people is a big crowd to him.” That may have been true, but it was crazy for her to say, as a DJ, and just as crazy for me, as a DJ, to hear. Do you know how hard it is to entertain a crowd that small?

The rink staff was professional, if a little nonplussed. “He’s pay­ing for us to stay open,” one guy told me. “Let’s make the best of it. What’s your shoe size?”

My girlfriend and I skated for about an hour. No Prince, no noth­ing, and the longer we went, the stranger it seemed. Was he com­ing? Was he up in the rafters, laughing? It was a strange setup, to say the least. Someone was putting down cash to keep the kid behind the snack bar there, watching the pizza bake under the heat lamp. He should have been home studying for his spelling test.

Around two in the morning we were ready to go. Still no Prince, and the anthropological benefit of watching this strange half‑attended all‑skate was wearing off. Suddenly, Eddie came in.

“Hey,” he said. “I have an idea. Maybe don’t take those skates off just yet.”

And there he came, Prince, followed by a Princely entourage: his wife, Manuela; Larry Graham; some kids. I didn’t recognize the kids but they were a familiar type—show‑biz small‑fry, like I was all those years ago, when my father took me down to the green room to meet KISS.

Prince was carrying a big briefcase in his hand, and he was acting all mysterious, like it contained the glowing substance from Pulp Fic­tion or something. He made like he was going to open it, then stopped, then started again. Then he walked toward me.

“Where’s your phone?”

“What?” I said.

“Yeah, right, what?” he said. “I know you have it, Ahmir. Where is it?”

I thought maybe he wanted to make a phone call. I admit now that’s not a plausible reading of the situation, but it was all so surreal. “It’s here,” I said.

He took it from me and turned it over in his hand. “Your coat is in coat check?”

“Yeah.”

“Put this with it.”

“Why? You think I’m going to record something?”

“Check the phone.”

“What about him?” I pointed at Eddie. “You’re not going to take his phone? He’ll tell everyone.”

Eddie put up his hands. “Hey, man, I don’t know what you’re talk­ing about. My phone’s in the car.”

I put the phone in coat check. Prince was asking me. I was being asked by Prince. It was Prince who was asking me. And fine, maybe I didn’t understand any part of what was happening, but sometimes you just have to launch yourself out into the river of an evening.

When I got back, Prince had the briefcase out on the floor. He clicked the lock and opened it, and took out the strangest, most singu­lar pair of roller skates I had ever seen. They were clear skates that lit up, and the wheels sent a multicolored spark trail into your path.

He took them out and did a big lap around the rink. Man. He could skate like he could sing. I watched him go, so transfixed that I didn’t even notice Eddie Murphy appearing at my arm. “I’m going to go get your phone for you,” he said.
Click to expand...

http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat...h_prince_an_excerpt_from_his_new_book_mo.html
 
I

III-V

Member
Bobby Roberts said:
I mean, Prince was basically competing with everybody all the time. The whole reason he went on that 1999 - Purple Rain - Around the World in a Day run was because he decided that it was time to fuck the pop charts up because the people ON the pop charts weren't doing it right.

Michael didn't really think of it as a competition, and Prince wasn't like, checking sales stats like "I'm gonna bring him down" but he was definitely hitting the studio throughout the 80s like "You motherfuckers ain't seen shit if you think this cornball is giving you something."

Michael used to think Prince was a big meanie.
Click to expand...

I should have phrased that better, thanks.

MJ for a while had captured the worlds attention in a way that I have never seen before. I remember the man in the mirror reveal and it felt like it touched so many people. I still get a chill thinking about it.
 
S

soundscream

Member
mambadragon said:
I'm sorry you the only way you could say MJ was cooler was if you were born in the 90s or later.
Click to expand...

This. And even then its wrong.

People were losing there minds when Prince showed his ass at the VMAs 1991. Singing "Get Off" talking about 23 positions in a one night stand while people were grinding on each other in there underwear as they played.
 
C

CloudWolf

Member
Prince. It really is no contest. Dude was handsome, had an amazing voice, was a great dancer and was one of the most impressive (mainstream) guitar players of the 80's. I'm pretty sure even straight men were in love with him.
 
C

captmcblack

Member
Peak MJ was the coolest person on Earth, beyond Prince, the Beatles, etc.

Nothing compares.

Mind you, that isn't to say that Prince wasn't supremely talented or incredibly popular...it just wasn't like MJ who was bigger than all media.
 
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