The hippy thing, well, some great music but ya, it was bullshit and thankfully didn't really last all that long. They were the very forefront of the music at that time so sure they'll get the blame. Even Hendrix had to go that way when I don't really know how much that was really him, all these years, I still don't know. I know he was crazy and wierd but the hippy influence in his lyrics I see as a calculation on his part to crossover (and it worked). He didn't live long enough to see where he'd go but it would have been in another crazy direction. People that knew him say he was embarrassed by it, the psychedelia. He shouldn't be, he did what he had to do. And, he really always was an outcast, even to black people so him being on the fringes made sense but he was basically a blues guitarist.
With Prince's legacy, my fear isn't about the money of course, I worry that it'll all get bungled so badly that he'll never even have a chance to have a future legacy enjoyed by The Beatles, MJ and Elvis. They were so huge that they don't really need much help, Prince wasn't. Yet, Ironically, he's the guy with the most new music just laying around, around 2-3000 songs. I've heard some of the stuff and some of it is just ok, some of it is mindblowing and some of it is just so mindblowing that it'll never work as far as a pop audience, it's just too much for them. Then, we have all his live shows since a certain point, recorded and filmed in high quality. yet, all they do is re-release purple rain era stuff that we've seen before. I wanna support but I don't always get it. They have managed to release several gorgeous boxsets of different eras of music but only diehards will spend 200 for those, (I have all but one so far).
Some people believe Sign O' The Times is the greatest album ever, I don't even think it's the best Prince album ever but that's the light it's seen in. I'm not ready to place it above Sgt. Peppers or Songs In The Key of Life which I don't know, those two are just so incredible in different ways, I don't really know how anyone can eclipse them. Stevie did not have as long a period of productivity, I can't even listen to much after Hotter than July. Prince was always worth listening to and even if an album sucked there was always something that I loved on it.