prince

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

And most fans could!

Tbh, at this point I might be more excited about an album where Prince didn't get to choose the tracks.

Dylan has the best archival series in large part because he doesn't give a fuck and let's them do it

I get that a recent album might have more impact and help to look at prince beyond the 80s, but I doubt this one will show he was making brilliant, overlooked music in the 2010s. and now that hes gone, its ALL in the past, so why would you opt for what is likely to be just another okay ish modern prince album? Surely we had enough of those from 2004 to 2015?

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

(Of all the artists who deserve an ILM ballot poll redux.)

Also his quality control, or awareness of what was good about his music seemed to go really askew in the later years, so you just know this will have maybe 2 to 3 rough gems and the rest borderline duds.

even Chaos and Disorder had "Dig U Better Dead"

https://wetransfer.com/downloads/a9101e9b631a11a3d73cec0d5dec8e5420210418084148/358b79

Npr/radio 4 Ann powers doc on prince.
Asks what prince might have made if he was alive during last years BLM protests which makes me wonder if maybe he would have gotten better at the recent social commentaries in his songs as he was looking outward more. Or maybe songs like Baltimore or act of God are better than I remember.

or... you could listen for free here? i’m assuming this is what you’re talking about?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000v75j

i put the DL link for ppl who might not be able to access BBC sounds due to not being in the uk.

Sounds is available everywhere now apart from Russia, China, North Korea and Vietnam

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/help/questions/listening-outside-the-uk/international

"political prince? in MY era? it's more likely than you think" is a simple narrative that serves the new album so i'm not surprised there's a lot of these kinda pieces

I didnt actually know Prince didnt believe in voting or that it was against his faith.

https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/music/story/2021-04-21/every-prince-single-ranked

Anniversary of his death today. Lot of content around it seems.

already furious at this list

Recently had the big idea that parade would be better if it ended after do u lie. Not cos the last three songs are bad but just that they dont seem to fit. #blamespotify

Either way,wendy and lisa posted this on Facebook from a big new prince book due soon, about the making of sometimes it snows in April

https://www.facebook.com/musicbywendyandlisa/posts/312206346929831

Really surprised to find out SISIA dates back to his pre-warners years.

things i don't care about #1: a ranked list of prince's singles from someone I've never met or heard of

https://audioboom.com/posts/7848858-barney-hoskyns-on-prince

Idk if you will hate this then but I enjoyed it, even if BH is an old rockist crit guy through and through

OK I saw "I Wish U Heaven" in the bottom 15 of the LA Times list, and that's a hard pass.

i learned from sheila e's twitter that prince didn't like people to watch him eat and also made undercooked eggs :D

U so dislike eating in front of people. But u could throw down when u wanted too. U always cooked eggs for me and I made the pancakes. The eggs weren’t always done 😳 that’s why I made the pancakes to cover up the eggs. 🥰 💜 #prince #eggs #memories pic.twitter.com/S6jJZsZCDH

— SheilaEdrummer (@SheilaEdrummer) April 21, 2021

#prince #eggs #memories the best series of hashtags ever?

Sometimes It Snows At Easter

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=febeHW4EO4o

'70s soul pastiche is not at all what I expected. I don't know how to feel about him having a band & production that actually sounds, idk, tasteful?

prince was always tasteful gtfo

(but yeah, this is great)

it's a good track, dunno how it will hold up to repeat play

am I crazy or does this sound like P influenced by D'Angelo rather than the other way around?