Prince..... the exact point where it all started to go horribly wrong.

My personal view is that he needs to work with an outside producer. He's a very great musician, and can be a great songwriter, but his recordings still have a horribly dated sound. Also, he's a poor judge of his own talents (as evidenced by every time he's tried to rap)....I suspect he's too far gone at this point.

you are really wrong with this. the quality of his recording sound has never been dated. its the songs that are weak.

I also picked up the One Night Alone thing, which I enjoyed quite a bit. So I guess I've only missed, what, 3 studio records? Some of the Rainbow Children music is really beautiful, but I was scared to pick up the album after hearing about how preachy and narrative-heavy it was, and the fact that he apparently uses the "Bob George" voice all over it. Still, the material sounded good on the live set.

Wasn't "Sexy MF" after Diamonds And Pearls. I'll fuckin' stand by "Gett Off" and "Cream." Maybe even "7." But once the glyph became his name...peeyyyuuuuh. Though in honor of Dan Perry I may actually try to listen to Emancipation again.

Thing is, 1980-1987 was SO FUCKING GOOD that I'd be eternally grateful even if he makes nothing but crap from now on.

I'm still waiting for all the people who say Emancipation would make 1 great CD to boil it down to those songs. I can find a few songs but would have a really hard time finding stuff that adds up to one disc let alone three.

However, I'm going to go with the predictable answer and say the axe truly fell when Prince became +()->. Aside from a couple of decent singles, I can't be bothered to go crazy in that territory of his discog at all.

Emancipation is a crap double album and a really great single length one.

i have it, I've listened to it, I can (maybe) come up with a good (not even great) EP.

What would the great single length album y'all put together from Emancupation be?

its still patchy. prince has always had bad songs. 'ronnie, talk to russia' anyone?

and yes, prince has always had some bad songs. nobody been disputing that - only question is whether the good still outweighs the bad/mediocre

Sheila E. is planning a benefit concert in Los Angeles featuring the
alumni of Prince's many backing bands. Actress Carmen Electra,
discovered and named by Prince in 1991, will host. "It's going to be all the Prince band members from all the bands, together, for one night only," says Sheila, who goes back twenty years with Prince. "It's never been done before." All proceeds from the concert -- to be held at either the Los Angeles Forum or the Universal Amphitheater on December 13th or 15th ("we have the time on hold right now," Sheila says) -- will go towards the creation of the Compassion Care Center in Los Angeles, a safe haven for
abused or abandoned children that provides education, counseling and
mentoring. The members of the Revolution who've already signed on
include guitarist Wendy Melvoin, keyboardist Lisa Coleman, keyboardist Matt Fink and drummer Bobby Z. "It's fabulous because they haven't played together as a band in twenty years," Sheila says. Onboard from the Family ("the band that Prince had that never really toured") are saxophonist Eric Leeds, singer Susannah Melvoin (Wendy's twin), percussionist Jerome Benton and singer/keyboardist Paul Peterson. The one member who has not yet been invited is Prince himself. "There's no pressure on him, but we'd like for him to come," Shiela says. "He's why we're doing this, because he started
all of it." Prince first recruited Sheila to sing on "Erotic City,"
the flip side to his Number One 1984 single "Let's Go Crazy." He also
helped her land a solo deal with Warner Bros. and penned the title track to her debut album, Glamorous Life, a Top Ten single. After two more solo albums, (Sheila E. in Romance 1600 and Sheila E.) she rejoined Prince's band for 1987's Sign O' the Times tour. The building of the Compassion Care Center is just one of many projects of Sheila and business partner Lnn Mabry's Lil' Angel Bunny Foundation (LABF). Sheila herself was sexually abused by a babysitter, as was Mabry by a family friend. "We're
going to use music as a therapy for the children," Sheila explains.
Sheila also has her own line of drum kits for children, the Sheila E.
Player's Series, and she has donated instruments to foster homes. "A
lot the kids have been abused so severely they have not been able to
speak,"she says, "and since they've had the drums, they're talking." Sheila E.is touring as a member of Ringo Starr's All Starr Band through September 7th.
KAREN BLISS (July 24, 2003)

Honestly, I'd have to listen to it again. And uh, the prospect of that doesn't really excite me at the moment...

this of course makes that scenario unlikely http://www.denisematthews.com/homepage2.htm

the original Crystal Ball is better than the released verion, Emancipationis boring etc etc.

I'm with maria b. upthread, after Graffiti Bridge nothing really worthwhile. Prince live will still be incredible and he could still produce albums that are stunning, but I would need serious convincing that his 90s albums are of that much worth. Even Diamonds & Pearls which is a more solid album can't stand up to the older stuff. Gold was errible as was C&D.

arrr, must stop before start ranting

then the album went number one
the same day 'on both sides of the atlantic'.
the public eh ?

course the career turnaround is scheduled 2 kick in at
10.30 p.m. on sunday the 27th of june
at the glastonbury main stage.

i'm already excited !

_Emancipation_ songs that people seem to sleep on that I really, really love:

"Somebody's Somebody"
"I Can't Make You Love Me"
"Mr. Happy"
"Holy River"
"Friend, Lover, Sister, Mother/Wife"
"Slave"
"Human Body"
"Sleep Around"
"Da Da Da"

Is it really? Wow! What did that freak say? I never heard Rainbow Children.

no? then he ain't no witness.

Prince's decline began when hip hoppers began to sample in the late 1980s. Before then Prince had a monopoly on hard pop-funk with avant-garde textures, but hip hop made his big advantage available to all sorts of young kids with ears. This has enriched our collective culture but made Prince's job harder.

That is *so* OTM, Mr Miccio.

No recollection of anti-semitism, but Rainbow Children is deeply weird -- thus, pretty interesting.

-- Haikunym

No recollection of anti-semitism, but Rainbow Children is deeply weird -- thus, pretty interesting.

-- Naive Teen Idol

Hmm.. I wonder if Haikunym considers Christian beliefs antisemitic.

"Like a thief in the night
My Lord come and strike
Leave nothing but ashes 2 the left, dust 2 the right
Holocaust aside, many lived and died
But when all truth is told
Would u rather b dead or b sold?
Sold 2 the one who can now mate the displaced bloodline
with the white jailbait"

It's funny you should say that Tracer, because Around The World In A Day was actually billed as Prince's Sergeant Pepper in some quarters. I can't remember if Prince was one of those quarters.

not just chaki's post
but the concept of the thing:
rainbow children = good,

and the "banished ones"
who don't dig "the New Translation"
are the enemy

when he mentions them
background voices say "love, like
a rose in bloom" (wait...)

then: "family name"
runs down lists of surnames some
people got to keep:

"Rosenbloom" (get it?)
"Pearlman" and "Goldstruck" also;
now you catch my drift?

since that's all he says
implication clearly is:
"Holocaust? Big whoop!"

"Digital Garden"
made by the "Banished Ones" is
(sigh) the media

again with that shit?
Jew-run Media Satan =
Prince's view these days

sorry these haikus
are getting tedious but
know what I mean now?

i think he just ran out of gas, in the way that just about every pop/rock artist in history has eventually run out of gas. he had his freakishly fantastic seven-year run from dirty mind to sign o the times, with nearly an album every year, including two doubles. then he woke up one day and there were no songs left.

i've liked bits of almost every album since, from "diamonds and pearls" to the underrated "chaos and disorder" and beyond, but the difference between them and what came before is the difference between a master with a direct line to god and an above-average craftsman struggling to come up with a tune, with ever-diminishing returns.

i don't think he's got an abbey road left in him, but i'd love to hear him come up with a tattoo you before he goes.

Have to disagree with this. Up until recently, he's always had the same '80s Minnesota synth-funk sound and it really got old. It's not just hip-hop that overtook Prince; funk moved on too but he never really changed. HIm not working with anyone else other than subservient band members and old funk legends who are probably just grateful he's giving them a gig doesn't help. He should just hook up with the Neptunes, since they updated his sound for him. But his ego would never allow it.

Now at least he's moved on, albeit to a jazz fusion tip, which could be good and is sometimes great (like the awesome live version of Dorothy Parker on One Nite Alone) but more often perilously close to Lite FM territory (like the two recent download-only albums and tracks like Muse 2 the Pharoah). He just doesn't seem to have good taste in jazz.

Still there is more good stuff in the 90s than people realize. There are a lot of great tracks on Symbol, almost all of it really... Gold Experience is Purple Rain pt. 2... Bits of Rainbow Bridge (Family Name, Everlasting Now, etc) are seriously funky... and for me the Truth is up there with his very best; I'd probably put it in his top 5 albums (I love about 2/3 of Crystal Ball... some of his hardest funk is on there). I would like to buy the Emancipation revisionism but can't quite; it's one of those albums that only Prince can churn out where all the tracks sound as if they should be good but are actually mediocre, and there are so many of them that you can't figure out which ones actually are good, if any. (I can come up with about 6). See also Graffiti Bridge.

The only irredeemable dreck, really, is Rave Un2 the Joy Fantastic.

But I still wouldn't write him off. Even tossed-off stuff like One Nite Alone (the studio album) throws up a killer track like Avalanche.

this thread is convincing me that i should really check out his more recent stuff.

I remember shelling out $35 several years ago for a rare one-track CD form his site called "The War." 35 minutes of spoken word on the coming apocolypse and Prince's fears of the government putting a computer chip in his neck. That was the last somewhat interesting trip from O+> for me.

that was just prince being weird. the idea was to force people to listen to the album all the way through, instead of just listening to "anna stesia" or "alphabet st." the effect, intended or not, was to make it just a little bit harder for radio stations to play tracks from it.

Check out Sacrifice Of Victor, not the song, but the video, if you can. It's from the same period. An aftershow.

Maybe the Diamonds and Pearls/O+>/Gold era wasn't THAT bad... in terms of live shows anyway.

Okay, I'm remembering "Endorphinmachine" live on some cheesy VH1 fashion awards show several years ago... brightened my day.

and... yeah. 1+1+1=yawn.

and my evidence
don't need yr ironic quotes.
call 'em like I see.

my analysis
is just what it is, no more.
but that album reex.

I can never understand why Lovesexy *always* gets panned. Must be the cover that just grosses people out to the point where the music inside is tainted. Thing is : hasn't anyone listened to the arrangements on that sucker? A total Sly-meets-Ellington mish mash of funk and groovy horn charts that's heaven itself to listen to on 'phones. And it's Prince's most concrete statement on the unity of God and Flesh. I also think it's his most psychedelic record.

(Having said that, the actual song "Lovesexy" does get on my nerves sometimes.)

He didn't so much lose it as occasionally misplaces it.

I think more people would enjoy "Lovesexy" if SOMEONE hadn't insisted on making this record all ONE FUCKING TRACK. Otherwise, though, yeah aside from "Alphabet St." and a few others, I still stand by my "eh".

*back in the 80s.
also complained that prince used
'flying-monkey' chant

i love these lyrics, too.

"In every man's life there will be a hang-up
A whirlwind designed 2 slow U down
It cuts like a knife and tries 2 get in U
This Spooky Electric sound
Give up if U want 2 and all is lost
Spooky Electric will be your boss"

Call People magazine, Rolling Stone
Call your next of kin, cuz your ass is gone
He's got a 57 mag with the price tag still on the side
Cuzzin' when Spooky say dead, U better say died
Or U can fly high right by Spooky and all that he crawls 4
Spooky and all that he crawls 4

Don't kiss the beast
We need love & honesty, peace & harmony
Positivity
Love & honesty, peace & harmony
I said, hold on 2 your soul, U got a long way 2 go

sho' nuff, sho' nuff, sho' nuff

Don't kiss the beast
Be superior at least

Hold on 2 your soul, y'all, court, sing
Hold on 2 your soul, we got a long way 2 go
Hold on 2 your soul

Just downloaded the 8 CDs worth of "The Work" volumes 1 & 2 which cover demos and outtakes from roughly 1978-1988. Now while there's an absolutely mind-blowing amount of great great stuff in that span that either Prince or WB put on the shelf ("Possession" vocal version, "Rebirth of the Flesh," "Electric Intercourse," "A Place in Heaven," "We Can Work It Out," and the stuff that turned up on Crystal Ball), there is also, again, another ton-barrel of not-so-hot stuff. The difference in the two periods is that now, all this stuff would trickle out of NPGMC at prime rate.

Lovesexy marks not the first time he sucked (I don't like about 1/3 of it but that's not super-different from, say, Controversy) but the first time he made an album you had to be on the bus to "get"--the first album that was readable only to his hard core of fans, his first all-out cult album. Dirty Mind was a cult-building album, which is much different--Lovesexy represented the beginning of his preaching to the choir, and its insularity turned a lot of people off, as did the one-track structure (or do I repeat myself?).

Actually, one could make an argument that _ATWIAD_ and _Lovesexy_ are seperate facets of the same album.

This is an interesting take, because this is actually the album where I fully got on the bus, if you will -- I had heard the breakthrough 1999 singles, bought Purple Rain and Around the World in a Day but didn't buy Parade and Sign O the Times then, I was content with the singles. But whether it was the flush of getting my first CD player or whatever, I heard "Alphabet St.," loved it, got the album and thought, "Hey, great stuff!" Pretty constant listening for the last weeks of high school and the intervening summer before UCLA.

prince looks in mirror
and for the first time is scared;
so he scares us back

Dan's otm re: Around the World, but circumstances are u+k here--ATWIAD came after the biggest blockbuster of the guy's career, he could have done ANYTHING after that and it would've sold 3 mil. Lovesexy came out on much shakier ground: Sign 'O' the Times may have sold 3 or 4 mil (I think it was around there) but he had undercut its should've-been blockbuster status considerably (not releasing "Housequake" or "Adore" as singles didn't help; "If I Was Your Girlfriend" was a U.S. flop; the concert movie was given a very half-assed releae; he DIDN'T TOUR); and his star was on the wane in a lot of ways (esp. in the black community) with hip-hop ascendant. So putting out a deeply spiritual album written largely in coded language with goofy signifiers like "Lovesexy is the belle of the ball" and "Positivity--have u had yr plus sign today?" (UGH! UGH! UGH! MAKE THE CUTESY LYRICS STOP!) and all-one-CD-track programming deep-sixed him in a way that wouldn't have been the case three years previous.

i don't get the ATWIAD comparisons to Lovesexy at all.

Matos - Prince has always had a penchant for flat out cutesy/corny/ weird lyrics. The stuff on Lovesexy was nothing new. I mean:

"animals strike curious poses/
they feel the heat/
the heat between me and U"

WTF? Cats + dogs doing calisthenics due to human horniness?

I had one.

About the culty thing (the cunty thing I leave to Chaki's fevered imagination) -- to be honest, M., I'm not sure that was consciously or even unconsciously the case. Around that time I was getting into my second wind of really buying music thanks to getting my first CD player, and was picking up a lot of stuff fairly randomly, but a large part of it was to do with The Stuff I Heard on the Radio, not necessarily anything obscuro or obsessive -- I only really got into alt.music as such after I went to UCLA. I don't recall reading into the cryptic lyrics as much as you were (big surprise, me ignoring lyrics!) or at least was perhaps bemused but was more appreciating the music as such (again, big surprise). So I dunno. I haven't listened to the album in god knows how many years.

Actually, Chaki's comment now makes me think of the bassline of the song. He's onto something!

As far as your cult-appreciation and its intersection w/your Prince fandom, I may have gone too far theory-wise but I do think it's a decent larger point.

i know the people love the revolution but they just werent as flexible as this other band. (which is why the revolution worked better on albums probably)

i'm going to have to listen to lovesexy tonight. i've never heard it in the way m matos describes above...that's way interesting. it seems like the general analysis is that the album is just too self-indulgent and maybe he's just gotten progressively more self-indulgent and insular over the years. his world is so far removed from what the public considers every day reality?

truly!!

and most of dirty mind for that matter...head

i'm ashamedly ignorant of anything before then.

Chaki I'm well aware of how non-live the movie is, but I've heard bootlegs too and by itself "Beautiful Night" from the album, whatever its overdubs, make a convincing case. You know the First Avenue April '87 boot, right, the rehearsal one? Wow. And that's just a rehearsal.

chaki -

email me. I have something you will LOVE(sexy). Trust me.

Wow. And that's just a rehearsal.

i would love to see this! is it readily available?

No, man! I have a Lovesexy Tour rehearsal CD that I know Chaki will dig, is all.

I don't know that America was unready for the sincerity as much as the muddledness of the message--and that most of Lovesexy isn't all that hooky compared to 1999 or Purple Rain or SOTT. I like it fine but it's one of his good-not-great albums for me, and the intended depth of its import isn't measured up to by the music.

You scamp.

U Scamp!

Shocka locka boom!

Sign 'O' the Times may have sold 3 or 4 mil (I think it was around there)

worldwide, perhaps, but it sold nowhere close to that in the u.s. it's a single-platinum album in the u.s., which requires shipments of only half a million copies, since the riaa counts each sale of a double album as two units sold. so that means between a half mil and a mil copies were shipped in the u.s., and that generally means a somewhat smaller number of copies were actually sold. for whatever that's worth, if anything. it's still a stone-cold classic.

I'd never noticed how feh the lyrics of "Positivity" were until this thread because the music doesn't allow the emotional text to be interpreted that easily. It's too weird a song, and the interplay of the voices, some of whom might not even be Prince, smolder and sigh too much. There's nothing banal about what he surrounds the lyrics with, just as with "Sigh o the Times"

I think one reason Lovesexy is so much a part of this thread is that it was followed (officially at any rate) by Batman and Graffitti Bridge, records on which Prince starts straightening the kink from his funk, a kink that had been noticeable since 1999. I see these records as looking for another niche, because he sensed that hip hoppers could take that particular type of kink further than he could (and they might even use his kink to do so, although it is interesting how little Prince was sampled). This could explain the antipathy towards rap on the Black Album. I think by The Gold Experience, or perhaps even "Gett Off" and "Jughead" he may have made his peace there.

The 90s weren't just when Prince started making uneven records on a regular basis (and how!); he'd turned away from something he was moving toward on Lovesexy.

I will say, Lovesexy threw me, and I climbed back on board via black radio in Minneapolis, which was far more likely to play his early '90s stuff than replay his '80s hits. "The Most Beautiful Girl in the World" probably got more play on KMOJ in the past decade than "Little Red Corvette." Then again, Prince also gives money (on the DL) to KMOJ. Whether Prince gets much play now, I don't know, 'cause KMOJ got its management taken over and has been sucking in various ways since December.

"He was precocious and brilliant, but lacked focus in his apprehension of new influences," Hahn says, relating the onset of Prince's creative wane, which the author pegs as beginning with 1987's heavily bootlegged Black Album. "After Prince decided to stop learning, the lack of continued stimulus, coupled with the absence of strong personalities like Wendy and Lisa from his band, quickly became apparent in his work." Possessed pinpoints other factors in describing the freefall of Prince's reputation and creativity: an inability to expose himself to new ways of seeing the world, an obsession with owning his master recordings (contrary to record industry practice), and the pursuit of his original black audience through the ill-fitting incorporation of wack rappers like Tony M. into his post-Revolution band, the New Power Generation. "We were his first black band, and our thing was to help him get his black audience back, because he had lost that," admits ex-N.P.G. singer Rosie Gaines.

I'm almost tempted to revise my Batman suggestion to agree with this as Black ALbum never did all that much for me, but Lovesexy's strengths argue that it has to be later point. I'm still thinking about why a lot of 90s Prince leaves me underwhelmed and what it is I like/love about certain songs. I'll postmore when I've figgered tat out.

oh, link to article http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0331/lewis.php(which also reviews Greg Tate's new book on Hendrix)

Very great. I should listen to it again, been a while.

If we look at our Prince history, we note that in 1988, Prince was to release "The Black Album," a funky follow-up to "Sign O' The Times." Then, he ended up doing Ecstasy with Ingrid Chavez, freaked out, saw God, and decided that the album was the wrong move. Check Per Nelson's excellent "Dance Music Sex Romance" for more information.

Then he puts out "Lovesexy." It's a brilliant record, and if you buy the CD you get the entire album as one track. You have to take the album as a whole. It works brilliantly for those who listen... it's the last great Prince album.

For a guy who always looks forward, his next move is perplexing. He decided to do a Purple Rain sequel. Most of the songs on the soundtrack are OLD SONGS re-recorded ("Can't Stop This Feeling I Got" and "We Can Funk" were originally recorded with the Revolution, and "Tick Tick Bang" dates from the 1999-era). Since the album features too many guests (Tevin Campbell, The Time, among others), the record doesn't work on it's own. It's too bad, because the movie SUCKS. Unlike "Parade," which is my favorite Prince album of all time (at least it is this month), you can't ignore the film and listen to a kick-ass album.

At this point, Prince begins to try way too hard to be both on the charts and somewhat relevant. "Diamonds and Pearls" may have sported some great songs, but listening to tracks like "Jughead" 10 years later, you realize that he was competing with MC Hammer. The O)+> album again features some great songs, but there's just too much bad rap and it's a bad "concept album."

From here on out, there are moments of brilliance. I buy every Prince album for those moments, but he's consistantly failed me with each release. His recent experiments with "jazz" (actually lightweight instrumental jams) are promising. It shows that he's more interested in music than sales or hits. But it's all pretty boring.

Looking back, the Revolution (or more specifically, Wendy and Lisa) had a huge influence on him. After they left, he continued to produce some brilliant music, but quickly ran out of ideas or went for the cheap hit. I just want him to release some Revolution tracks from the Vault, without modern overdubs. Then i'll be happy.

As for the acoustic disc, Truth, it just seems sorta gimmicky to me. Like he just wanted to prove that he *could* do this jazzy folk thing if he wanted to (he's always been up front with his infatuation with Joni Mitchell). And the aforementioned trebliness of the mix also doesn't sit well in my ears - it sounds too clear and crystalline, doesn't have any warmth really. I could be wrong, I haven't listened to it in years and really only heard it a few times, but it really didn't appeal to me.

My moment of when Prince lost (even if made good stuff afterwards - Gold Experience) was with Diamond and Pearls when he deliberately wrecked his songs to make them more commercial. Also he stopped having extended singles/bsides which really need to be rereleased (but will never happen) as it is now forgotten history.

-- Naive Teen Idol"

I did forget Batman. I can defend Batman. It's simply a soundtrack, an interesting side project almost. There are some great songs on there ("Vicki Waiting," "Electric Chair," "The Future," etc) and some clunkers ("Batdance," "Trust"). Still, it's not really a Prince album, don't you think? It's simply a soundtrack... the fact that he put so much thought into it shouldn't matter. He did a good job identifying with Bruce Wayne's character, not to mention the Joker. It's a no-brainer... he's always had the duality thing going, being a Gemini. God/Sex, Camille/Spooky Electric, Male/Female, Black Album/Lovesexy, etc.

But my overall point, that he blew it with Grafitti Bridge, still remains. ;)

I've retroactively decided he blew it with 'The Most Beautiful Girl' because a. he initially managed to obscure how horribly irritating it actually was with a good chorus b. I was 12 in '94 and didn't know no better and c. it's dated like a carton of milk released in the same week.

My main problem is the dated production on Batman, it's by far the most trend sounding production which actually might be considered the turning point as he wasn't ignoring trends. Also he left off lots of good songs of Batman (the bsides Sex, 200 Balloons, and Feel U Up as well as outtakes Dance With The Devil, & Rave Un 2 The Joy Fantastic).

Personally, I think the love symbol album was the beginning of the end. Despite a few good tracks, it just doesn't hold up like his earlier material does. And after that the downhill turn was even steeper.

Oddly my fiancee, who is a waaaaay bigger Prince fan than I am, said she thinks "Around the World in a Day" was the turning point, but too much great stuff followed for me to agree.

AND... I got Crystal Ball today!!

Rock on, Sean! That's one of those albums I'm dying to hear but not actually spend money on.

"she thinks "Around the World in a Day" was the turning point"

Jesus, Sign O'The Times came after that and it's his crowning glory. I'm not detecting much love for Parade around here either which is a tad disconcerting.

Not as good as "Purple Rain" nor "Sign "O" The Times", but still really, really, really great.

If only for the second side Starting with the champagne funk of Mountains then the over the top cabaret of Do U Lie then jumping into the contrasting Kiss which segues into Anotherloverholenyohead before ending with Sometimes It Snows in April.

I much prefer Crystal Ball to Emancipation.

Also, weren't snatches of every song except "Lemon Crush" and "Batdance" used in the movie? I distinctly remember "The Future" and "Electric Chair" in there somewhere.

The point where I started going "uh-oh" was Diamonds And Pearls . It was obvious he was scared of losing his commercial appeal at this point and it shows in the music. Once he put the wack rapper/dancer guys in as part of the NPG, everything just seemed to go wobbly.

I still love Come and Chaos & Disorder . I think they're cool glimpses into how dark his mind was at the time -- "Solo", "Papa", etc.

I don't think I've ever heard "The Gold Experience," "Come," "Chaos & Disorder," "New Power Soul," "The Rainbow Children," or "N.E.W.S." in full, although I've heard bits of them all except the last. Liked what I heard of Come, TGE and TRC, pretty much hated all the rest, ISTR.

1. Purple Rain
2. Sign "O" The Times
3. Parade
4. Grafitti Bridge
5. 1999
6. Around The World In a Day
7. Lovesexy
8. Controversy
9. Dirty Mind
10.The Black Album
11.Diamonds And Pearls
12.Prince
13.Emancipation
14.Come
15.(Symbol)
16.Batman

Yes, even in spite of all those guest acts (some of whose contributions aren't too bad IMO), "Grafitti Bridge" is up there among my fave Prince moments.

Is this normal?

So, about For You...

1)Purple Rain
2)Sign O' The Times
3)The Hits 2
4)Dirty Mind
5)Controversy
6)Emanicipation
7)Parade
8)1999
9)Around The World In A Day

I'd have select Camille as my favourite album if we can include unreleased albums.

I'm still pissed this thread hasn't gone anywhere: /ILX/ThreadSelectedControllerServlet?thread.php?msgid=4008947.

No Camille and Dreamfactory are fairly different. I can't remember what dreamfactory track listing is but camille is

1) Rebirth of The Flesh (unreleased - but easy to find good copies of)
2) Housequake
3) Strange Relationship
4) Feel U Up (long stroke version released on Partyman 12 inch)
5) Shockadelica (long Stroke version released on If I Was Your Girlfriend 12 inch)
6) Good Love (not the crystal ball version - Prince played around with it - the version released on Bright Lights Big City soundtrack - good god part 2)
7) If I was Your girlfriend
8) Rockhard in a Funky Place

There is overlap, but I find it easier to view SOTT as a badly selected best of (rough guide) to the Prince business year of 86-87.

I would say somewhere between the formation of New Power Generation and changing his name to a symbol. But, again, it did happen gradually.

Uh, isn't that on Grafitti Bridge, in the intro to "Joy In Repetition," which is the best song on the whole record? And I don't think the quote is right anyway--I always thought it was "My name is Andre Crabtree III, I got more HOES than a golf course."

I'm not sure I "disagree," per se, in the sense that one of the great things about Prince's music has always been its commercial appeal. There's no denying how powerful his music is to an incredibly broad range of people -- music nuts like us and people in clubs alike.

But on a musical and technical level (from a compositional standpoint, that is), Lovesexy is an astonishing fucking achievement -- and were the times to have merely passed him by as he made 15 more records of its quality, I don't think we'd be having this discussion.

Rather, the slide seems more a matter of self doubt creeping into his work. I wrote about this in my "Welcome 2 The Funk Bible" piece in Stylus a few years ago on the work he did in 1987-88. The thing is, the same self doubt that drove him to record the rapper-baiting "Dead On It" from The Black Album and fire his band also drove him to go nuts with the Camille character and do insanely schizophrenic records like Sign o' The Times.

In short, I don't think you can pinpoint it, but the seeds were probably sown around that time.

If you define "horribly wrong" in any way that has some relation to the dictionary, then the answer is 'never,' cos he's still putting out good music. He just ebbs and flows like any other artist does over the course of 25 years. The whole decline and fall narrative is a short-sighted cliche perpuated by people who haven't been listening since the late 80s in the first place.

Um, I cannot seem to find that recent favorable thread where folks talked about the special Prince shows in the UK and in Los Angeles, and Prince on that Latin tv award show so:

Prince charming at the Roosevelt
For fervid fans, it was a fantasy come true: an intimate night with the pop star (for an eye-popping price).
By Ann Powers, L.A. Times Staff Writer
June 25, 2007

Photo Gallery
Prince: Look back in purpleTHERE are shows, and then there's the pop fantasy realized. Having Prince practically sit in your lap as he takes a guitar solo midway through his debut at the Roosevelt Hotel? As the credit-card commercials say: Priceless.

Eyebrows have been raised over the exorbitant ticket prices for the artist's seven nights of shows, billed as "3121 Live," at the Hollywood hot spot — $3,121.00 for dinner and tickets for two; move the decimal point one space to the left and you've got a standing-room spot — but once the funk-rock maestro hit the stage Saturday, all questions of money melted away.

The 200 beautiful people perched on couches or crowded into the corners of the lush Blossom Room had purchased the right to forget that Prince was there to do his job. Arena shows are often so rote; the chance to see one of the great arena-level musicians playing in an intimate (and, therefore, casual) setting was as rare as getting a soft seat at Staples Center, and it needed to feel that way.

Prince knows this. Always one of the hardest-working — if most unpredictable — men in show business, he's recently figured out a way to reinvigorate the live experience for himself and his audience.

His trick has been to transform often denigrated gigs — the Vegas run, the hotel engagement — into rare opportunities. He squashed the idea that appearing at a casino is for has-beens with his recent tour de force at the Rio; now, he's reclaiming a space once reserved for wedding bands and also-rans and making it a private domain where royals play.

On Saturday, he began his set sniffing a flower and ended by triumphantly throwing down the microphone. In between, he performed a few hits ("Kiss," a hard rock version of "U Got the Look") but mostly concentrated on getting his powerhouse band in the pocket on material that stayed funky even when it simmered down to a slow jam.

Horns come marching in

The show started late, which is Prince's way. Absent the main attraction, a horn section anchored by funk founder Maceo Parker marched in playing "When the Saints Go Marching In." The quartet wound through the room, which had been equipped with leather couches and coffee tables to hold $400 bottles of Patrón tequila, and the mood suddenly turned from Hollywood fabulous to Crescent City warm and rowdy.

After the horns joined the rest of the band, which included the hard-hitting drummer Cora Dunham and the noted Brazilian keyboardist Renato Neto, Prince finally strode out.

Within moments, he was in the audience. This was a constant: Everyone not anchored to the stage by an instrument got out and pressed the fan flesh. The festive mood broke down audience expectations and kept the excitement high, even when Prince focused on newer or more obscure material.

Only one awkward moment emerged during Prince's forays into the crowd. He approached the daunting bunch on what could have been dubbed the "hip-hop power couch" — it included Diddy, Death Row Records founder Suge Knight, Erykah Badu and Nas, among others — and tried to hand the microphone to Nas.

The rapper declined to ad-lib, however, simply muttering, "I love Prince," and handing back the hot potato. Prince then tried to work his charm on Badu; she gave up a half-hearted rhyme about sisterhood, but it fizzled out. About half of those seated on the couch then abruptly departed (although Nas and Badu both stayed).

Other loose-limbed celebrities made up for that aloofness. Laker-turned-actor Rick Fox danced goofily with his sister; actress Penélope Cruz got one of those front-row hugs. And singer Nikka Costa even joined Prince onstage, belting out a rather metallic rendition of "Purple Rain."

The stars could let loose because of the house-party atmosphere Prince established by leading his band into the place where grooves and group interaction matter more than delivering sing-along choruses.

Gems among friends

Digging into his song bag and pulling out such gems as the carnal "Shhh" and the proto-electro "Girls and Boys," he was like a host running down to his wine cellar and pulling out that special bottle for good friends.

The house party is, after all, the model for Prince's current live act. After staging several legendary fetes at the West Hollywood manse he once rented, Prince clearly decided that their mood could be translated to more a formal setting.

It's as if this former hit machine, tired of playing the commercial game, has redirected his focus on the informal process of making music with friends — and then decided to let his fans (those with enough green, that is) in on the fun.

One flaw not unlike what might happen at a real house party marred the evening: The sound needed work. Prince's spoken asides were barely decipherable through an echo-prone microphone, and his singing also sometimes got lost. Such kinks can be worked out, though, and could be expected in a room that's also been used for bar mitzvahs.

The sound got better during the jazzy jam session that the most elite members of Saturday's audience witnessed after Prince's initial 90-minute set.

Moving into the hotel's cordoned-off lobby, audience members perched wearily on different couches as the band unwound with a tasty selection of jazz standards. Solos impressed, but the absence of the night's leader dulled the mood at first.

Prince finally showed up at nearly 4 a.m., teasing the crowd with a fiery guitar solo and then decamping to the back of the room. Twenty minutes later, he returned, sunglasses affixed on his head, and picked up a five-string bass. The crowd started to dance.

Perhaps not everyone who'd scored this special ticket expected a dream night that would end with Prince, the great original, leading the crowd in a rousing version of "Brick House" by the Commodores. Isn't that what karaoke nights with pals are for? But this didn't sound like karaoke.

Seeing Prince rip it up three feet away, and getting to sing along too? Priceless.

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✧✧✧.pow✧✧✧@lati✧✧✧.c✧✧

I think the love symbol album is being underrated here. The Morning Papers is one of his greatest songs, and 7, The Continental and 3 Chains of Gold are all a load of fun.

OK, My answer:

I was a Prince fan (not nutzo style, just bought the records, you know...) and "Sign of the Times" up to "Diamonds & Pearls" I'd be gettin without hearin...

"Gett Off" is all about the six track remix/different songs thingy (Violet the Organ Grinder, etc). "Cream", similarly.

"D&P" the album was "yep, it's nice but a bit easy listening" but still played it plenty. After that, didn't buy any more (I think)... But still liked what was on't radio.

Still haven't played "Emancipation" after getting it for £3 at Fopp.

"you are really wrong with this. the quality of his recording sound has never been dated. its the songs that are weak."

no, the production is dated and so are the songs these days. that new 'my guitar' song is embarrassing.

Guitar might be his best single in 10 years, in my opinion.

thats not saying much.

the guitar sounds like the edge. the verses are about 3 lines long. and the production sounds plastic. sounds like he turned it out in about 5 minutes.

that's a good thing, right?

i got a tik to da roosevelt :)

check out the song 'da bang' from the crystal ball set. thats a 100 times better than this new song as far as princes modern 'guitar' songs go.

its weird reading all these great amazing reviews of prince live these days. i think a lot of that is just cos hes still out there doing it. cos his show these days is pretty vegas. and not in a good way.

I think the love symbol album is being underrated here. The Morning Papers is one of his greatest songs, and 7, The Continental and 3 Chains of Gold are all a load of fun.

I'd also add "Blue Light" and "I Wanna Melt With U." There's some forgettable ballads and the sounds-worse-with-every-year "Sexy M.F."

"Black Album" was the foreshadowing

True enough. Lovesexy was his last great album. I wrote a big piece about all this here -- put as simply as I can, The Black Album was where he began to play to his audience more than his muse.

But it doesn't really materialize until Batman.

Nas declining to freestyle is like one of those you-knew-there-was-no-Santa-Claus-but-why'd-they-have-to-go-and-say-it moments :(

Haha.

I haven't heard the new record, but about half of 3121 was really great and he's still unbeatable live (judging from videos/tv appearances, I haven't gotten to see his show :( :( :( ).

My friend Tom got to go to one of those house parties, courtesy of another friend who found a "golden ticket" in his copy of 3121. He is still talking about how fucking dope Prince was live and in such an intimate space. All the beautiful people etc.

are there any fans crazier than prince fans?

how about fans of crappy music? NOW THAT'S CRAZY>

When I was Brooklyn a couple days ago I watched the Sign o' the Times movie on a projection screen, so I'm still in full-on worship mode. :>

SOTT = best concert film ever.

When I was Brooklyn a couple days ago I watched the Sign o' the Times movie on a projection screen, so I'm still in full-on worship mode. :>

I got to do this a couple weeks ago, with similar results.

SOTT is all mimed to the soundtrack of an actual concert btw.

Yeah, it really is a shame he only got to rule for one decade. Poor guy. *rolls eyes*

<i>SOTT is all mimed to the soundtrack of an actual concert btw.</i>

Seriously? I assumed that some parts of it were overdubbed later for precision/sound quality reasons, but none of the video + sound is live? :(

nope. prince didnt like the concert footage so he staged a fake concert at paisley park.

Right, but was the "fake" concert recorded live?

no. he mimed to audio from an actual concert.

So the actual concert was recorded in the studio?

Wow, then it's pretty dead-on!

xpost

isnt it that it was filmed at paisley park as a real gig but then overdubbed later? either way, its amazing you can barely tell and it *feels* so live.

is SOTT the one where he pees on the audience with his penis-guitar-hose or am I mixing it up with some other Prince concert

haha thats the purple rain tour.

I'm not a huge Prince fan but for whatever reason 'New Power Generation' popped into my head and I realised that, probably due to my age, I originally came to Prince via his 1990-1995 singles on the radio.
So I've been going back to songs like 'Morning Papers', 'Diamonds & Pearls', 'My Name Is Prince', and unabashedly enjoying them.
Am I wrong? Am I bad? Am I hated? (Do not answer if U hate me)

Money Don’t Matter 2 Night is all-time

Yeah, lots of great stuff after his "imperial" period.
I'm pretty sure we've had this exact discussion in another thread !

Yeah I was really enjoying 'Money Don't Matter' yesterday. I guess you coudl spin a thread out of this: 'Artists you only know cos of the 'wrong' stuff' or something... Not that I don't know the 80s stuff, but I had to actively go back and listen to all that out of choice. The 90s stuff came to me via radio

All those songs are great though! Especially "diamonds and pearls" but tbh that album is terrible

"Cream" is awesome !

And get this, Sexy MF is a jam too. The opening line alone.

ahah on wikipedia regarding "Cream" :
"On MTV Unplugged 2004, Prince stated that he wrote the song while masturbating himself."
Of course he did !

I reckon you could drop 'My Name Is Prince' on any dancefloor today and the place would go mental

"Gett Off" is also a classic Prince & NPG single

I reckon you could drop 'My Name Is Prince' on any dancefloor today and the place would go mental

― YOU CALL THIS JOURNALSIM? (dog latin), Friday, November 15, 2019 3:10 AM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Maybe true, but that song makes me embarrassed to have ears.

It's terrible, and "Sexy MF" is the unsexiest of motherfuckers

it was so dominant at that time, but the pneumatic drums of new jack swing were a bad influence on Price and Michael

I know as a big fan the couplet "My name is Prince and I am funky/When it comes to funk I am a junkie" definitely gave me pause. I did like "Gett Off" a lot, and "Sexy MF," both the right kind of ridiculous.

Tony M is the laughable kind of ridiculous.

Prince was futuristic and innovative in many ways but he was also old fashioned, he was a product of the pre hip hop era, R&B club bands, to me at least it never felt like he was comfortable with hop hop despite his efforts, or as a listener it felt clunky and forced

I think Prince was a rockist maybe?

I didn't like anyone is this band but Prince and Michael Bland.

Diamonds and Pearls is a terrible song wtf

there's some gems on the album but apparently no one agrees on what they are lol

I think Prince was a rockist maybe?

He was a Funkist !

I would think Prince's confusion about how to integrate rap is p well covered territory. Prince's aesthetic - one of ambiguity, mystery, elasticity, sophistication - ran very much counter to hip hop's emphasis on authenticity, crude machismo, etc. They don't mesh well, the only common factor is the braggadocio.

Musically they share a lot of funk influences though.

You're being unfair to a lot of hip-hop released in 1990-1991 that was ambiguous,elastic, and sophisticated -- unless you mean that Prince misread or got hip-hop wrong

xpost

Yeah crude machismo is not really how I'd describe a lot of early 90s hiphop.

I don't know what Prince thought of De La or UMCs or Divine Styler or whoever, and yeah I bet he was inclined to misread it - it was a v different kind of "musicianship" than what he was schooled in.

it's also worth pointing out that I wasn't referring to hip-hop in 1990-1991, rap was over a decade old at that point and Prince's dabbling in it felt more like grudging respect not willingly given to something he had pretty much ignored wholesale for his entire career

I mean, I would think Prince's preconceptions about rap were formed pretty early on

Who's the crude macho ?

https://i.skyrock.net/7670/16037670/pics/460951091.jpg

ugh can we keep the MJ shit to the other thread

It's quite likely Prince wasn't that familiar with rap much at all, and to the extent he listened to any music other than his own it was probably just a few of his favorite acts and records. Sly, Joni or whomever. He didn't, at least back then, seem like the most attuned ear-to-the-ground guy. That could explain why, when he finally dipped into hip-hop, it was (pretty much literally) very much of the "My name is Prince and I'm hear to say ... " variety.

Like, the story of him hitting a Seger show while doing R&D for "Purple Rain," surely he knew about arena rock already, right? Who knows. Sometimes I wonder if he learned about Sheena Easton through her duet cover of Seger's "We Got Tonight."

there's some gems on the album but apparently no one agrees on what they are lol

Such is the conundrum with basically every Prince album after Sign o' the Times.

xpost to me, "here to say," gah.

I stopped caring pretty much around Prince's Tony M / GameBoyz era. Too slick, too calculated to try and please and he fell on his face more times than I wanted to hear. But COME is a great "minor" masterpiece IMHO -- the horn arrangement on the title track alone ups the horniness to another level ( I will also stan for the brilliance of Lovesexy (album) and its horn arrangements til the day I die). And when he would do lowkey little raps - like on the COME title track - I didn't mind it so much. "My Name Is Prince", though? Oy Vey.

I think he was probably pretty familiar with a lot of contempo rap. He signed Monie Love to Paisley Park and I doubt some label suit was behind getting J-Swift on remix duties here, for instance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LUHaLLQc1ew

“Here to stay” would work better if he said it in one of his cartoon voices, acknowledging the origin of the phrase:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oX_dgcSsu1Q

Which is of course what you were already getting at.

_Prince finally showed up at nearly 4 a.m., teasing the crowd with a fiery guitar solo and then decamping to the back of the room. _
Hahaha