prince

Lovesexy was my first Prince LP and is often still my favourite

i'm not saying it's bad, it's a good album

but it's the end of the era

hmm tho diamonds and pearls is messing up my theory..i forget how big that album was just because i think it pretty much stinks

It does stink

Eric Weisbard got it right re Lovesexy: "more okay God pop."

D&P remains an excrescence

Lovesexy is the end of the imperial run; even if it is overused, “1980-88” will probably be a part of Prince conversation til the end of time

Releasing it as one long track was easily one of the biggest mistakes he ever made.

At least on vinyl you can drop the needle

There's actually quite a bit I like on D&P when looking at the tracklist again. But yes, the overall impression is that it's very ungood.

Diamonds and Pearls is high school to me so i don't get the hate. I still unreservedly love most of the album, particularly Money Don't Matter 2 Night, Strollin, Thunder, Insatiable, Get Off, Willing and Able...

High school for me too, and I still l thought it sucked aprt from the second and fourth singles and "Walk Don't Walk." Prince wanted R&B hits again, he got them.

Walk Don't Walk is good too! Cream ain't bad either! It's just a handful of zonkers on there imo.

I think you all are underestimating exactly how bad "Jughead" is

Ranking the singles:

Money Don't Matter 2 Night
Cream
Insatiable
Gett Off
Thunder
Diamonds and Pearls

Gett Off is embarrassing. Otherwise otm

Songs i will not readily rep for on D+P: the title cut, jughead, push.
Live 4 Love is sprawling but has some good batman energy and Daddy Pop is totally a too-long b-side but I have some nostalgic love.
Three bad tracks out of 13 on a prince album is to be expected!

My main memory of the album will always be this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-h4UK2G8B0

This was the first "maxi-single" i ever bought and it kinda blew my little teen age mind.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-CHzzvJTMg

@DJP - MN only reference but the title track always had a Lorie Line vibe

what’s that link, forks?

"Violet the Organ Grinder" off the Gett Off maxi-single

merci

love the title track, it sounds like it was mixed/mastered for those crappy stereos at gas pumps

We got a new album in July:
https://store.prince.com/product/5QCDPR047/welcome-2-america-cd

I hope it's good. I didn't like 20Ten from the same year but it had a pair of keepers that I put on a personal compilation of Prince's later work.

Wouldn't mind seeing your tracklist for that compilation tbh.

I really liked much of 20Ten for its one-man-band vibe. He sounded like he had fun making it. Doubt this one will have that same feel with the list of collaborators involved but who knows?

Sure. I burned this a few months after Prince died. Covers the studio work following Emancipation (1996).

FWIW I have Musicology, 3121, Art Official Age and Hit n Run Phase Two, so even though they're covered, there's other stuff I like on them that I left out for space.

Wasted Kisses • 1997 - 2016

Disc One
1. The Truth 03:34
2. Don't Play Me 02:47
3. Circle Of Amour 04:43
4. Wasted Kisses 03:03
5. The Greatest Romance Ever Sold 05:30
6. Baby Knows 03:18
7. Prettyman 04:24
8. The Work Pt. 1 03:46
9. She Loves Me 4 Me 02:49
10. A Case Of U 03:32
11. Musicology 04:24
12. A Million Days 03:50
13. Cinnamon Girl 03:56
14. 3121 04:31
15. Lolita 04:06
16. Black Sweat 03:11
17. Deliverance 03:45
18. Guitar 03:46
19. The One U Wanna C 04:29
20. Chelsea Rodgers 05:41

Disc Two
1. (There'll Never B) Another Like Me 6:01
2. Chocolate Box 6:14
3. Dance 4 Me 4:58
4. Colonized Mind 4:47
5. Feel Good, Feel Better, Feel Wonderful 3:52
6. $ 3:58
7. Future Soul Song 5:08
8. Laydown 3:07
9. Breakfast Can Wait 3:54
10. FunknRoll 4:09
11. Breakdown 4:04
12. Way Back Home 3:45
13. 1000 X's & O's 4:28
14. June 3:22
15. Black Muse 7:22
16. RocknRoll Love Affair 4:02
17. Baltimore 4:34

Actually it was a year after Prince died. "Deliverance" didn't come out until then.

Nice!

welcome 2 america is pretty terrible

hope it reaches the heights of the Vikings fight song from that year

Sadly I agree, it is an embarrassing track

Okay instrumental though!

Disappointing but not surprising. Based on what's out there (which is probably a good sampling of his archives, even if it's arguably a small fraction of it), it just seems unlikely that Prince would bury a good album in the vault while putting out something as disappointing as 20Ten. If it is good, it's usually picked apart and reconfigured into something else. The closest thing to a lost classic is The Black Album which did go to press and was released six years later anyway, so it's a fairly atypical case.

Facebook ad:

"Welcome 2 America. The unreleased studio vault album that documents Prince’s concerns, hopes and visions for a shifting society. Available July 30th. Pre-Order Now."

Some snippets here from CBS at the weekend -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3vjB9fgjfg0

If I were the estate I'd have made an album of his political songs over the last two decades and released it as a compilation.

More here, though cant say I'm super excited about this 2010 album. I think they're just trying to market it to reposition prince as more of a thinker than most people see him as being.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lN0Lw8NebDI

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/prince-welcome-2-america-60-minutes-2021-04-11/

i get that presenting prince as an "artist of this moment" is smart from a marketing perspective but his political acumen was generally not his strongest suit for the long game.
"Welcome to America" sounds like a Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy b-side and not in a good way. "Distracted by the features of the iPhone/In other words taken by a pretty face (somebody's watching u)/hook up later at the iPad" and a handful of Bush senior quotes don't bode well for the lyrical freshness here.

I mean, dude was a Jehovah's Witness, anti gay marriage and believed in chemtrails I don't think the estate is going to benefit from digging too deep into his beliefs

princes politics as heard in his music changed quite a lot in the last few decades. i personally prefer what he used to do which was just donate to causes he believed in, rather than try to put it in a song and get to sermonising. but if you wanted to hear how prince's views changed over the years, including conspiracy theorising and so on, you could check out these:

Act of God
Avalanche
Baltimore
Black Muse
Colonized Mind
Days of Wild
Dear Mr. Man
Dreamer
Family Name
Golden Parachute
Judas Smile
Silicon ("Leave that blood alone/Don't you know that dead blood kills interferons/Making the immune system victim to whereupon/Any known virus can boot up and log on/WWW dot you dot com"
2045 Radical Man
The Word
The War
United States Of Division
When Will We Be Paid?
We March

could just be me, but didnt totally believe the enthusiasm of morris hayes as he played that reporter the new music in that 60 mins clip. more than anyone, i think many of his collaborators knew what was good and what wasnt.

Ronnie Talk To Russia

thats earlier though, when he was more leaning towards the conservative, republican-ish side in his political songs. america is another song like that. free too.

xpost Forced enthusiasm. The blank look on that reporter’s face as he listened was hilarious. And, yeah, those snippets sounded pretty ho-hum.

NYT on the single. clearly hearing something im not.

Prince, ‘Welcome 2 America’
Prince recorded an album called “Welcome 2 America” in 2010, but shelved it before his death in 2016; his estate will release it in July. Maybe Prince decided the album was too bleak. Its title song is ominous, funky, seemingly improvisational and deeply cynical about an era of misinformation, exploitation and distraction. A pithy, stop-start bass line leaves space for dissonant little solos, while Prince’s vocals are deadpan spoken words: “Truth is a new minority.” He’s answered by women singing precise, jazzy harmonies and layering on more messages: “Land of the free, home of the brave,” they sing with a swinging lilt. “Oops, I mean, land of the free, home of the slave.” JON PARELES#

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/09/arts/music/playlist-prince-doja-cat-twenty-one-pilots.html

it's funny that there will be people who get excited by an "unreleased" prince record when there's like 20 most people have never heard on streaming right now

OTM.

That late-career playlist posted upthread ("Wasted Kisses") made me realize how many Prince albums I've not only never heard, but actually never heard of. "MPLSoUND"? "One Night Alone"???

(the selections from the 2 HITNRUN albums are amazing, btw. thanks for sharing that list!)

I bet I could fairly easily put together an unranked top 400 tracklist from prince without having to resort to side projects