The "Los Angeles Times" called Prince "our first post-everything pop star, defying easy categories of race, genre and commercial appeal." Jon Pareles of "The New York Times" described him as "a master architect of funk, rock, R&B and pop", and highlighted his ability to defy labels. "Los Angeles Times" writer Randall Roberts called Prince "among the most versatile and restlessly experimental pop artists of our time," writing that his "early work connected disco and synthetic funk his fruitful mid-period merged rock, soul, R&B and synth-pop." Simon Reynolds called him a "pop polymath, flitting between , acid rock, deep soul, —often within the same song". AllMusic wrote that, "With each album he released, Prince showed remarkable stylistic growth and musical diversity, constantly experimenting with different sounds, textures, and genres [...] no other contemporary artist blended so many diverse styles into a cohesive whole." Jon Pareles has named Prince among the "pantheon" of artists in the album era, in which the album format was the dominant form of recorded music expression and consumption.