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.

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