Crystal POLL: Best Track from Prince's Crystal Ball "Previously Bootlegged" Box from 1998

I always loved 'Interactive'...wicked groove and blistering solo...

i like "Acknowledge Me"

Good love
But only cause I think crystal ball will get enough votes without my help

good love

The artwork is 10 out of 10 amazing

Crucial -- replaced on SOTT by Adore ... I prefer this, actually (Sacrilege!).

yeah I also like "Crucial" better than "Adore"

this is a strange collection, so all over the place. been meaning to re-listen to the Truth but my wife put the CD in the car... honestly my favorites here are probably the Morris Day bits, but not sure which one is better.

title track also incredible obviously

also always thought the intersection of Shock G and Prince was cool but also a missed opportunity. Prior to his Doug E. Fresh collabs I think this was the only time Prince and a bona fide legit hip hop star worked together. Shock was great at sampling Prince, including for 2Pac's "I Get Around" but also of course:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P53mWKRWaao

I thought there was some other Shock G productions around '93-'94 (maybe there was some quid pro quo thing going on between the two of them there) that sampled Prince but I'm blanking on what they were

Last Heart's good. wasn't there a bonus CD to at some point? maybe it was a fan-only thing.

the Truth was the bonus CD...?

only about 5 songs i would get rid of. odd, as i remembered it as being a disappointment at the time.

the Truth was the bonus CD...?

there's also an instrumental bonus disc that i don't think i've ever listened to lol

i might vote "strays of the world," a really gorgeous, strange gold experience-era song

well i guess it's more come related bc prince literally says "come" at the end

Is it possible there isn't a terrible song on this?

the cheapest copy on Discogs is $91.04

Cloreen Baconskin, one epic sick funk groove.

I don't even see this on discogs...?

https://www.discogs.com/The-Artist-Formerly-Known-As-Prince-Crystal-Ball/release/3223819

lol forgot "The Artist Formerly Known as Prince" would have a totally separate discography from "Prince" (which is also totally separate from "Prince and the Revolution")

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Crucial is better than i remember.

Cloreen Baconskin

How is it possible that nowadays an old official release cd from a star as big as Prince can be so expensive ??
I mean, "Sign O' the Times" and all his albums are like 7€... even the 3 discs "Emancipation" is around 35€ (released around the same time as "Crystal Ball")... and then "Crystall Ball" is at least 170€ !!

and as for the poll, I only know the Dream Factory/Cyrstal Ball era tracks but obviously, it's Crystal Ball !

It was released on his own label around the time most people didn't care about him anymore, so the pressing must've been fairly small... Most of the NPG releases (like Rave Un2 the Joy Fantastic and Rainbow Children) are pricey these days, it's just the Warner albums (which obviously had much larger pressings) that you can get for cheap. Emancipation is a special case, because it was his first post-Warner release, and he'd still had a big hit the previous year ("The Most Beautiful Girl"), so they must've pressed it a lot more than the albums that followed.

And Emancipation was marketed as the new Prince album, i.e. something that casual fans/non-fans might buy too, whereas Crystal Ball was a comp of previously unreleased tracks, which mostly sell only to devoted fans. So the pressing for the latter must've been considerably smaller.

Btw, you can still get used copy of Emancipation from Discogs.com for less than 10 euros, don't pay 35 € for it!

Thanks, that makes sense...
I have some bootlegs of the Crystal ball project but I was just wondering about the released CD silly price.
And I already have Emancipation !

This is either 'Crystal Ball' or 'Crucial'

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

LOL, awesome

damn !

lol, who voted for p control and acknowledge me.

kind of weird that this album is all either '85-'86 or '93-'95 (with a couple exceptions).

As noted upthread, the version on P Control on this is absolutely amazing.

And yes, there is a distinct lack of anything '88-92 on this. Was most of that era already released?

Maybe it's because both of those eras were marked by Prince amassing tons of material for megareleases that didn't happen (crystal ball, the dawn) generating a lot of important to him castoffs

well there were no more plans for triple lps after "crystal ball", but there was an unreleased album between "sign" and "lovesexy" and another between "lovesexy" and "batman". the former was released before "crystal ball", and most of the songs that would've been on the latter were reworked for "graffiti bridge". it's true that even with crystal ball out there's still way more '85-'86 stuff that hasn't seen the light of day- he was pretty possessed during those years. but the alternate (superior) versions of the "graffiti bridge" material would still be nice!