I read an interesting claim last week(which I forgot about till now) claiming Prince was one of the best guitarists ever but it was shouted down, although everyone agreed he was good. I can't say I've ever paid attention to his guitar playing really to form any sort of opinion myself.
He had some skills and often did the studio work for all the instruments on his studio recordings.
I'm still debating if I'd call him better than Hendrix. In the realm of professional musicians, he's right about average and good all around. But, he's not that fantastic. What does make him special was his skills as a multi-instrumentalist.
If I take that into account, he's better than Hendrix. However, my list is about guitarists and I don't feel that weighting him for being skilled on other instruments is a valid metric.
So, when my list of guitarists greater than Hendrix finally bores me, he'll absolutely be on a new list - a list of guitarists that are pretty damned good. I figure I'll call it "Featured Guitarist of the Week." I'll expose people to guitarists who didn't make the list and many will be guitarists that folks absolutely are unlikely to know about.
We shall see... I'm still debating Prince.
Curiously... When the clock ticked to mark the year 2000, I was playing Prince's song 1999 on stage. We were actually supposed to end it just prior and do Auld Lang Sign at the right second, but we were pretty fucking trashed. It was a great show and we played so many sets that night. We were the only band and we went on at 21:00 and the bar was allowed to serve until 03:00 for that night only - they usually closed at 01:00.
I was just directed to it today. I offered 'em a healthy rebuttal. Sorta... I only made it 20 seconds into their video.