Prince designed Purple Rain as the project that would make him a superstar, and, surprisingly, that is exactly what happened. Simultaneously more focused and ambitious than any of his previous records, Purple Rain finds Prince consolidating his funk and R&B roots while moving boldly into pop, rock, and heavy metal with nine superbly crafted songs. ...
With Dirty Mind, Prince had established a wild fusion of funk, rock, new wave, and soul that signaled he was an original, maverick talent, but it failed to win him a large audience. After delivering the sound-alike album, Controversy, Prince revamped his sound and delivered the double album 1999. Where his earlier albums had been a fusion of ...
Controversy continues in the same vein of new wave-tinged funk on Dirty Mind, emphasizing Prince's fascination with synthesizers and synthesizing disparate pop music genres. It is also more ambitious than its predecessor, attempting to tackle social protest ("Controversy," "Ronnie, Talk to Russia," "Annie Christian") along with sex songs ("Jack U ...
Since his second full-length as Pantha du Prince, 2007's truly sublime, duly acclaimed This Bliss, Henrik Weber has gradually expanded his profile beyond the traditional confines of the minimal electronic realm, turning in remixes for the likes of Animal Collective, Bloc Party, and the Long Blondes and, in 2009, making the surprising shift from ...
Even geniuses (maybe especially geniuses) are taken for granted, not seen as geniuses, or only appreciated in small doses. Which is a grandiose way of saying that, no matter how partisans may complain, there are many listeners out there that don't want to delve into the deliriously rich catalog of Prince and would rather spend time with a single ...
Undaunted by the criticism Around the World in a Day received, Prince continued to pursue his psychedelic inclinations on Parade, which also functioned as the soundtrack to his second film, Under the Cherry Moon. Originally conceived as a double album, Parade has the sprawling feel of a double record, even if it clocks in around 45 minutes. Prince ...
Neither For You nor Prince was adequate preparation for the full-blown masterpiece of Prince's third album, Dirty Mind. Recorded in his home studio, with Prince playing nearly every instrument, Dirty Mind is a stunning, audacious amalgam of funk, new wave, R&B, and pop, fueled by grinningly salacious sex and the desire to shock. Where other pop ...
Purple Rain made Prince sound like he could do anything, but it still didn't prepare even his most fervent fans for the insular psychedelia of Around the World in a Day. Prince had made his interior world sound fascinating and utopian on Purple Rain, but Around the World in a Day is filled with cryptic religious imagery, bizarre mysticism, and ...
Prince changed his name to an unpronounceable symbol in 1993, but it wasn't until 1995 that he actually released a record credited to that symbol. During those two years, he released a greatest-hits collection, an official version of his much-bootlegged Black Album, and a final Prince album, the lackluster Come. Throughout 1994, he pressured ...
Comeback accomplished, Prince now settles into a groove with 2007's Planet Earth, his 26th studio album and successor to the two deliberate comebacks, Musicology and 3121. Those two albums were designed to storm the top of the charts but, more importantly, they were made with the intention of making Prince prominent again -- a gambit that worked ...
Fearless, eclectic, and defiantly messy, Prince's Sign 'O' the Times falls into the tradition of tremendous, chaotic double albums like The Beatles, Exile on Main St., and London Calling -- albums that are fantastic because of their overreach, their great sprawl. Prince shows nearly all of his cards here, from bare-bones electro-funk and smooth ...
Prince's two-part Hits collection includes enough necessary items to illustrate why he was one of the most influential and gifted musicians of the '80s, as well as providing a reasonable introduction and compilation for casual fans. Hits 1 contains a good cross section of his biggest hits -- "When Doves Cry" (presented in an edited version), "When ...
Like Hits 1, Hits 2 presents a cross section of some of Prince's biggest hits and most notorious songs, including "Dirty Mind," "I Wanna Be Your Lover," "Head," "Delirious," "Little Red Corvette," "I Would Die 4 U," "Raspberry Beret," "Kiss," "U Got the Look," "Cream," and "Purple Rain." Two new tracks, "Peach" and "The Pope," are included among ...
From the seemingly bottomless vaults of Trojan Records comes this very fine collection of dub from the '70s: reggae's classical period and the high point of dub as a producer's art form. One in a series of limited-edition box sets, this set features 50 tracks on three discs at three-for-two pricing with attractive, no-frills packaging. The bands ...
Prince's star faded not long after he won emancipation from Warner Brothers in 1995, as he abandoned the mainstream so he could follow his whims however he liked. Which meant that he effectively started making records for nobody but himself, whether that meant triple-disc collections of new material or an all-instrumental smooth jazz album, and in ...
The third Prince compilation includes a second disc devoted to 12" mixes and extended dance mixes issued on CD maxi-singles. There is certainly a market for these mixes -- they have not been compiled on CD, so hardcore fans have been awaiting their reissue, not just for the sake of completism, but because the mixes were often very good. Included ...
Hard-hitting hip-hop with an unrepentant gangsta tone. Arabian Prince angered some in the middle class community with this unrelenting condemnation of inner city life. It was vicious and vulgar, but delivered with the kind of cold, harsh slant that made it convincing. ~ Ron Wynn, All Music Guide
Prince spent the latter half of the '80s courting the pop audience, and by the time of Graffiti Bridge, he had lost much of his R&B fan base. As a response, he formed the New Power Generation and recorded Diamonds and Pearls, his first record to reconnect with the urban audience since 1999, as well as his first to acknowledge the hip-hop ...
One of Rhino's main gifts as a record label is that they know a good gimmick when they see it, and there's no better gimmick than the millennium. Hence, their series of Millennium Party albums. None of the Millennium discs demonstrate much imagination, but they do make a good argument that sometimes it's better to stick to the basics. For instance ...
Emancipation was a critical moment for Prince, one that he designed as an artistic rebirth and, optimistically, as a commercial comeback. In a typically perverse fashion, Prince decided to make the album a triple-disc set running exactly three hours, easily making it the longest album of all-new original material ever released by a popular artist. ...
It may not have been embraced by the entire hip-hop community, but P.M. Dawn's ponderously titled debut Of the Heart, of the Soul and of the Cross: The Utopian Experience was a startling reimagination of the music's possibilities. In the post-De La Soul age, hip-hop seemed open to all sorts of eccentrics, but P.M. Dawn was still difficult for ...
Prince had stumbled commercially with Lovesexy, which may be one of the reasons he decided to record the soundtrack for Tim Burton's dark, gothic interpretation of the DC comic Batman . Reportedly, the Batman album was recorded quickly, and it shows in the loose, offhand nature of the songs, which actually comes as some relief after the big ...
Originally scheduled for release in November of 1987 -- following the double-album Sign o' the Times by a matter of months -- Prince pulled The Black Album weeks before its release, guaranteeing it near-mythic status. Urban legends spread like wildfire: Prince believed it was too bleak to release; Warner Bros. balked at its explicit lyrics; no CDs ...
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