Prince Albums Thread

Musicology is Prince giving the people what they want. Some good stuff on it (title track, Cinnamon Girl (although you need to replace it by the live version), Dear Mr. Man), but not too inspired, paint by numbers.
But hey, who can blame the man for wanting to make a bit of money after following the muse wasn't thàt succesfull...

 

I loved with it was released and I still like it a lot.
Call my Name is all time classic song

 

By 2004, many many people were looking for ways to make recorded music pay. The ground had already shifted under the market's feet. And for some reason, Prince was a stronger draw in 2004 than he had been in most markets since 1984. I really don't see the whole thing as a problem at all. Tickets on that tour were not insanely priced.

 

The fact that Billboard sat up and took notice shows that to some extent, this was an innovation, at least on this sales level in 2004. But even Madonna's "Madame X" tour did the same thing. Among dozens of other artists and tours over the years. So the importance of not personally going deeper into the red to get a record in people's hands is more important than a Billboard ranking. Billboard gets more irrelevant with every new innovation. That's been some small comfort.

 

This was the common knock at the time, especially in Chicago. Critics for the Chicago Tribune and Chicago Sun-Times never reduced their coverage of Prince - they still devoted feature-length reviews to him and often praised work that was overlooked or dismissed in other large newspapers. (Rainbow Children made Jim DeRogatis's end-of-year ten best list.) So when the comeback hype/marketing for Musicology rolled out, their attitude was "hey, Prince never left, and we've been banging that drum for years." They were also more skeptical, feeling that Prince was playing it safe, and DeRogatis even dumped on the accompanying tour as being sanitized and less daring compared to years past.

I was skeptical myself, but in hindsight, I think time has been a little kind, at least for me. Prince doesn't break new ground, it's in his comfort zone - for that reason, it's no masterpiece and it's no great album. But comfortable isn't the same thing as calculating or worse going through the motions, and despite a few dull tracks, this is mostly a fine batch of songs, impeccably performed and crafted. A lot of this is kind of like Prince's Get Back album, and the mission statement's right there in the opening title track - he's not doing old Prince, he's gone back further, doing the R&B he's loved since his youth. This would serve Prince well, yielding more gems on his next few albums. A B+ album.

1. Musicology
2. Illusion, Coma, Pimp & Circumstance
3. A Million Days
4. Life 'o' the Party
5. Call My Name
6. Cinnamon Girl
7. What Do U Want Me 2 Do?
8. The Marrying Kind
9. If Eye Was the Man in Ur Life
10. On the Couch
11. Dear Mr. Man
12. Reflection

 

The Chocolate Invasion: Trax From the NPG Music Club, Volume One (2004), NPG



Track listing:

1. When Eye Lay My Hands on U
2. Judas Smile
3. Supercute
4. Underneath the Cream
5. Sexmesexmenot
6. Vavoom
7. High
8. The Dance
9. Gamillah
10. U Make My Sun Shine

The Chocolate Invasion and the album following it were released for download only on March 29, 2004. These were a collection of tracks released exclusively on the NPG Music Club, though I understand some have been rewritten or rearranged for this release. And then the album was rearranged yet again when it was released on other streaming services. What you see above is the original 2004 track listing. On the streaming version, Sexmesexmenot and The Dance switched places, and then The Dance was replaced with a song called My Medallion. All of the songs that remains from the original version now had slightly different run times, the exception being U Make My Sun Shine having an extra minute and thirteen seconds added.
And that's all I have to say about The Chocolate Invasion. I remember nothing about the songs on this album.
What do you think of it?
Do you have any unpopular opinions? Would you recommend it with or without a caveat?

 

This was the first new album released by Prince after I became a fan. Until that point, I thought Prince was choosing to toil in obscurity for the rest of his days.

There are a couple of top drawer tracks on here, like Illusion Coma.... and Reflections.

 

Xpectation is grittier and less disciplined than NEWS. Feels more like “new directions” which both albums claimed. (I think that description was also a play on words with the latter - directions...get it?) Anyway, I’m happy to have this album in my collection although I don’t visit it often. I would absolutely love the full version of Xenophobia restored to the track list as Prince had intended it at one point.

 

This is Prince and a crack band - Blackwell, Leeds, Smith, Neto - doing it right. Tempo, texture, control, playing - all are superb. Prince’s penchant for mixing things up - when those Metallica riffs come crunching in Prince manages to convince you that it’s the most natural thing in the world. Boring? Not to me. It’s pure masterclass on full display, sounding at once both disciplined and spontaneous. You don’t even have to stay locked into the four tracks each at 14:00 motif; each track encompasses two or three ideas that could have been separate songs. Prince was reaching here, fully inspired and, in my opinion, definitely comes up with a winner.

 

Alright, you sold it to me. I'm going to dust off my old copy of NEWS later this week.

 

And Stevie Wonder did “Spiritual Walkers” in 1985 between Van and The Rainbow Children.

 

After Rainbow Children/One Night Alone...Live, it all becomes a bit of a blur for me.
I didn't find much interesting in Musicology and I play The Chocolate Invasion/The Slaughterhouse far more. "When I Lay My Hands on U" is terrific (nicely done at Montreux 2009 too!).

 

the Chocolate Invasion is a weak album by any standard. Prince is my absolute, all time , music God, whatever you want to call him, favorite artist from any period or discipline. But that didn't prevent me to notice when he made crap. And he released many albums that were horrible.

 

"Judas Smile" just might be Prince's last great song. I love it. Great vocal delivery when he sings the "you've been bamboozled, hoodwinked, took" line.

Overall, The Chocolate Invasion was a top album. The last Prince album I can play all the way through.

 

I don’t want to push this too far but the analogy to me is like David Bowie with Let’s Dance. Did you mean Cinnamon Girl? I don’t think I’ve heard a live version of that. Not even sure he ever played it. But overall I assess it as a very solid album, well performed, albeit not too thrilling material for me. It totally lacks the “weird” factor which so many of us cherish. But 2004 was a landmark year for Prince; who am I to begrudge him a little commercial success?

 

I enjoy some of the material as outtakes, isolated tracks, downloads, etc, but overall I’m glad High never got a proper release as a follow up to Rave. The material was simply not there to merit “official next studio album” status in Prince’s discography. As is I’m happy to have both TCI and Slaughterhouse as collections and do enjoy them occasionally.

 

Oh, was this the one that angered me most. WTF???? Hey, all Prince fans know the guy would take off in various directions, but man, The Rainbow Children was a direction that didn't even exist!

Oh, I tried and tried. Actually I didn't try. I gave it a number of listens and just kept laughing at the lunacy Prince was foisting upon his followers. I just couldn't see a way I would like this album.

But then it was the "1 + 1 + 1" song. I really dug the intro to that song. That Darth Vader voice actually worked, then the light tap on the snare growing in volume...and then those insanely killer bass notes. The first twenty or so seconds of "1+1+1" is absolutely Prince's greatest moment. I'd play it over and over and over again. Then I'd let it run into the song proper...wow. One of Prince's greatest jams.

And that song became the key for me to get into the album. It took months, but I kept going back to the album and playing it from the beginning to end and I really got the full sense of the work. Ultimately, The Rainbow Children became one of my favorite Prince albums and no doubt, one of Prince's greatest works.

 

I gave "When Eye Lay My Hands on U" another shot, and to be brutally honest, it's kind of horrid. I never bothered to join his fan club thanks to releases like this. If I had been greener, I would've jumped at the chance - exclusive access to new music from one of my favorite artists? how can that go wrong? - but massively disappointing fan club releases like this just kept me away. A C- album, and that may be kind.

 

Love When Eye Lay My Hands on U and Supercute most of the rest of the album's a pleasant listen (did Prince ever make an unlistenable album?), but not much more than that to me. I think the Dance was replaced on the streaming sites because of its repatriation to 3121. The Dance I like (but don't love), but think it works better on 3121. Between The Chocolate Invasion and Slaughterhouse I prefer Chocolate Invasion but mainly because of those two songs.

To me these two albums far more than Musicology are Prince playing it safe. I mean Prince channelling James Brown/The Metres in 2004 is him playing it safe and trying to get hits? I mean it did get hits, but in 2004 this was pretty far out from prevailing music trends.

 

Well darn, I would've sworn there was a tv-show version somewhere! I must've mixed it up with Lolita I guess, cus I thought he played it during the 21 Nights stand in London too. Clearly mixing up a bunch of things, apologies!

 

The saga of “The Dance“ on the Chocolate Invasion is curious. When Prince originally planned a physical release (7 CDs set - one of which was TCI) in October 2003, The Dance wasn’t included. That set was cancelled, but the track list for TCI and Slaughterhouse (npgmc trax vol 1 and 2) carried over when those two titles got a digital release a year later. Except now “ The Dance” a new song, was included replacing My Medallion. The album track sequence was also shifted slightly. In 2006 a re-recorded The Dance appeared on 3121 to much acclaim. Also that year, Prince’s npgmc closed making many digital titles - including TCI - unavailable. When TCI was reissued in 2015 on tidal and again a few years later on all digital platforms, they reverted to the original track list and sequencing which included My Medallion but not The Dance.

 

Cream Sh-boogie bop.
Funny I never cared for Diamonds and Pearls when it was out but I’m enjoying it immensely these days. The breadth of the material is astounding. To go from Thunder to Daddy Pop to D&P alone is quite a fun ride. Did you ever hear the Thunder ballet version? That’s my new go to for that song. A real mind trip.

 

Really? No idea it even existed
Also, I’m really fond of Willing & Able video version . This is really an album that needs a huge box set a la 1999

 

The Slaughterhouse: Trax From the NPG Music Club, Volume Two (2004), NPG



Track listing:

1. Silicon
2. S&M Groove
3. Y Should Eye Do That When Eye Can Do This?
4. Golden Parachute
5. Hypnoparadise
6. Props 'n' Pounds
7. Northside
8. Peace
9. 2045: Radical Man
10. The Daisy Chain

Please refer to my post on The Chocolate Invasion. I have nothing new to say about this album.
What do you think of The Slaughterhouse? Do you have any unpopular opinions on it? Would you recommend it with or without a caveat?

 

Even worse than the Chocolate Invasion. I think the best songs ended on the latter and this seems to be one of his lowest points ever.
As a coda, I think Supercute could be a great 12” release if the estate plans on doing again something like they did with the I Feel For U acoustic demo.