PRINCE album rundown: the 'shitty' years
Posted: Sun Apr 10, 2005 11:25 pm
I'm a big Prince fan, but I passed on MUSICOLOGY when it came out a year ago. I had my doubts about the hype, and despite glowing reviews, it didn't make a lasting impression, at least it seems that way when you look at the P&J poll: didn't even place in the top 40.
It's double platinum, but Prince boosted sales by tacking it on to ticket purchases from his last tour (not exactly a giveaway, he just boosted the price to include the CD). So if you want, there's tons of cheap copies floating around on the web.
I snagged one, still waiting, but I read some reviews and a number of them say it's the "best since Sign O The Times," often following that up with some shit about how Prince has lost it since then. So I got out some CD's, borrowed a few others, etc. So here's his extended 'down' period:
The first one in the can after SOTT is THE BLACK ALBUM. Once legendary, here's a brief summary: Prince records a party album, WB presses thousands of copies, but before they release it, Prince (who was allegedly popping a lot of Ecstasy at the time) has some sort of quasi-religious vision/dream/hallucination that scares the shit out of him. He doesn't like talking about but has alluded to it interviews (he says he saw "God," and "And when I talk about God, "I don't mean some dude in a cape and beard coming down to Earth. To me, he's in everything if you look at it that way.") He "suddenly realized that we can die at any moment, and we'd be judged by the last thing we left behind. I didn't want that angry, bitter thing to be the last thing." So, to WB's credit, nearly every copy was destroyed, and Prince recorded a new album. In the 1994, when Prince was squabbling with WB, he finally released a limited edition. I have it, and it sounds pretty good, no super-compressed. There's two lame rap parodies (and a third that's actually pretty cool called "Bob George"), and a sappy ballad "When 2 R In Love," but the rest is great, straight-up jams: lewd, of course, and great funk. Screw All-Music Guide, it's no masterpiece, but it's a really good Prince album. The limited edition goes for $20 new, pretty good for an OOP CD. No real artwork, just a black square for the cover, an all-black tray card, and a black CD with orange text. Just like Spinal Tap.
LOVESEXY was the one that replaced THE BLACK ALBUM. It re-uses only one track, "When 2 R In Love." I don't think they changed this, but it's indexed so it's one, long track so burn a copy with better indexing. Unless if you're some fundamentalist nut who thinks CD-R is a crime. "Alphabet Street" and "Glam Slam" are the two best tracks; the rest is pretty good, but not that great, it's a decent Prince album.
BATMAN was the first Prince I bought. Most of it was dashed off, but this is actually a solid soundtrack (even though only 6 minutes was used), but still, 'just' a soundtrack. "Electric Chair" is GREAT, I like "Partyman," and "Batdance" is kind of nostalgic - when I was a kid, every radio station played this to death. Not really a song, it's like a DJ mix of the whole album, and taken like that, it's pretty cool. "The Future" is pretty cool if barebones, and some moments like the bridge on "Vicki Waiting" and the whimpering on "Scandalous" (is that Kim Basinger?) are classic, but those songs as a whole aren't that great, neither is the rest.
GRAFFITI BRIDGE is the soundtrack to a box-office bomb. A double-Lp/one CD, half of it is Prince, the other half Prince's protegees, old and new. The Time tracks aren't bad, but I can't believe the glowing reviews this got. EW gave it an A+; it's not terrible, but it's okay at best. There's only three Prince tracks that I like: the single "Thieves In The Temple," "Still Would Stand All Time" - a great faux-gospel track that's even better on the awesome SMALL CLUB bootleg of a German, after-hours show in 1988, and "Joy In Repetition," which I heard was originally conceived in the SOTT sessions, maybe even earlier. Tevin Campbell also has a solid single, "Round and Round" which is basically a Prince track with Tevin (still in grade-school) singing lead. The rest is pretty flat stuff.
DIAMONDS AND PEARLS introduces the NPG. This gets cited as the last good Prince album in some of those MUSICOLOGY reviews, but that's bullshit for several reasons. The singles are good: "Cream" and "Money Don't Matter 2 Nite" are the best, the title track and "Gett Off" have something to recommend. "Thunder" is okay, "Daddy Pop" is pretty catchy, but the hip-hop moments suck, and "Jughead" BLOWS, I can't believe Christgau singled that out as a favorite. The rest is just okay. If you have the singles on the compilations, you can probably pass on this.
THE SYMBOL ALBUM is where the sound quality begins to dive. Sharper, harsher, more compressed. There's a definite change but it's gonna get a whole worse. For now, it's not too bad. Really weird how Kirstie Alley pops up, but those two or three bits are really brief, this is a really good Prince album. The opening cut, "My Name Is Prince" is even better on the CD-single, which is a new mix, but it's still great here. Make sure you get the uncensored version with the Parental Warning because there's a lot to censor, like "Sexy MF." You need this if you love Prince.
THE HITS has four 'new' tracks, and they're pretty good. One is actually a live version of "Nothing Compares 2 U," originally written in '85 for the Family, this post-dates Sinead's great cover. In an RS interview, Prince gushed over Sinead's version. Tons of promo CD's for these four tracks floating around, you can download off iTunes, too.
COME is pretty damn lewd. The title track is about eating out pussy. It's 11 minutes, plenty of time to explore details to a pornographic degree. Often dismissed as Prince's worst, it may very well be, but it's got two worthy tracks: "Letitgo," the only single and pretty solid, and "Loose!" which is actually a GREAT modern-slice of hard funk, sort of "industrial funk." BTW, this is a loud CD, pretty compressed...
...but nothing compared to THE GOLD EXPERIENCE. I couldn't stand listening to this for a long time because this is some of the worst-sounding shit ever. I don't mean the music, I mean the sound quality. Never mind the compression, which is really, really bad, there's a ton of treble. I burned a CD-R and took a shitload out of the upper frequencies, and I highly recommend doing something similar because this is an hour-long album, and if you don't, it will be headache inducing. Once you fix it, you'll hear a GREAT, underrated Prince album. In the post-SOTT era, for my money, this is his best one. He even left out a great track, "Days of Wild," which can be found in good sound (a live version was issued on CRYSTAL BALL). Now OOP for no good reason, it's easy to find, but a lot of assholes are trying to peddle it for $40. It can be easily found for $15, and if you're patient, $8-10 in most stores I've been to. Of course, if you want to fix the sound, you might as well borrow it and burn your 'remastered' copy.
CHAOS & DISORDER got shitty reviews from the mainstream press, worse than COME (which oddly enough got good reviews when it was released, even though most hate it now). Prince's 'intended 4 private use' bullshit disclaimer didn't help, but I think Jimmy Guterman's right, this is underrated, and many Prince fans have warmed to it. Not great, but a very good Prince album, it's also OOP, but can be found everywhere for $8 and below. Sound isn't as harsh as GOLD EXPERIENCE.
EMANCIPATION got good reviews and gets slagged a lot now. Yeah, way too much, it's three-CD's for crying out loud, but I still like it a lot. It's still a very good Prince album in my book even if it sounds like he's spread himself a bit thin because most of it is pretty solid, even if few tracks stand out as 'classics.' The covers are really dated except for the Stylistics cover (funny because it's easily the oldest song). A LOUD CD, pretty hard sounding. From here on out, it's compression city processed by Brian Gardner at BG Mastering. Many Prince fans would probably disagree, but I think it's totally worth getting, and considering how CHEAP it is, there's more reason to get it. Just check ebay - a sealed, NEW copy went for $3.01. Make sure you get the uncensored version, a lot of censored ones flooded the market via cut-outs (catalog numbers are also different, and printed on the actual disc, which helps with purchasing; forget what they are but you can find out).
CRYSTAL BALL/TRUTH used to be DIRT cheap, but it seems to be creeping up back to the $15-20 range. Still good for three CD's worth of music (actually four, but the three discs of 'bootleg' material is only 150 minutes or so). Disappointing musically, but there's at least one CD worth of primo bootleg tracks, and the final disc is actually a solid 'acoustic' album called THE TRUTH. Overrated, but still a good Prince album, plus how many acoustic albums does Prince put out? (Besides this, none.)
NEW POWER SOUL is almost creatively bankrupt, a holding pattern, like generic Prince. The untitled final track "Wasted Kisses" (you have to skip to track 49; each previous hidden track is silence) is actually a very good ballad, and "Come On" is a pretty good jam (a flop single, though). Some love "Mad Sex," but I don't. "One" was the other single and it charted higher on the r&b charts, but it's pretty generic stuff - if you love Boyz II Men, though, maybe you'll like it.
RAVE UN2 THE JOY FANTASTIC is the Clive Davis-Arista album, the one where he supposedly tried to do for Prince what he did for Santana. Same formula tons of guest stars. Prince has too much of an ego to let himself be marginalized as a sideman on his own album, but this has the same generic-pop feel as SUPERNATURAL, even though every track is clearly a Prince track, not 'guest artist plus Prince.' Half of it is pretty bland stuff, even if it's performed well, like the opening track. What's good: "Baby Knows" (with Sheryl Crow but her presence is barely felt, thank God), "Prettyman" (another hidden bonus track), and "The Greatest Romance Ever Sold." I also have a soft spot for "I Love U, But I Don't Trust U Anymore" (with minimal acoustic guitar contributions from Ani DiFranco) and "Wherever U Go, Whatever U Do," the former a good ballad, the latter a guilty pleasure because I think I've heard that melody ripped off from somewhere - actually, it's more like a generic hook that's been done to death, but I still like it....
RAINBOW CHILDREN was a complete flop. Too bad, because the band is actually REALLY good, except for Najee and his bland flute/sax playing - they're purely ornamental touches, though, so maybe he's shown the chops elsewhere. The super-low voice is grating after awhile, the lyrics are pretty bizarre, sometimes airheaded fluff, some bad political/religious/philosophical shit, and occasionally the light stuff degrades into smooth jazz, but "The Work Pt. I," "Mellow," "1+1+1 is 3," "She Loves Me 4 Me" (a tad sappy, but still a good Prince ballad), and "The Everlasting Now" are the ones you come back to.
It's double platinum, but Prince boosted sales by tacking it on to ticket purchases from his last tour (not exactly a giveaway, he just boosted the price to include the CD). So if you want, there's tons of cheap copies floating around on the web.
I snagged one, still waiting, but I read some reviews and a number of them say it's the "best since Sign O The Times," often following that up with some shit about how Prince has lost it since then. So I got out some CD's, borrowed a few others, etc. So here's his extended 'down' period:
The first one in the can after SOTT is THE BLACK ALBUM. Once legendary, here's a brief summary: Prince records a party album, WB presses thousands of copies, but before they release it, Prince (who was allegedly popping a lot of Ecstasy at the time) has some sort of quasi-religious vision/dream/hallucination that scares the shit out of him. He doesn't like talking about but has alluded to it interviews (he says he saw "God," and "And when I talk about God, "I don't mean some dude in a cape and beard coming down to Earth. To me, he's in everything if you look at it that way.") He "suddenly realized that we can die at any moment, and we'd be judged by the last thing we left behind. I didn't want that angry, bitter thing to be the last thing." So, to WB's credit, nearly every copy was destroyed, and Prince recorded a new album. In the 1994, when Prince was squabbling with WB, he finally released a limited edition. I have it, and it sounds pretty good, no super-compressed. There's two lame rap parodies (and a third that's actually pretty cool called "Bob George"), and a sappy ballad "When 2 R In Love," but the rest is great, straight-up jams: lewd, of course, and great funk. Screw All-Music Guide, it's no masterpiece, but it's a really good Prince album. The limited edition goes for $20 new, pretty good for an OOP CD. No real artwork, just a black square for the cover, an all-black tray card, and a black CD with orange text. Just like Spinal Tap.
LOVESEXY was the one that replaced THE BLACK ALBUM. It re-uses only one track, "When 2 R In Love." I don't think they changed this, but it's indexed so it's one, long track so burn a copy with better indexing. Unless if you're some fundamentalist nut who thinks CD-R is a crime. "Alphabet Street" and "Glam Slam" are the two best tracks; the rest is pretty good, but not that great, it's a decent Prince album.
BATMAN was the first Prince I bought. Most of it was dashed off, but this is actually a solid soundtrack (even though only 6 minutes was used), but still, 'just' a soundtrack. "Electric Chair" is GREAT, I like "Partyman," and "Batdance" is kind of nostalgic - when I was a kid, every radio station played this to death. Not really a song, it's like a DJ mix of the whole album, and taken like that, it's pretty cool. "The Future" is pretty cool if barebones, and some moments like the bridge on "Vicki Waiting" and the whimpering on "Scandalous" (is that Kim Basinger?) are classic, but those songs as a whole aren't that great, neither is the rest.
GRAFFITI BRIDGE is the soundtrack to a box-office bomb. A double-Lp/one CD, half of it is Prince, the other half Prince's protegees, old and new. The Time tracks aren't bad, but I can't believe the glowing reviews this got. EW gave it an A+; it's not terrible, but it's okay at best. There's only three Prince tracks that I like: the single "Thieves In The Temple," "Still Would Stand All Time" - a great faux-gospel track that's even better on the awesome SMALL CLUB bootleg of a German, after-hours show in 1988, and "Joy In Repetition," which I heard was originally conceived in the SOTT sessions, maybe even earlier. Tevin Campbell also has a solid single, "Round and Round" which is basically a Prince track with Tevin (still in grade-school) singing lead. The rest is pretty flat stuff.
DIAMONDS AND PEARLS introduces the NPG. This gets cited as the last good Prince album in some of those MUSICOLOGY reviews, but that's bullshit for several reasons. The singles are good: "Cream" and "Money Don't Matter 2 Nite" are the best, the title track and "Gett Off" have something to recommend. "Thunder" is okay, "Daddy Pop" is pretty catchy, but the hip-hop moments suck, and "Jughead" BLOWS, I can't believe Christgau singled that out as a favorite. The rest is just okay. If you have the singles on the compilations, you can probably pass on this.
THE SYMBOL ALBUM is where the sound quality begins to dive. Sharper, harsher, more compressed. There's a definite change but it's gonna get a whole worse. For now, it's not too bad. Really weird how Kirstie Alley pops up, but those two or three bits are really brief, this is a really good Prince album. The opening cut, "My Name Is Prince" is even better on the CD-single, which is a new mix, but it's still great here. Make sure you get the uncensored version with the Parental Warning because there's a lot to censor, like "Sexy MF." You need this if you love Prince.
THE HITS has four 'new' tracks, and they're pretty good. One is actually a live version of "Nothing Compares 2 U," originally written in '85 for the Family, this post-dates Sinead's great cover. In an RS interview, Prince gushed over Sinead's version. Tons of promo CD's for these four tracks floating around, you can download off iTunes, too.
COME is pretty damn lewd. The title track is about eating out pussy. It's 11 minutes, plenty of time to explore details to a pornographic degree. Often dismissed as Prince's worst, it may very well be, but it's got two worthy tracks: "Letitgo," the only single and pretty solid, and "Loose!" which is actually a GREAT modern-slice of hard funk, sort of "industrial funk." BTW, this is a loud CD, pretty compressed...
...but nothing compared to THE GOLD EXPERIENCE. I couldn't stand listening to this for a long time because this is some of the worst-sounding shit ever. I don't mean the music, I mean the sound quality. Never mind the compression, which is really, really bad, there's a ton of treble. I burned a CD-R and took a shitload out of the upper frequencies, and I highly recommend doing something similar because this is an hour-long album, and if you don't, it will be headache inducing. Once you fix it, you'll hear a GREAT, underrated Prince album. In the post-SOTT era, for my money, this is his best one. He even left out a great track, "Days of Wild," which can be found in good sound (a live version was issued on CRYSTAL BALL). Now OOP for no good reason, it's easy to find, but a lot of assholes are trying to peddle it for $40. It can be easily found for $15, and if you're patient, $8-10 in most stores I've been to. Of course, if you want to fix the sound, you might as well borrow it and burn your 'remastered' copy.
CHAOS & DISORDER got shitty reviews from the mainstream press, worse than COME (which oddly enough got good reviews when it was released, even though most hate it now). Prince's 'intended 4 private use' bullshit disclaimer didn't help, but I think Jimmy Guterman's right, this is underrated, and many Prince fans have warmed to it. Not great, but a very good Prince album, it's also OOP, but can be found everywhere for $8 and below. Sound isn't as harsh as GOLD EXPERIENCE.
EMANCIPATION got good reviews and gets slagged a lot now. Yeah, way too much, it's three-CD's for crying out loud, but I still like it a lot. It's still a very good Prince album in my book even if it sounds like he's spread himself a bit thin because most of it is pretty solid, even if few tracks stand out as 'classics.' The covers are really dated except for the Stylistics cover (funny because it's easily the oldest song). A LOUD CD, pretty hard sounding. From here on out, it's compression city processed by Brian Gardner at BG Mastering. Many Prince fans would probably disagree, but I think it's totally worth getting, and considering how CHEAP it is, there's more reason to get it. Just check ebay - a sealed, NEW copy went for $3.01. Make sure you get the uncensored version, a lot of censored ones flooded the market via cut-outs (catalog numbers are also different, and printed on the actual disc, which helps with purchasing; forget what they are but you can find out).
CRYSTAL BALL/TRUTH used to be DIRT cheap, but it seems to be creeping up back to the $15-20 range. Still good for three CD's worth of music (actually four, but the three discs of 'bootleg' material is only 150 minutes or so). Disappointing musically, but there's at least one CD worth of primo bootleg tracks, and the final disc is actually a solid 'acoustic' album called THE TRUTH. Overrated, but still a good Prince album, plus how many acoustic albums does Prince put out? (Besides this, none.)
NEW POWER SOUL is almost creatively bankrupt, a holding pattern, like generic Prince. The untitled final track "Wasted Kisses" (you have to skip to track 49; each previous hidden track is silence) is actually a very good ballad, and "Come On" is a pretty good jam (a flop single, though). Some love "Mad Sex," but I don't. "One" was the other single and it charted higher on the r&b charts, but it's pretty generic stuff - if you love Boyz II Men, though, maybe you'll like it.
RAVE UN2 THE JOY FANTASTIC is the Clive Davis-Arista album, the one where he supposedly tried to do for Prince what he did for Santana. Same formula tons of guest stars. Prince has too much of an ego to let himself be marginalized as a sideman on his own album, but this has the same generic-pop feel as SUPERNATURAL, even though every track is clearly a Prince track, not 'guest artist plus Prince.' Half of it is pretty bland stuff, even if it's performed well, like the opening track. What's good: "Baby Knows" (with Sheryl Crow but her presence is barely felt, thank God), "Prettyman" (another hidden bonus track), and "The Greatest Romance Ever Sold." I also have a soft spot for "I Love U, But I Don't Trust U Anymore" (with minimal acoustic guitar contributions from Ani DiFranco) and "Wherever U Go, Whatever U Do," the former a good ballad, the latter a guilty pleasure because I think I've heard that melody ripped off from somewhere - actually, it's more like a generic hook that's been done to death, but I still like it....
RAINBOW CHILDREN was a complete flop. Too bad, because the band is actually REALLY good, except for Najee and his bland flute/sax playing - they're purely ornamental touches, though, so maybe he's shown the chops elsewhere. The super-low voice is grating after awhile, the lyrics are pretty bizarre, sometimes airheaded fluff, some bad political/religious/philosophical shit, and occasionally the light stuff degrades into smooth jazz, but "The Work Pt. I," "Mellow," "1+1+1 is 3," "She Loves Me 4 Me" (a tad sappy, but still a good Prince ballad), and "The Everlasting Now" are the ones you come back to.