New Prince

Prince is usually at his best when he works in the middle-ground between the funk of "The Black Album" and the rock of his latest album.

And this song sounds way too much like "Sexy MF" - his worst ever single. He should at least use synths instead of guitars when he wants to make that kind of music.

this is fun!

"Sexy MF" - his worst ever single. He should at least use synths instead of guitars when he wants to make that kind of music.

-- Geir Hongro, Monday, 12 November 2007 14:46 (47 minutes ago) Link

GEIR OTM

I still haven't heard it. I really liked Musicology, but 3121 was half good half "meh" for me, although "Lolita" was awesome...and the dude tore it up at the Super Bowl.

Prince=teh win

leave it to Prince to address a fan on a message board by name in a song and still not look lame

?

Prince calls out people on message boards in a song recently posted, Jordan.

"Future Baby Mama" is the greatest song Prince has written in nearly 20 years everything else is just blah

rong

its kinda meh, as they say. throwaway camille-style funk. lyric actually sounds like it has a sense of purpose which is fine until you remember what the purpose is in this case, but its too clean sounding. sounds like he knocked it out in 5 minutes. IMO he hasnt been too funky in years and this doesnt really change that.

i downloaded that jazz record "N.E.W.S." he did. OMG that's the worst album ever recorded by humans easy.

Prince calls out people on message boards in a song recently posted, Jordan.

THANKS FOR CLEARING THAT UP.

I like half of the stuff on 3121 as much or more than Future Baby Mama, ie Black Sweat, Satisfied, Lolita, 3121, Love, and Incense & Candles.

OMG that's the worst album ever recorded by humans easy.

haha yeah I think that's the album that killed my wife's Prince fanaticism

i love prince up to a point (lovesexy) but god i can't believe people are so blinded by that stuff they can't see how fucking lame he is now. it's weird. he's no better than some average funk band you'd see at a local bar most of the time, plus all those crappy session dude guitar solos. blech.

plus all those crappy session dude guitar solos.

uh, no.

uh yes

"people are so blinded by that stuff they can't see how fucking lame he is now."

OTM

performance-wise he's still pretty amazing and quite funny. waaaay more versatile than "some average funk band you'd see at a local bar".

I don't know any session dudes who pay homage Eddie Hazel so religiously.

i dont know why when a guy plays with soul and chops it automatically gets summed up as "session dude shit" by some people. his guitar paying is mighty tasty to these ears. that synth solo on the new one is awes classic prince style.

chaki otm

after buying emancipation i was like why am i wasting my time listening to this and pretending like i have to find the good in it? i let go...it felt so good. like when i let myself not care about star wars anymore after attack of the clones.

wrt to his lead playing, he's pretty hot shit in a oh hey check this shit out kind of way, but i never find his solos particularly memorable...he sounds so sterile compared to eddie hazel.

he sounds more van halen than hazel these days. hes virtuoso-like but it turned into cheesy wankery really quickly at the recent london shows. it was just one massive solo after another. even when he brought on winehouse to do loves a losing game (in turgid modern blues style), he couldnt resist chucking in a whopping solo after each and every verse.

"i dont know why when a guy plays with soul and chops it automatically gets summed up as "session dude shit"

cos its all flash and well, thats about it.

I'm with Chaki. Anyone who thinks this is half-baked funk or even sounds remotely like "Sexy MF" should have their ears cleaned. This is the closest he's come to the energy and weirdness of '87 Prince in eons. What if he knocked it out in 5 minutes? Wasn't the "Black Album" done in, like, a weekend?

Waiting for the "3121 is much better then The Black Album, anyhow" responses...

prince isnt fucking shredding and and doing sweeps and shit. he's doing long notey bluesy rock soloing in the style of hendrix. playing a blues lick after every line is in the tradition of modern blues. is bb king all flash? dude, you are full of shit re: prince's playing. dude is full of soul and pain.

xpost

it was just one massive solo after another.

I'm kinda surprised, honestly... the times I've seen him he didn't solo much at all. Maybe this is a recent thing cuz he thinks people have forgotten he's the only black pop star left who can play guitar.

black album was recorded in one night

actually he's kind of the ONLY pop star left that can play guitar (EVH doesn't count)

(that can't possibly be true about the Black Album! too many overdubs on it)

x-post

ok this is great

yah you're right, shakey

And I finally listened to "Planet Earth" this weekend and thought - for the first 5 or so songs at least - it holds up better than the previous two albums. But I can't feel the love so many people have for "Chelsea Rodgers". "The One U wanna See" is my jam. Is that Wendy & Lisa doing b-ground vocals on that?

"dude is full of soul and pain."

haha. ok.

yah they are also on "lion of judah." for the record i find planet earth and 3121 mostly wack but my mom loves them. i think he makes music for moms now which is cool.

xpost

that song he did recently about his guitar was sub-lenny kravitz but i still like him alright

yeah he's more like a preservation act these days - Musicology really spells out what he's about these days (ie, remember when r&b was versatile and weird and oh yeah don't forget JAMES BROWN and JIMI HENDRIX and CURTIS MAYFIELD)

yeah, "guitar" sucks. "the one u wanna c" is my favorite too.

people are so blinded by that stuff they can't see how fucking lame he is now.

Less than two years ago, he delivered his best album in ages. "Planet Earth" may not be particularly good, but "3121" was ace!

why is hendrix always brought up when it comes to princes playing? i hear a lot more or just as much santana as hendrix. santana also played in a prettier, less messy/rougher style than hendrix, which is more how prince plays. the hendrix-prince guitar playing similarities are really over emphasised, prob just cos theyre the biggest black rock icons of the past 40 years. prince plays a lot poppier than hendrix.

the rainbow children and the truth are his last two good albums.

I think its more Hazel than anyone else (as I mentioned a few posts back) but the Hendrix stuff comes up because Prince is fond of breaking out those "chitlin circuit" gimmicks that Hendrix became famous for - playing with his teeth, whipping his guitar around, etc. Physically they play the guitar in very similar ways.

geir otm! titchyschneider SO RONG

yeah I don't think people who are interested in him post-Musicology are really blinded to how bad the vast majority of his 90s output is. Prince has definitely gone through an "I'm gonna re-engage with the general public" campaign with the last few records, and its merited much better musical results... you can't tell me 3121 is somehow just as bad (or worse) than, say, Rave Un2 the Joy Fantastic.

ah i dont care. i 'let go' of being a prince fan years ago. each new album just reminds me why. 3121, musicornolgy, planet earth, rave unto the joy fantastic, god, theyre all virtually the same album!

see, that is demonstrably untrue. Rainbow Children, N.E.W.S., Rave, Emancipation, all those Warner Bros extras, etc. are all quite different in tone and construction from the last three.

This is the wrong thread, but anyone who says Emancipation isn't worth trolling through for an album and a half's worth of really fine material hasn't been listening. And what he's doing on these recent albums compared with Emancipation seems very different to these ears.

planet earth is more fm-rock than anything hes made since chaos and disorder, sure, but rave, musicology, 3121, these three are pretty all the same 'please return me back to commercial/mainstream form' albums. im not talking about emancipation (its cliche to say but theres a really really excellent one-disc album in there) or TRC, those are quite different.

lol prince plays SO MUCH like hendrix.

I don't mind when Prince's stuff doesn't work (like most of Planet Earth) because the stuff that does (like most of 3121) are so worth the pain of the failures.

the rainbow children and the truth are his last two good albums.
3121, musicornolgy, planet earth, rave unto the joy fantastic, god, theyre all virtually the same album!

ROFFLES NON-STOP

He's still a dick:

http://www.spin.com/articles/prince-smashed-someone-elses-guitar-fallon/

Did I miss this? New one not bad?

It's not great.

its better than pretty much any of his albums from the past 10 years. the AOA one at least. it sounds like prince comfortable to be prince again. and hes making some effort again, which he hasnt done for years. some awful moments in there of course, but most of it is likeable enough, even if i dont really know how much i want to listen to it repeatedly. the 3rd eye girl one is pretty terrible. like TGE and chaos and disorder, but insipid and bloodless.

is it better than 3121? not even gonna listen to the trio record.

the trio record is a bit embarassing. AOA is better than 3121 or as good as. its funkier, anyway. and funkier in a way he hasnt been in decades.

it's also good as its basically prince sounding like prince but also sounding current without trying to sound like everyone else

It's a grower too. Found myself humming Way Back Home the other day.

this is actually like an old prince album where you can kind of imagine him making a live show out of it, the first song has a terrible rap on it but it sounds like a grand entrance kind of song (also makes me think prince dabbling in EDM = not actually so bad)

Dude has a really high standard to reach when he puts out new music.

Breakfast can Wait is def worth a listen.

"Breakfast Can Wait" came out so long ago, and is so much better than the rest of the album, that i feel like he must've spent the last year and a half trying in vain to make more songs of that caliber

he sounds more like Cartman than Camille on the pitched-up vocal on "FUNKNROLL"