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

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".

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