I copy below some relevant parts which were rather shocking to me; and I found particularly, ahem, entertaining the parts shown in bold:
Tavis: How difficult is it to live in a world - and to your earlier point, which I take, it's a brilliant point; the world is already mean enough. We don't have to add to it. But how do you contextualize, emotionally, having much of your work judged by your personality rather than on the merits of the work?
Prince: Well, one reason is because I like criticism. I like constructive criticism from smart people. I'm thankful enough to - or blessed enough to be able to say that Miles Davis was a friend when he was alive, and he was a wonderful mentor and really, really funny.
And he could critique something you've done by humor and out of love rather than just call you a punk and just dismiss you. (Laughter) He wasn't like that, because people he cared about he tried to help.
When people criticize my work and attack my personality, it doesn't help me; I can't do anything with it. I don't know what they want. I've asked writers this before and a lot of times they tell me that they just write for each other. They're not really writing for (laughter) - "Oh, I really got him that time, didn't I?" Like, okay, well. I don't know, nobody learns anything from it, really.
Tavis: Who's qualified - I want to connect these two things. I said earlier that you were head and shoulders above everybody else in the music world and most musicians, I think, even acknowledge that. Who's qualified - and maybe qualified is the wrong word, but it's the one I'm going to go with. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.
Who's qualified to critique your stuff these days? You mentioned Miles Davis. Who's qualified to critique you?
Prince: Oh, anybody.
Tavis: Music critics? Fans? Other artists?
Prince: Yeah, I don't mind - anybody, if they do it with a sense of love, if they're trying to show me something about the work that they really feel is important for me to know. And I don't see a lot of that in journalism today. Most journalists are just lazy.
Tavis: You said you liked being critiqued and you love constructive criticism from smart people. How do people critique you if you are so ahead of your time, as you have proven to be consistently? If you're so ahead of your time, how can they critique what they ain't even caught up to?
Prince: Because they - listen, if they don't feel what I'm doing, they're going to let me know. If it's somebody I love they're going to tell me they don't feel it and they'll tell me the reasons why. And I can appreciate that. I write all the time, I record all the time.
I think some of you might understand why, after reading this interview, had a smile of incredulity in my face.
Some of the hardcores fans of Prince music (including me) have written in the past with good, constructive intentions about Prince work. And the response we received was, to be fair, not exactly a positive one, and we didn't exactly feel that Prince liked that kind of criticism. For instance, I wrote an open letter to Prince in 2007. And as stated in the article of the link, the good intentions of the letter had no effect whatsoever.
So when I read "Prince likes criticism", I can't avoid to think "yeah, right".
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