90s Prince - S/D

has this been done before? i think my 's' section would go something like this:

Can't Stop This Feeling I Got
The Question of U
We Can Funk
Joy In Repetition
Thieves in the Temple
Diamonds and Pearls
Cream
Gett Off (promo version)
Walk Don't Walk
Money Don't Matter 2 Night
Insatiable
the morning papers
and god created woman
Papa
Dark
dolphin
shy
billy jack bitch
eye hate u
dinner with delores
had u
courtin time
in this bed i scream
soul sanctuary
curious child
dreamin about u
holy river
lets have a baby
my computer
one of us
the love we make
so far so pleased
tangerine
i love u but i dont trust u anymore

the 90s werent so bad after all.

nothing from love symbol?

"The Morning Papers" and "And God Created Woman" are from the Love Symbol. But anyone who doesn't include "Sexy M.F." and "7" on such a list must be crazy!

"Joy In Repetition"

^ apt

My top 25 Prince songs of the 90s would be like this:

Thieves in the Temple
Joy in Repetition
Loveleft, Loveright
Gett Off (12" Mix)
Horny Pony
Cream
Willing and Able
Sexy M.F.
7
The Morning Papers
The Max
Pink Cashmere
Super Hero
Space (Universal Love Remix)
Return of the Bump Squad
The Most Beautiful Girl in the World
P. Control (Remix)
Soul Sanctuary
Courtin' Time
Sex in the Summer
Joint 2 Joint
Face Down
My Computer
Emancipation
Pretty Man (Remix)

ooh i forgot horny pony. thats a really good one. cant think of any other essential b sides really. used to love love left love right but then i heard it last year and it didnt do much for me.

i haven't looked into prince's 90s output at all. is there one record in particular that i should start with?

The Gold Experience, for sure.

I'd say the Love Symbol album is his best record of the 90s. Emancipation is also very good, escpecially considering it's 180 minutes long and yet there's little filler on it.

The best ones from the 90s are The Gold Experience, Emancipation, O)+> and Come imo.

Come is... for those of aquired taste, I'd say. But you can't really go wrong with getting the first three on Dan's list.

"But anyone who doesn't include "Sexy M.F." and "7" on such a list must be crazy!"

call me crazy ;P but sexy mf was always a bit ropey to me - prince trying too hard to be sexy and outrageous/offensive, and 7 i do like, the acoustic version esp, but its a bit leaden.

"Letitgo" is one of my favorite songs of his, period.

"my name is prince" and "blue light" are also good

I mean, Come is certainly interesting, and it's worth the cheap price you can usually get it with, but I wouldn't recommend it for others than Prince completists. The whole album sounds like a bunch of tunes that were considered too weird or formless or indulgent for previous albums. And IIRC, that's exactly what it is: according to his contract Prince still owed Warner one album, but he didn't really want to put much effort into it, so he scoured his vaults for some leftover tunes.

(xx-post)

let it go is cool but it just sounded a bit too much like prince trying to fit into modern r&b at the time it came out imo...

not as bad as acknowledge me though ;)

Given that "Pheremone" sounds more like what was actually happening in R&B at the time, I disagree.

I think Prince saved his worst r'n'b imitations for New Power Soul and Rave In2 the Joy Fantastic. Up until Emancipation his take on r'n'b was still interesting, but those late 90s efforts sound pretty awful.

my favorite song where prince tries to do radio r&b is 'incense & candles'

Given that "Pheremone" sounds more like what was actually happening in R&B at the time, I disagree.

You gotta be kidding, right? What rnb in 1994 sounded like "Pheromone"? I agree with Titsy that "Letitgo" sounds like an attempt to do the Babyface/Toni Braxton/Mariah Carey sound of that era.

I am mostly thinking late-era new jack swing.

also: "Titsy"?

i agree with bumas. pheremone sounded almost like industrial NIN (i need a better reference) type shit.

uh no it didn't

You aren't thinking of the housey-rave track "Loose", are you?

Sorry, I meant "Titchy".

Wow. Some sheer wrongness here. "Come" wasn't a contract filler. That was "Chaos And Disorder". "Come" is possibly his last true studio effort for Warners. It's also possibly one of the darkest Prince records ("Papa", "Pheromone","Solo"). It's fine for the most part. Give it another full listen, Tuomas.

My fave 90's Prince albums are the ones Dan mentioned as his. "New Power Soul" is the one I've never heard that has the rep for being his worst ever.

nah 'Come' was all archive stuff- old stuff he made as "prince".

prince doesnt have a 'great' 90s album really. theyre all a bit so-so despite the great tracks on them. come was just stuff he had lying around from the gold exp-era that he gave to warners cos they wouldnt put out the gold experience i thought. and after all the hype about TGE, it wasnt especially amazing either.

i need to check out 'solo' again. not heard that in ages. come the actual song has some great horn charts and the extended vamping at the end is some of his best arranging but as a song its a bit lacking. there was a kinda funky live version he was doing around the time but its not as classy/lush.

come was just stuff he had lying around from the gold exp-era that he gave to warners cos they wouldnt put out the gold experience i thought.

This is pretty much the how the story's told in the Prince biographies I've read. I think there's a couple of Love Symbol era leftovers on Come too.

TBH, I don't think the problem is that they're leftover tunes as such... Most of the tunes on Come have one or two good ideas that could've been fleshed into nice tunes if Prince had put some effort into it, but it seems that he couldn't be arsed to do that. Plus Come lacks the spontaneous jammy vibe of that other leftover LP, the Black Album.

off the top of my head prob missing loads of stuff

joy in repitition
thieves in the temple
the sex of it
violet the organ grinder
cream
strollin
willing and able
money don't matter
sexy mf
morning papers
7
pink cashmere
if we can count the black album, all of that.
letitgo
i like every track on the gold experience
get wild
count the days
return of the bump squad
the exodus has begun
had u and there's another one of chaos i like too but i can't remember which one
the smooth ass mix of somebodys somebody
courtin time
sex in the summer

def search that live vhs of prince, michael bland and sonny t jamming in paisley park with the drunk girl walking around being sick.

yeah the undertaker was brilliant. maybe the best thing from that era. shame it never came out on cd.

xpost - come is ok. but its just another album where prince was trying to do a bit of everything that other people were doing (bit of techno, bit of kravitzy rock, bit of R&B etc etc). but i do like dark, papa, and solo was interesting and space had a pretty melody. race was awful though. i think the very last track was my favourite though, weirdly.

i forgot to include pink cashmere, peach and count the days in my first list.

Wasn't the last track just an old recording of Vanity faking an orgasm followed by some wave sounds?

(x-post)

Though I guess it sums up neatly what Prince is about.

haha, yes. great moaning and guitar playing (i think its taken from lady cab driver?).

I remember reading from somewhere that it's an old, unused recording of Vanity. And Vanity is not on Lady Cab Driver, is she?

wheres the guitar from though? im sure i remember reading he just lifted that from an older track of his, but i cant remember which. i think the moaning is from the bootleg song 'vibrator'.

i think i would have liked if he made all the other tracks silent and just kept only the last one audible. that would be a good epitah for 'prince 1958 - 1993'

"Love Sign" is a total jam.

"LOOSE!"

^^^

i forgot about she spoke to me and dont talk to strangers amazingly

could include some stuff from the NPG albums too - i always forget about those

i didnt include any of the truth album either! circle of amour should be in there.

Wot no 'Interactive'...

the whole truth album is great imo

i have a nice hq version of the undertaker stuff on mp3 somewhere

have any of the minnesotans here ever been to any of the paisley park surprise party things? that was prob my first experience of forums and stuff on the internet, reading alt.music.prince and prince.org paisley park gig reports, those parties sounded insane

that undertaker stuff will have all the npgmusicclub mp3s with it too. damn i need to dig all of that out, it'll be stuck in some ancient pc tower in the loft somewhere. some of the npgmusicclub radio shows had some incredible live recordings on them, well worth hunting down.

we'll forget about cybersingle though.

The pitchfork list of post 93 cuts is pretty dissapointing.

Come is a great album. is that 90's? it's probably his most overlooked full album, a total classic in my book

the current played "love 2 the 9s" in its chronological overview of prince and wow is that the best song ever written

Come is definitely underrated. Very bleak, and in parts it sounds like trip-hop

I love to the 9s.

ooh i got into "Love 2 The 9's" last year and forgot how good it is

I also loved "Strollin", "Thunder", "The Max", and "Morning Papers" from the first two NPG albums

tho those are definitely the most dated sounding albums of his (the NPG joints), whereas Come isn't.

also, Tuomas and titchy were way RONG upthread, Come wasn't a contract filler full of cast asides. He wrote most of it at the same time as The Gold Experience was written, and was originally going to put "Endorphinmachine" from the latter album after it. He submitted both of those albums to Warner at the same time, they just didn't want to release both simultaneously.

It's only considered cast asides because Prince himself said that about the album, but nothing about the album's genesis suggested it was thrown together from leftover material...he actually wrote for the album, even if he did use a track or two from prior to 1993.

*after it = "on it"

original version of Come that WB rejected didn't have the title track on it. could you imagine

add "Space" to my list of 90's Prince.

and fuckin "Pheremone"

I always liked "Walk, Don't Walk."

Come is a great album.

agreed.

Come has race and loose. Not sure if i can get behind it thaaaat much. Though orgasm was always good.

Emancipation is his best, best written, most carefully crafted album of the 90s. It's his purple rain of the 90s in that sense. It's way too long, he should not have been releasing triples at that stage in his career and I doubt it helped him get the comeback he was craving but it does have more great songs than any other 90s album.

Add a few other songs to that list at the start of this thread and you have a fantastic album.

"Race" is a misstep, very poor and dated hip-hop laced New Jack Swing. feel like that's the low point but I can live with that.

as far as releasing triples at that stage of his career, is there ever a stage where it's appropriate to release a triple? that's what you had to love about Prince. he just didn't care.

gotta listen to that one again now.

Come is a proper fucking prince album, isn't it? I'm excited that I never heard it til now

The nasty title track is awesome. Love the horn arrangements. My least faves on "Come" are Race and Loose but otherwise -- great.

I'll be damned if "solo" off Come doesn't sound like a Tim Buckley starsailor thing???

Eye'm re-listening 2 Come now and it's still as great as ever. 4 what it lacks in "hit singles", it makes up 4 in consistency. Definitely an "album" album.

The long version of "Pink Cashmere" is pretty dope and it's become one of my favorite re-discoveries of the past week. Was there ever a video for it in rotation on MTV?

I'd probably rank the post-Batman WB catalogue like this:

1. The Gold Experience - His best record of the '90s. 'Endorphinmachine', 'Shhh', 'The Most Beautiful Girl in the World', 'I Hate U', 'Gold' etc. Superb.
2. Come - Written off by many as an album Prince threw together to get out of his contract, this LP is actually made up of the less commercial tracks from the sessions for The Gold Experience and works well as a front-to-back album experience. Very underrated. 'Come', 'Space', 'Pheromone', 'Papa', 'Dark' ... 'Solo' is one of his strangest tracks.
3. Love Symbol - An overlong, overstuffed record which is slightly brought down (again) by the presence of Tony M. - this album does what Diamonds and Pearls does, but does it better. There's about 40-45 minutes of excellent music here, maybe more: 'Sexy MF', 'The Morning Papers', 'Love 2 The 9s', 'Damn U', 'And God Created Woman', '3 Chains o' Gold' ... '7' is a highlight for many, it's not for me.
4. Chaos and Disorder - Like Come, this is written off as an album Prince threw together to get out of his contract, and unlike Come, this album really does have a thrown together vibe to it. However, at the same time this is probably Prince's most guitar-heavy release of the '90s, so if you enjoy Prince's guitar playing (and I do) there's much to enjoy here. It's nowhere near Prince's most essential batch of songs, but if you take it as a light, breezy release with Prince stratching his guitar itch, it's quite enjoyable. For a contractual obligation album, there's some very energetic performances here too.
5. Graffiti Bridge - Not a record I feel like putting on often, and very much a step down from Lovesexy and Batman, even though a lot of the material on the record is old material.
6. Diamonds and Pearls - His least enjoyable record of the '90s for me. 'Thunder', 'Diamonds and Pearls', 'Cream', 'Money Don't Matter 2 Night' and possibly 'Insatiable', but there's a lot I don't like about this record, particularly Tony M.'s "contributions" ...

Pretty otm list though I'd flip #s 1 & 2. I think "Come" is a near-perfect album minus "Loose" and "Race". TGE has too much Prince-rap which I could never warm to.

no Emancipation?

If I was to include the '90s stuff after he left WB, I'd put Emancipation slightly above Love Symbol and Rave Un2 the Joy Fantastic would be a distant last place.

I keep forgetting Rave Un2 the Joy Fantastic exists, which I guess actually makes it worse than Diamonds and Pearls.

For the life of me, just can't get into Emancipation. Far, far too little variety in an album so long - acres and acres of mid-paced RnB

Disc 2 is wonderful and varied.

Disc 3 is odd and varied.

yeah, I have the same issue with Emancipation : while it plays in the back it's nice but I don't think I could name ONE song on it !
that said I'm far from begin a 90s Prince fan. I have never heard a note from Come, for instance. The last album I really like from him is Lovesexy.

Emancipation is the perfect soundtrack for a 90s 30something BBQ party... (and I don't say it like it's a bad thing !)

Emancipation was really the last time I remember Prince being that visible in the UK. I seem to him remember him playing the title track at the Brit Awards and also there was quite a fair bit of press surrounding the record being his first after the whole Warner Bros. thing. 'Dinner With Delores' from Chaos and Disorder was played a lot on MTV Europe, too, so I kinda have 1996 in my head as the last year that Prince was really "visible" ... I know he had an attempt at getting back into the mainstream with Rave Un2 the Joy Fantastic, but mostly post-Emancipation Prince's career seemed to be "fans only" territory, even with the newspaper giveaways etc.

Emancipation is the perfect soundtrack for a 90s 30something BBQ party... (and I don't say it like it's a bad thing !)

― AlXTC from Paris, Monday, June 26, 2017 1:19 PM (five minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Makes sense. Prince was 38 when it was released.

and he certainly enjoyed BBQs.

I think to get maximum enjoyment out of '90s Prince, though, you have to see it as a body of work that's completely separate from his work from the beginning up to Batman. The '80s stuff is Prince as madcap studio wizard, an artist pretty much on his own path. The '90s stuff is Prince playing catch-up, a follower rather than a leader.

I'd put it another way; 80s Prince is largely someone making his own costumes, while 90s Prince is noticing the wardrobe has stuff other people made and trying that on with some alterations to fit his weird body shape

Pretty much on board with Turrican's ranking. I have to thank old ILX threads for making me try and like Come, while Love Symbol really does have some wonderful high points + at least its lowpoints are DOING SOMETHING.

Never had the heart to listen to Rave Un2.

What's the best protege album of the 90s?

Rave Un2 is a very depressing album aside from a hilarious cover of "Every Day Is A Winding Road"

So what do people think of Rave In2? (Not a typo.)

What's the best protege album of the 90s?

― or at night (Jon not Jon),

Not protegé, but my favorite Prince donation of the '90s is the basic track for "Love...Thy Will Be Done" to Martika.

oh wait that's 90s? LOL i had it in my mind as '89 or something. Yes, the Prince tracks on Martika's Kitchen definitely take it.

What's the best protege album of the 90s?

― or at night (Jon not Jon), Monday, June 26, 2017 10:28 AM (sixteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

That's prob a toss up between Tevin Campbell's "I'm Ready" and Martika's "Martika's Kitchen". The pickings are slim.

Lol Alfred beat me to it

The funny thing about Emancipation is that it was meant to represent something of a new beginning for Prince, a freedom where he could put out triple albums and do whatever the hell he wanted. For me, as much as I can find a lot to like on the record, it represents the very, very end for me.

insofar as it also marked the end of decent sales in America and basic good sense until 2004, yes.

I'll put it this way: I'm far more excited about what '80s treasures were in Prince's vault than any of the officially released stuff post-1996.