So to start with, some general housekeeping. No way am I listening to every Prince album. I mean, I could, but I feel like it would somewhat sour my appreciation of the great man. Instead, I'm going from the very beginning to Diamonds and Pearls inclusive, at which point he started to refer to himself as a symbol and it all got strange. That's still a good amount of ground to cover.

One touch point which I should have covered in my Preconceptions was Ultra Vivid Scene - I love that idea of the lone craftsman, hunkered down in his studio, surviving on coffee and JD and weed or whatever, emerging blinking into the sunlight with their finished masterpiece. At least at this early stage, there seems to be an element of that to Prince's work.

It's on Soft and Wet that we get our first glimpse of Prince in the wild, the naughty boy that he is. It has a retro feel, a bit like the music from Sonic the Hedgehog on the Megadrive. That retro feel isn't affected though - it's just a very old track. If bits of it sound like they're borrowing from disco, it's because this album came out a year after Saturday Night Fever. We are at the beginning of a long apprenticeship.