Prince Album by Album Thread

Thanks! That was great! I do remember having seen that before. I liked the song already, but in this version it came alive.
...and Támar is hot!

 

I'm not sure if this has been mentioned yet on here or not (too many pages to read! ) But it looks like Prince - For You is getting a vinyl reissue in April! Hopefully WB will continue with these, and move a little faster!

http://www.elusivedisc.com/Prince-For-You-LP/productinfo/WEALP49220/

 

3121 was indeed a better album than Musicology. But 3121.com was where I finally stopped following Prince's online activities. I remember it as a flashy and buggy site that I didn't really feel like paying attention to.

Also I think this was the peak of his 'war on fan sites' era, and given how wonderful some of those sites were, it was tough going as a Prince fan. I remember the whole PFU 'movement' and the PFUnk song, and the closure of the wonderful Housequake.

 

This was an awesome song live!
This hyped the album really up. What a great performance of Fury

 

Támar was indeed yummie

 

I actually don't remember 3121.com that well anymore. It probably wasn't that good, because I do know I refused to become a member of the lotusflower site... or maybe that was because of the PFU thing.
I was at Housequake at the time and remember the PFU very well. The founder of HQ is dutch and went to the press with the story. PFUnk was a real slap in the face after trying to get some sense out of Prince about his fan sites. It became very ugly and a lot of fans lost interest in Prince, the person, but also the music. Actually, it's still a subject from time to time if fans discuss Prince the person and fan sites. A really sad story. Prince had the right, I guess, but this was totally inappropriate and unneccesary is you ask me.

The fans lost and the great fan site Housequake closed down because of that...

 

I've read that too.
Do you know if there's a special treatment with the album. Is it just a new print, or has it been remastered or is it on 180 grams vinyl?

Wasn't Purple Rain released a couple of years on viny?

 

The Támar Davis ‎Milk & Honey album:


Might as well include this in the thread, since it is a proper side-project, and even though it was unreleased it did surface physically as a promo. But mainly because it gives me an excuse to post the artwork...

 

Coprincidence?

 

Here is Támar and Prince rocking out with "Redhead Stepchild":
http://www.tudou.com/programs/view/2DofDfIHtTQ
http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XMjQwNTUxODg0.html

I'm not sure if this type of song is her forte, but it's a nice gig, performing with Prince as your backup musician.

 

Message control. It's the death of Prince, and it's so sad. Other artists would kill for the kind of fans Prince had, but he throws them away. Or else drives them away. Prince used to be routinely listed as a performer with the most internet savvy. I remember love4oneanother... it was an amazing site at a time when it was tough to be a fan because of symbol ridicule. Cool messages straight from him - one talking about how great Napster was! - and low-quality samples of unreleased stuff (I remember a cover of a Shania Twain song, of all things). Other artists' web presences were corporate and perfunctory. Prince's was great.

But it was all about message control. I want to control how my fans view me. Everything must be through my filter.

I still don't think he knows that the fans were doing this stuff as a labour of love. What was that European print magazine that put out "The Vault"? Prince crushed those guys, and they were just dedicated fans expressing their love.

It's so sad.

 

haha, too much coincidence to be true

 

Uptown!!... I had a subscription to that and have most of their books. Great stuff!
Prince needs to control everything it seems, to the extreme. For a lot of thing this worked out great for him; he wouldn't be were he is today music-wise if he wasn't. But, the downside is the whole PFU thing and the lawsuit against Uptown etc.
Remember the magazine Controversy from the early 90s. Same story basically.
... back to the music

 

Purple Rain was, as well as Controversy, 1999 and Dirty Mind (all by Rhino.) I highly doubt there's any remastering going on here, but I do believe the other reissues were 180, so this one should be as well. That's half my interest in buying these reissues, so I don't have to deal with those crappy 80's thin as paper flexi-vinyl things anymore!

 

The ”comeback” era we are now in is not quite as interesting for me and I don’t know if I can work up quite the same enthusiasm for 3121 as some of you, but I’ll do my best! I don’t see this as a very big step up in quality from Musicology, if at all, but it is different, since it isn’t as concerned with trying to be pleasing and commercial, but it is still a major label release, so it has some of that feeling of not getting too out there and experimental, keeping it relatively accessible. B.t.w. what is it with Prince and the label hopping when it come to the majors in this later era? From Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic onwards it seem like he has put it into practice to only do one album and then leave, is it some conscious strategy? Like a parasite he moves from label to label, sucks out all he can and then moves on, ha, ha…?

The title track right away is not a favourite, in fact I think it is a little annoying and always feel like skipping over it, sorry… But it picks up right away with ”Lolita”, which is great track with a good funky groove, has hit potential. I didn't like the keyboard sound at first, but grew to really like it. I haven’t really though about the ”Cool” connection, which shows how carefully I have listened to this... Some of the lyrics and the way they’re delivered do however remind me of the Thin Lizzy song ”Ballad Of a Hard Man”, which is a more obscure reference. ”Te Amo Corazón” is a little on the sweet side, but it is still a very nice ballad, relaxing and soothing, beautiful arrangement and production, maybe not the best song as a first single? ”Black Sweat” is a cool funky number, if just little too minimalistic maybe, but what little is there is very effective, it works (up a sweat). That synth line is a it annoying at first but then becomes irresistable. Like I said, I like it even better with the visuals of the video, yum! So far I this is very strong start. Then we move into what for me is bit of a slump in the middle. I absolutely hate autotune the way it is used in ”Incense And Candles”, so that song is ruined for me, I could have liked it otherwise. Neither ”Love” nor ”Satisfied” does much for me either. ”Fury” is a great little rocker though, which picks things up, and as we saw it is even better live. This to me is kind of like ”Cinnamon Girl” on the previous album, it is an uptempo song with hit potential, but it is missing something to be able to go all the way. From here on the ride gets a little better again, if still a little rocky. ”The Word” is nice song, but again there is something that ruins it for me, that synthetic sax thing (or if it’s a real one, it sounds bad anyway), without that it would have been great. ”Beautiful, Loved And Blessed” is the duet with Támar, also on her album posted above, and it’s a good and and enjoyable R&B number with a laid back groove. ”The Dance” is a song I really like, but the thing is I much prefer the more stripped down version that appeared on (the original version of) The Chocolate Invasion, here it is overproduced and turned into a weird quasi-rhumba or something, and it is also overly dramatized, escpecially all the screaming at the end. It’s still a good song, but I’d rather listen to the early version. And lastly we have ”Get On The Boat”, which is a good old JB-style Funk workout, complete with Maceo blowing, that is always enjoyable and can never be wrong. A bit disconnected from the rest of the album maybe, kind of a bonus addon, like ”Prettyman” on Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic.

So to summarize, compared to Musicology this has both more up and downs, and on the whole it is more interesting if not necessarily better, I like several of the songs, but I’m not always crazy about the production.

Actually the version on Támar's album is the one which is shorter. The only difference is that version fades sooner, but keeps the full instrumentation all the way, while on 3121 the fade goes on a little longer but instruments are mixed out.

Again I seem to be in opposition with you, not liking your favourites and preferring the ones you think are so-so.

 

Támar's Milk & Honey was supposed to be called Beautiful, Loved & Blessed



The Támar story one of those examples where Prince lost interest in the project before it was released.
Támar worked with Prince on his 3121 album and Prince worked to make her own album with many co-written songs. They even toured together to promote the, then still planned, album.
With Prince losing interest, Universal wasn't willing to release the album anymore.

The album had the following tracklist:

1. Closer 2 My Heart
2. Milk & Honey
3. Can't Keep Living Alone
4. Holla & Shout
5. Kept Woman
6. Holy Ground
7. Beautiful, Loved & Blessed
8. Redhead Stepchild
9. All Want Is U
10. First Love
11. Sunday In The Park
12. Beautiful, Loved & Blessed (Reprise)
13. Te Amo Corazón / Fury / Purple Rain / Let's Go Crazy (Live at BRIT Awards 2006) (Video)

Beautiful, Loved & Blessed was released as a promo single from the original album.
Holla & Shout was released as a promo single after Támar changed her name on the album to Támar Davis and the album title to Milk & Honey.
After the breakup (pun intended), Támar did release some of the songs digitally.

As much as I love her voice and work on 3121, her own album is not that overwhelming.
All of the songs are written by Prince and Támar, music was mainly Prince with some help from Sonny T, Michael B, C.C. and Joshua Dunham.

Most of the songs are pretty bland. Four songs stand out:
- Holla & Shout is a nice uptempo song. I like it. Prince is ending the song with a rap.
- Beautiful, Loved & Blessed is the shorter version of the song, a duet with Prince. The same version has been released as the b-side of Black Sweat.
- Redhead Stepchild, a nice heavy rocker. I adore the live version, the studio version is nice but a little tame and repetitive. The guitar is great.
- Sunday At The Park, a good ballad that builds nicely. There's a (sampled?) horn solo in the middle of the song which is unusual in Prince music, but nice.

The reprise of Beautiful, Loved & Blessed is a thank you on music by Támar.
Kept Woman was in 2009 given to Bria Valente on her debut album, packed with Lotusflow3r and MPLSounds 3cd. I actually like Bria's version more


So, I do love the cover too , but the album is a let down and only four songs are good.

 

You are correct! Don't know why I thought otherwise...

 

I'm hoping they don't just stop at the 80s and move into the 90s. I have all the albums on vinyl through Graffiti Bridge but the 90s stuff is pretty pricy if you come by a copy so I'm all for Diamonds And Pearls, O+> and Come on vinyl (would love Gold too but I don't think Warner even owns it anymore, its been OOP since 1998 or 1999)

 

How could you?

 

I'd love to know who owns that album. I remember that it had both labels on the cover and said (P) NPG / WB, which doesn't make a whole lot of sense. It was clearly a Warner release, but it had TMBGITW on it... confusing.

Maybe this was covered in the pages about the album.

 

Yea. I wondered if Warner's rights lapsed like some of the latter albums that he had majors distribute (like Rave and Musicology are well out of print now) because it seemed off that Warner would keep Come in print but not Gold when TGE sold more units and had Prince's last two US top 20 hits off it.

 

As far as I know Prince made a deal with WB for this album.
I don't know the details, but it was something like WB wasn't allowed to reprint the album after the first set.
I have no idea how that is possible or why WB would agree with this, but that was the case as fas as I know...

 

There were a few hiccoughs in the transition from WB to indie where I presume Prince was legally in the wrong but WB just shrugged their shoulders: there was a WB b-side that wound up on an NPG album, and Crystal Ball contains the previously-released "Good Love" plus some remixes of Come tracks. I don't imagine Prince had the legal right to do any of those things, but where Warner nixed the "Love Sign" single (but rolled their eyes at the notion that Prince with a bandana on his face was somehow not Prince), I guess they just said, 'why bother?'

 

And here I was thinking "should I really post images that big?"
But it's ok, can't have too much of that!

I agree about the album though, it is really nothing special... I have not seen that bonus video that is on there.
The artwork images I posted come from the Japan version of the CD, were apparently some regular copies were sold....?

 

There were a lot of things happening around that time, the termination of the Paisley Park Records label, which was closely tied to Warner, and the formation of NPG Records which was more independent. There was the deal whereby he was allowed to release "The Most Beautiful Girl In The World" independently, and there were surely a lot of other special deals and exchanging of favours, "you do this and I'll do that", and there was definitely some special deal with The Gold Experience. If you had asked about this back when we were on this album maybe I could have answered better, because I was buried deep in this stuff back then, but it is so complicated that it is impossible to remember...

There was also that whole thing whereby some releases were designated as being by "Prince" (such as Come) and some as being by "" (like The Gold Experience), basically seen as different artist, I don't know what contractual implications that has, if any.

In any event it is very unfortunate that The Gold Experience, possibly his best album outside the "classic" era, is not available, and hasn't been for so long. Why not at least put it on Tidal? (There are some other odd omissions on Tidal as well.)