prince

he has an honest-to-god collaborator now? https://twitter.com/joshuaworld

ah so is he the one doing all the modern production touches? because i had a hard time imagining P sitting at a computer messing around with pitch envelopes etc at this stage in his career.

https://screen.yahoo.com/live/event/prince this is now

Yipes

so cheesy. geez.

he only likes rich people to watch him play live.

I think the people losing their shit over "Art Official Age" have sort of lost their shit. I mean, it's got some good stuff on it, but I'm not sure it's necessarily any better than "20Ten" or "MPLSound" or whatever. Though I'm afraid to go back and compare. I do want to give this one some time to settle in.

Definitely the British narrator/announcer thing is pretty annoying. I seem to recall he did that on the squiggle album, certainly The Gold Experience. Anyway, having an outside producer, albeit one married to his drummer (iirc), suits him. The ballads particularly. I like "Way Back Home" a lot.

the ballads are great, the pacing is way off, and the songs are still kind of like... evocative husks of former prince songs, just modernized

still it's pretty consistent for a prince album in 2014

"Way Back Home" is a highlight, more for its content than its music/production.

I never heard 20TEN, but it seems a step up from the MPLSound package. Prince sounds engaged at least.

Engaged to be engaged, more like.

What number wife is he on at this point?

You know, the sixth listen was the charm on art official age; this album required some squeezing but i've come around
imo: u know > breakfast can wait > affirmation III > this could be us > the gold standard > breakdown > time > funknroll > clouds

i don't like the prince part and the overproduction on way back home but affirmation iii does the same stuff without the noodly conversational bits from PRN

am i the only person who prefers the 3rd Eye Girl album to Art Official Age? it at least has its own sound that it digs its heels in for instead of being a bland, fussy approximation of various Prince song types.

i honestly haven't cracked it yet, will check back in.

the part of affirmation iii when telepathic british womanbot informs prince that "all of it... everything... is you" still cracks me up

not sure about PE having its own sound. i just hear a slightly empty composite of gold experience era-prince/lenny kravitz/classic rock sludge and the general limpness of the other protege projects hes had a hand in over the last decade. chaos and disorder is better for this kind of thing.

the co-producer on AOA def makes all the difference. and he is better than kirky j on emancipation too, though that might just be that prince is better suited to the edm pop era than he was the post-babyface R&B vibe prince seemed to be going for back in 1996

obviously 'hard rock Prince' is its own archetype, but i mean that the slightly off kilter production of Plectrum Electrum at least gives it a unique texture. i feel like you could put tracks from AOA next to tracks from 3121 or Rave Un2 the Joy Fantastic or any number of other later albums and they'd all blend into the same waxy Botox version of 'Prince trying to be the cool quirky Prince you used to love.'

I will hardrep for breakfast and u know
most of the rest of this is basically gold experience level, yes. i like it a lot more than chaos and disorder tho'.

the whim caught me to listen to the Batman OST this afternoon... I spent almost two decades neglecting this record as being the beginning of his decline but in fact it completely rules and if he dropped something on this level today we would all be shitting ourselves. Maybe it's just that I overplayed this when it was new. In any case, coming back to it this past year it's almost as good as lovesexy to me now and definitely better than the black album.

Graffiti Bridge is still a bridge too far though

Batman sdtk is awesome

xp you're missing out -- "Joy in Repitition" and "The Question of U" are absolutely first-rate ballads

^^^

I have those two, that's all I need from GB tho.

Batman is like a prince record made up of nothing but weird misbegotten super fun B-sides

+ Partyman

which is terrible

I am 44 and ready to embrace Partyman

Perhaps bc I have forgotten what irl partying is like

Batman soundtrack is all about "The Future", "Lemon Crush" and "Batdance"

uh grafitti bridge has round and round, thieves in the temple, still would stand all time, love machine, we can funk, the question of U, Joy in Repetition, tick tick bang
about half classics

I will also rep hard for vicki waiting, trust, lemon crush, the future... and somewhat less hard for electric chair and batdance I suppose.

I owned (still own somewhere?) a "batcan" copy.

parade was always the album that kinda went over my head, maybe i'm due to revisit

yeah, this feels warm immediately.

Parade is an incredible album

i bet you're a few years older than me dan; i missed listening to this until well past its sell by and it hit me cold when i first tried it and continues to be a bit of a struggle.

Yeah, the entire album is an indelible musical suite that really works as a sequence of songs IMO, with "Sometimes It Snows In April" being a personally devastating song (when my brother died, I spent several days camped in front of the record player repeating SISIA for hours and now can no longer listen to it or even really think about it without experiencing intense sorrow)

Graffiti Bridge has the unfair advantage over his other 90s albums that a lot of those songs were made in the '80s peak days. weird mixed bag but still a lot of fun.

Parade is an incredible album

― 💪😈⚠️ (DJP)

Yeah Parade rules really hard. The recordings I've heard from that tour are amazing too.

And the 12" mix of Mountains <3

Parade is like the only album I have listened to all year, that and Beyonce's new one. Every time I put on an album I'm like 'I really should try something new' but then I remember the horn break in 'Mountains' and I give in to PARADE.

plus that is my most dancingest song

also I have watched 'Under the Cherry Moon' 5x this year
it is the best

I've still never seen it!

Wow is a really good song. That's how far I am into these, not disappointed yet.

http://www.theroot.com/blogs/the_grapevine/2014/10/chris_rock_will_host_saturday_night_live_with_prince_as_the_musical_guest.html

Plectrum Electrum ranges from decent to super embarrassing ('why didn't anyone delete "FIXURLIFEUP" before it got to the mastering stage' is a question that may haunt me until I die) but ART OFFICIAL AGE is pretty damned enjoyable after I listened to it three times.

aoa funkier than a rafflesia

wrecka stow

i feel like you could put tracks from AOA next to tracks from 3121 or Rave Un2 the Joy Fantastic or any number of other later albums and they'd all blend into the same waxy Botox version of 'Prince trying to be the cool quirky Prince you used to love.'

― Raccoon Newsy Wewsies (some dude), Sunday, October 12, 2014 4:06 PM Bookmark

3121 is my favorite late-era Prince album and AOA is my favorite since, so this hardly looks like a negative comparison to me.