Prince's Rainbow Children - what the F*ck?!?!

Veganism and (to a certain extent) "bad whitey" might be defensible, if silly, positions. What gets me is that Prince takes the Jehovah's Witnesses seriously. Since the Witnesses have one of the dumbest religions in existence, that leads me to question the Purple One's intelligence. At least Michael Jackson has the excuse that he was borne into the Jehovah's Witness stupidity.

I think that title of the next Prince album should be Please Read This Pamphlet! Followed by a worldwide tour of subway stations.

I think Prince put out just as much good music, track for track, in the 90s as the 80s (the peak being the "Truth" album, which he buried on "Crystal Ball"). The difference is that his output was a lot higher, and the good music got buried in a lot of mediocre stuff. You have to work a lot harder to find it. So it's not surprising that a lot of people just give up and dismiss him out of hand now.

......erotic city come alive.......

i think prince is hot,mm mm.

I unabashedly love this record, whitey this whitey that. The opposite of NATO is OTAN!

I love it as well. Probably his last truly weird album.

"The Sensual Everafter" from this record is some kind of cosmic tribute to Devadip Carlos Santana. Love it.

id like to think that at some point in the near future, this will be viewed as something like his last great album, or his last great ambitious album, cos to me, no other album after lovesexy sounded like he really had something he needed to say like this one. i mean, i like bits of all the 'look! i can still make hits!' albums of the last 15 years well enough, but TRC felt like a proper album, and one with that sort of inspiration you had in his best older albums. the voiceover gets a bit much after a while, but no matter what you think of the message, it doesnt matter ultimately, you can quite easily listen to it as just a great exercise in princely religious-fantasy-mythology.

more than that though, its basically prince making his heavy prog deep conceptual 70s fusion album (like, what he might have made if was a grown man in the 70s before for you came out). also, his response to dangelo, erykah badu, maxwell, etc.

but the music is terrible

I'm totally fine with ridiculous high concept albums that's not really my issue with it, the *sound* of it is just really unpleasant, this kind of generic easy listening jazz crap. (whoever said he really didn't understand how to play jazz is otm)

3121 might have a little bit of pandering in some of the production choices, but there are some truly great hooks on there.

as far as late-period albums go, that one has a ton of energy in an 'I'll show them how it's done' sense.

The Rainbow Children is great while it's playing, but its big downfall is that it's totally forgettable as soon as it ends.

there's plenty of good stuff on 3121 and Musicology imo

Musicology is totally great.

Yeah, Musicology is pretty great all the way through. 3121 has some high points but some low too. Always thought if he'd split that with Planet Earth, he could have had a really strong album.

I wrote about Musicology vs. Rainbow Children here: http://www.stylusmagazine.com/reviews/prince/musicology.htm

(Spoiler: I preferred TRC by a good distance)

i love generic easy listening jazz crap. still it's very difficult to get through n.e.w.s. this album's awesome though. i guess I sort of get why austin finds it forgettable but I like that. it sounds new every time I hear it

even if you hate it, 'forgettable' is not the word i would use for it.

"this kind of generic easy listening jazz crap."

if it was generic easy listening jazz i would be fine with it being labelled crap, but its not. its not prince attempting instrumental jazz fusion like on NEWS or madhouse, its a vocal record, full of songs. def not easy listening. its not even jazz, really (though obv theres quite a lot of weather report and return to forever in there). its just jazzy. its still a pretty typical prince album in how its got a massive range of styles. but if you hear everywhere and your spirit isnt even slightly raised, i dont know what to say. slick at times, sure. easy, no. i suppose if you hate neo soul (which i am guessing is what you mean by easy listening jazz crap), you might hate mellow mellow or muse to the pharoahe (which has him comparing the holocaust and slavery - he seems to have decided the latter is worse, in the grand competition of human atrocities - if prince wanted to highlight slavery, then comparing it to another genocide is prob not the best way to go about it).

after posting yesterday, i realised that the concept of TRC gets lost a bit with 1+1+1=3 and that songs like family name and everlasting now are not that much diff from songs like get on the boat which he would release later. but still, as a very full bodied band album, and his most 70s-prog album, it deserves higher praise than it gets.

gr8 post, StillAdvance

As I noted in my Musicology review, my feelings about this record are colored at least somewhat by the concert I saw on TRC tour – the one and only time I saw Prince live. It was kooky—he went even further down the rabbit hole of African American mythologizing, which went over well w the DC audience—and star studded (Santana and Larry Graham each showed up for a few songs). But it was also undeniably creative. There was no doubt that Prince was energized by the direction and his band (which included the amazing John Blackwell) – and it really felt special.

All that said, I find that the record itself is still an engaging listen – there's almost always a new part or arrangement I discover when I throw it on. And while I better appreciate what he was trying to do with records like Musicology (and the second volume of HITNRUN) today, I generally prefer weird Prince to "Show the Kids How It's Done" Prince when we are talking full albums.

just reading your review now. "The opposite of NATO is OTAN". ha. yes, i never understood the significance of this.

as he got older, prince, like so many people (myself included), i think was on a search for his 'roots', and looking for a sense of belonging. in the 80s he was fine with being out there on his own and sort of relished it. later on, i think he started to get lonely. it was like he was really trying to remind people he was still a black artist. where before, it was never addressed that explicitly. in the 80s, youd be lucky to find much slang on his records (i think he knew it would date them). in later years, he was almost desperate to feature slang, though it often ended up dating him/the songs much quicker. but i guess he was worried about alienating himself again, or being separated from R&B. TRC is obv about his faith, but also about connecting to 'classic' black music roots from the 70s.

its basically prince saying to dangelo, anything you can do, i can do it better. in retrospect, maybe this album is actually where the retro-prince of musicology etc began (though it started much more interestingly here).

I really don't hear the sonic connection to D'Angelo and neosoul (ie Erykah Badu or Maxwell or whoever), or at least I don't remember hearing one. I can't actually relisten to this at the moment since I sold it and don't own it anymore.

that stuff was all informed by hip hop rhythms and drum sounds and structures and I don't recall any of that on TRC

Anyone else remember the incredibly bizarre television ads for this album that aired on daytime television in the U.S.?
They didn't show Prince, but they had testimonials from "fans" who spoke glowingly about its positivity.

would love to see those ads!

xpost - its not about the hip hop rhythms (though mamas gun has barely any hip hop aspects to it) and voodoo isnt that hip-hop flavoured either. its more about neo soul making prince go back to 70s soul/funk/jazz in a consciously retro way; TRC is also his most rhodes-heavy album, and the rhodes was dangelos key instrument. he didnt suddenly pick it up for no reason.

prince uses lots of slang on his 80s records, it's just slang of his own invention...

but yeah there's a desperation to the way he deploys curse words and hip-hop jargon in the 90s stuff, from "sexy mf" on down.

Days of Wild

I'm totally fine with ridiculous high concept albums that's not really my issue with it, the *sound* of it is just really unpleasant, this kind of generic easy listening jazz crap. (whoever said he really didn't understand how to play jazz is otm)

― Οὖτις, Thursday, May 5, 2016

I think we should distinguish between jazz and easy listening. George Benson, who isn't Miles Davis nor did he attempt to be, was often very good and occasionally great. His good music has a lot of detail and quiet virtuoso filigrees that work perfectly on the radio or in a hotel lounge.

The question of Najee is easier to answer: he's on the showboat end of easy listening and is often gross.

he reminds me of what was just said in the Prince R.I.P. thread about good JB-influenced funk: the idea of holding back and teasing instead of filling every space. The latter's what Najee does.

Prince's choice in sax players after Eric Leeds was pretty weak. Except for those few moments he had Maceo with him.

This album isnso fucking tight there's riffs for days on this thing!!!

Prince's choice in sax players after Eric Leeds was pretty weak. Except for those few moments he had Maceo with him.

I'm totally fine with ridiculous high concept albums that's not really my issue with it, the *sound* of it is just really unpleasant, this kind of generic easy listening jazz crap. (whoever said he really didn't understand how to play jazz is otm)

― Οὖτις, Thursday, May 5, 2016

I think we should distinguish between jazz and easy listening. George Benson, who isn't Miles Davis nor did he attempt to be, was often very good and occasionally great. His good music has a lot of detail and quiet virtuoso filigrees that work perfectly on the radio or in a hotel lounge.

The other thing about jazz playing is that there is a perhaps complicated set of guidelines and practices for what sounds "inside" and what sounds "outside." If you know a lot about that and have internalized it through years of practice and listening to others, you have considerable latitude of what you can play and have it still accepted as jazz. If you haven't mastered it yet, then when you intend to play "inside" it may sound like you are just playing jazz cliches, and your "outside" playing may sound like you are just playing another tune than what you started with. As an aside, my general impression from my recent crash course in Princeology, is that his dad may have been considered a bit of an eccentric more than a genuine jazz player.

i'd like to read more about his parents, who were both musicians. his dad was IIRC fairly old when prince was born -- in his mid-40s, maybe -- and i wonder if that meant he brought some old-school jazz/pop influences to bear.

my first thought when prince died was whether his parents were still alive (prince was only 57, it's not unlikely) but i guess they were both older when he was born and passed away some time ago.

=(

In Matt Thorne book-which I bought so you don't have to- Alan Leeds says that Prince didn't seem to know much about jazz until Eric Leeds educated him about it and Wendy pigeonholes him as more of a smooth jazz operator than a bebopper.

Xpost George Benson was a stone cold prodigy virtuoso as a teen.

I'm not even so sure about Eric Leeds himself. He is is my least favorite Leeds brother by a mile.
― Wrecka Stow Ralph (James Redd and the Blecchs), Saturday, May 7, 2016 12:53 PM (5 hours ago)

Fair enough but Alan Leeds doesn't play anything. Eric Leeds is a fine sax player and he and Prince were great together. That's undeniable. Unless you prefer Candy Dulfer.

Maybe I just might.

Read something a while back about how George Benson was really into Hank Garland when he was starting out.

Prince actually had najee as his sax man for a while IIRC

It's one thing I like about Prince - he does not care about good ideas of taste or cool canons. His sax tastes veer mostly towards smooth rather than hard.

I think I read in some Prince biography (though I can't remember whether it was pure speculation on the writer's part) that it bothered Prince that he could play all the other instruments needed for a funk/R&B track, except for the horns. Obviously he was a person who liked to be in control of everything, so maybe he preferred sax players (as well as trumpeters and trombonists) who would bend to his every wish rather than having a unique instrumental identity themselves?