prince

Indeed.

xpost to austin Yeah, friend. Had a wonderful day. Wine and friends I hadn't seen in a while. Nice weather. One friend was wearing a sweet 1999 tour t-shirt, natch.

“Born 2 Die” is the second single made available from Prince’s upcoming unreleased studio album Welcome 2 America and is available now. The song was recorded during a flurry of studio activity in the spring of 2010, when President Obama was just a year into his first term and Prince was reflecting deeply on the issues affecting the Black community and the role he hoped to play. As happened countless times throughout his career, Prince ended up shelving the song and the rest of Welcome 2 America in his legendary vault, and the full album will be released from the vault for the first time on July 30. The slow-burning song was first recorded by Prince, the bassist Tal Wilkenfeld, and the drummer Chris Coleman, and then accentuated by the vocal harmonies of Shelby J., Liv Warfield, and Elisa Fiorillo, and topped off by a melody sung by Prince himself. He then tapped his longtime music director Morris Hayes to add final production to the track—and shared some of the inspiration behind its sound. "We got to 'Born 2 Die,' and Prince said, 'I'll tell you how that came about,' Morris remembers. "He had been watching videos of his friend Dr. Cornel West on YouTube, and during one speech Dr. West said, 'I love my brother Prince, but he’s no Curtis Mayfield.' So Prince said, "Oh really? We will see."

lmao that is a great story

haha wow

I am really looking forward to meeting the children that DJP, Alfred, and Austin will shortly give birth to.

one of mine will be named "prince curtis" btw

also yes, that little tidbit story is wonderful.☺

thanks for giving me the image of a pregnant cornel west in demi moore vogue cover pose

Aah so that’s why Cornel West didn’t get tenure

I am really looking forward to meeting the children that DJP, Alfred, and Austin will shortly give birth to.

― portmanteaujam (Ye Mad Puffin)

Nicki Minaj will record our kids' theme "Negronis in the Bottle"

pic.twitter.com/mJfsMucowo

— sherilynfenn (@sherilynfenn1) June 4, 2021

she's not wrong

Happy Birthday. I will always celebrate this amazingly gifted and complex human.
Unlike those sharpening their torches and pitchforks on another thread.

For a split second I thought that was Dianne Feinstein and I thought, yet, shit *has* gotten weird.

Happy Birthday. I will always celebrate this amazingly gifted and complex human.
Unlike those sharpening their torches and pitchforks on another thread.

― SQUIRREL MEAT!! (Capitaine Jay Vee)

Ya know, it's possible to carry a valentine in one hand and a pitchfork in the other.

Unlike those sharpening their torches and pitchforks on another thread.

― SQUIRREL MEAT!! (Capitaine Jay Vee), Monday, June 7, 2021 9:54 AM (seventeen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

literally relating a true and documented story but ok sorry to ruin santa claus for you

that torch is mighty sharp, tho

pretty sure everyone is or has been a fan and hates to hear about this stuff so fuck off. it's part of this thread now, congrats

xps

Ha yeah I should've kept the torch out of there.

xpost lots of true and documented stories of how Prince was a dick to those who worked for / with him. Possibly even more about how
magnanimous he was. Like his anonymous charitable works that he kept up until his death. Dude was complex, as I said, and a true weirdo. Reason to cancel him?

You can just as easily fuck off, Left.

yeah this is just handwavey bullshit

you could have just not mentioned it

Reason to cancel him?

who the fuck said anything about canceling him? There is no "cancel culture."

The only artist whose pop profile was wiped in the way you imply was Janet Jackson's.

it's hard to imagine what cancelling a dead man would entail. this extremely typical rock star behaviour - only some of which is news - is painful to acknowledge but the pre-emptive outrage over other people doing so, on a thread about another artist who was directly affected by this behaviour, is nagl to put it mildly

sinead was also cancelled i would say

Prince was already cancelled by life

Alfred, ums, Left otm tho

You know, the story of "When Doves Cry" and its (lack of) baseline is legendary. But something that's always caught my ear is that the song *does* have some sort of cycling thing going on that provides some low end, if not an actual bass then for sure some sort of bass pattern, played on a synth or (perhaps) as pitched programmed/sequenced percussion. Any idea what's up with that?

I think it's just Linn toms pitched way down (you're right that this is super key and usually overlooked).

I'm playing a gig with the Prince tribute band that I helped start years ago for fun, but haven't played with in years. So now I'm learning a two hour show with all kinds of backing tracks and breaks, it's a lot but it's fun to go deep on the music again.

(lol "baseline," RIP autocorrect)

Had the chance to visit Paisley Park last week and let me enthusiastically recommend it to any Prince fan. There's some corny stuff of course but mostly just a real privilege to be inside all of these spaces that he designed and occupied. I just did the basic tour, so I don't know what you see on the pricier ones, but got to see his funny little diner kitchen, his office, recording studios, soundstage, and of course the club area where he had shows all the time. All packed with his instruments and outfits, handwritten lyrics, etc. Just super cool. It included the actual drum machine and keyboard used on "When Doves Cry" among lots of other stuff. (Also it was cute and very Prince-like that they're very protective about what you can take pictures of. You're only allowed to photograph in the more public areas, where lots of people were allowed anyway when he was alive. They make you put your phone in a little lock pouch for most of the tour.)

It is also kind of endearing that he built it in basically a generic suburban office park.

Totally. I've driven by many office buildings in the Chicago suburbs that look similar from the outside. Anyway, I've always loved this anecdote:

I remember taking him to the hardware store in my camping van. He wanted to go buy a lock. And we go to Ace Hardware—it’s snowing and freezing—and I say, “Okay, Prince, you stay in the car.” So I’m picking stuff up in the aisles, I look over, he just cruises by in a turtleneck sweater and his fuzzy boots, and people are looking like, “Oh my God, Prince is in the hardware store!” He comes and finds me and he’s got a handful of crap—like, “Can we buy this?” I’m, “What did you do with the car?” He says, “It’s out there—it’s just running.” I said, “Prince, you can’t leave the car running—somebody could just steal the car.” He said, “This is Chanhassen—nobody’s gonna steal the car.” So we get out to the car and sure enough it’s out there, just running, smoke coming out of the tailpipe. And he’s like, “I told you.”

https://consequence.net/2016/12/princes-closest-friends-remember-some-of-his-funniest-strangest-moments/

it's funny that there will be people who get excited by an "unreleased" prince record when there's like 20 most people have never heard on streaming right now

― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Wednesday, April 14, 2021 2:49 PM (three months ago)

OTM.

Welcome 2 America has already leaked and the press (particularly quite a few who were down on Prince's latter day work) are overpraising this like it's a lost classic - the standard line is why did Prince keep this in the vault when it blows away everything he did in the last 20 years? Total horse shit.

It's not a bad album, it has that going for it, but a lot of it's underwhelming. I guess it's a more consistent listen - there's no syrupy material or boring, smooth jazz excursions that I wish he would have tossed out for better tracks - but Musicology, 3121, Art Official Age and Hit n' Run Phase Two are all better albums. I'll even throw in Lotusflow3r and MPLSound - the highlights on those are better and more memorable than the ones here. (I'll note that "When She Comes" also appears on Hit n' Run Phase Two - sounds like it could be the same take but without the horn section and a few other overdubs. Another track was also re-done as the coda to the magnificent "Black Muse" on the same album.)

THANK YOU. I was on the verge of ordering this based on the AVclub review, but I was still hesitating because I'm not down with Prince after Come.

You're welcome. Also it's strange to see some rave reviews claim this is better than any of his recent work while singling out "When She Comes" and "1000 Light Years From Here" as highlights - none of them seem to recognize those tracks from Hit n' Run Phase Two. Anyway, they are good, but they're not even the best tracks on Hit n' Run Phase Two.

(or rather best parts of Hit n' Run Phase Two. "1000 Light Years From Here" is again the coda to a better song that's pretty awesome.)

Come, however ... since you mention it @Cow_Art ... is quite underappreciated.

I will revisit Come one of these days. I wasn't a fan, but I really enjoyed that fan-made Prince album stitched together from his early-mid 1990s material (including stuff from Come), so I should give it another chance. Besides, it's not like I'm averse to that era - I actually love The Gold Experience, I really like a lot of Emancipation (there's like a great 90-minute double-LP in those three hour-long CD's), and The Truth and Chaos & Disorder are pretty good for a pair of albums that were tossed off and thrown together.

With Welcome 2 America, the disappointment isn't surprising. Put within its original context, you get the impression that Prince was really stretching himself thin. In 2009, he released THREE albums, all packaged together as one purchase - two under his own name and a Bria Valente album that he wrote, produced and performed. Had he dropped the Valente album and embraced the idea of a more eclectic album (not exactly a new concept for Prince), he could have had an excellent LP that was buried within those discs. The following year, he finishes two more albums, Welcome 2 America and 20Ten, and the one he did put out was easily his weakest in a long while. I don't blame him for taking a four year break from releasing a studio album because he really needed to slow down and work on quality control. What came next, 2014's Art Official Age, was a good, underrated album IMHO - kudos to Ben Greenman and Greg Kot for recognizing that.

The official podcast on the album is good for anecdotes at least.

One strange thing about Welcome 2 America - a lot of it (maybe all of it) was supposedly mastered from a CD-R. I'm not sure if that's entirely true, but it's the explanation for the glitches people have been hearing on the CD and hi-res downloads of the album. (I have not heard whether or not these glitches are audible on the vinyl edition.) It's most audible on "Stand Up And B Strong" for almost the entire track, and I actually thought it was simply the result of a bad rip (a dirty or scratched CD, etc.) but I guess that's actually the source Prince's estate had to work with.

And Jon Pareles of The New York Times is the first reviewer to point out that Hit n Run Phase Two reworked two of the tracks, though it's the type of review that's more descriptively analytical than critical or passing judgment.

carefully so, yes

Thank you, Twitter, for for once guessing what I'd like to see correctly:

since Matt Damon is trending pic.twitter.com/jsdwEDedWC

— laura olin (@lauraolin) August 1, 2021

That's right up there with Westerberg's story: “The first time I met him was at a urinal at a nightclub in St. Paul...There he was, and I said, ‘Hey, what’s up?’ And he answered, ‘Life.’" It's hilarious how these perfect responses just came to the guy.

Is anyone else flipping out over the vault tracks on the 1999 super deluxe reissue? It's like an alternate universe version of the album that's just as good. Unreal that tracks like Purple Music, Rearrange, and If It'll Make U Happy have been unreleased for so long

― J. Sam, Wednesday, December 4, 2019 8:08 AM (one year ago) bookmarkflaglink

Continuing to flip out over the 1999 vault tracks today. Easily my favorite vault set so far, but I'm partial to that era. If Parade is indeed the next super deluxe release, I'm psyched for that but I really can't wait to see what they've got for Dirty Mind and Controversy

"Purple Music" is so incredible