That was where Prince was at, aspiring to the level of Davis’s In A Silent Way or Mitchell’s Blue, not Jacko’s Speed Demon. Having spent most of the year at Sunset Sound and his basement studio, in a small room with low light, and becoming increasingly pleased with the results, Prince even stumped up the courage to offer a track each to both Miles Davis ( Can I Play With U?) & Joni Mitchell ( Emotional Pump). Indeed, his output was so prolific albums were generally recorded and finished almost a year prior to gaining eventual release - his last album Parade (out March ’86) was compiled before the paint had even dried to the artwork sleeve for Around The World In A Day (released April ’85). Prince’s vault was already stocked with a wealth of new and exciting material. He might have still been smarting from his James Brown live appearance embarrassment, but it’s also possible, hearing the best of what Jackson could muster, that he realized (ability to entertain aside) how far he had left the king of pop behind, and besides, sitting on a large portion of the music that would form the basis of his crowning achievement Sign ‘O’ The Times, there would be no need to record anybody else's songs. Quincy Jones (Jackson's producer and consigliere) Fed Ex’d over a demo of Bad - the rather limp follow up to Thriller- which landed on Prince’s paisley doormat that autumn. Jones had hoped, somewhat ambitiously, that Prince could be persuaded to duet in a superstar showdown, the two squaring up to each other B-Boy style (*one imagines Mike grabbing his crotch, and Prince with his bare ass showing) on a proposed megabucks video. However, after hearing Jackson’s opening line (“Your butt is mine!”) Prince promptly refused. By September 1986, just as Prince the musician and artist (but not the moviestar) had climbed to the top of the peak creatively, his only real rival, Michael Jackson, had already begun sliding down the precipice.

Prince complete discography blogspot