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

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.