Prince - The Gold Experience POLL

Y’all just talking about 90s Prince like this epic demonstration of quality control never came out:

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/4166E3PC5GL.jpg

For me, a lot of how I hear this album and mid-90s Prince is through the Crystal Ball box – which is a total dog’s breakfast but also shoved a lot of 90s odds and sods up against outtakes from his 80s heyday. And perhaps surprisingly the 90s stuff is, candidly, no more hit or miss than the material from the 80s, with plenty of experimentation and playfulness. As a result I wasn’t particularly disappointed when I finally dug into the proper releases during this era (including TGE) as they seemingly all had a few amazing moments, a couple of horrible clunkers and a lot of stuff that was serviceable and maybe rewarded deeper listening for an incredible guitar solo or the like.

Also, and I’ll say this again, the Crystal Ball version of P. Control remains the absolute fucking greatest.

"Wasted Kisses" is great. It says a lot that it was an unlisted track buried as track #49 (with 38 blank tracks preceding it) while the rest of that album is crap.

i dont think the 80s albums had any real duds
def some umm idk how good this is moments, but even those were still interesting in some way?
in the 90s, the highs were just not as high, which made the rest seem less good.
but obv there were still good songs there. he still sounded inspired and like he was trying, compared to the 00s and 10s. i recently listened to his hit n run albums and couldnt believe that in 2014/15 he was still trying to write modern sounding bangers.
wasted kisses just leads to the suspicious myth that there were lots of great songs he made but didnt make it to the albums. but who knows if that is really even true?
but as soon as he left warners, and he becomes independent, you can see that his albums start to sound fairly forced. he never stopped trying to write commercial material, which at that stage, he prob should try avoiding.

theres a doc on the 90s called slave on amazon which is interesting and makes a good case for him as a business sage and innovator in the 90s and beyond, but while thats all great, as the music started to suck, it was hard to care so much. but hey, thats all artists after a certain stage in their careers. i suppose the drop with prince just seemed more dramatic.

i made this post but prob should have posted it here
Prince's 'Slave' era and battles with Warner Bros - C/D