Jump to content

What happened to Prince?


Apollo

Recommended Posts

Wasnt The Black Album situation something to do with the label wanting more pop oriented material? And thats the crux of the Prince thing. When he stops doing pop rock songs like U Got the Look and starts doing RNB stuff like on Emancipation that's when he loses The Rolling Stones fans.

The Black Album was shelved at Prince's request. The album was two weeks from release, manufactured and hundreds of thousands of copies sat boxed in warehouses after Prince had some kind of spiritual awakening and demanded that Warner destroy all copies of the album.
On wiki it says he tried to do it in 1987. Connect with black audiences again. I guess label just wanted to keep the pop thing going? But he got it out once he was a Symbol ans there for not controlled by the label? Edited by wasted
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Musicology seems like solid effort. That was on Universal.

Does seem like he wanted out of the pop icon mold. He has a weird religious phase too. 3121. At least Dylan finally said fuck it and became a new orleans bluesman arch capitalist.

Now he's back on Warners?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

While it's his 80's stuff/sound that I really love him for, there's still heaps of good stuff in his later albums.

Planet Earth and Lotus Flow3r had some brilliant stuff on them.

That is the one I got free with the Daily Mail. Might see if I can find it and give it another listen.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I own every album Prince has done and every bootleg (and there's probably more unreleased stuff than released stuff). His best album post-00's is probably Art Official Age or Planet Earth. Lotus Flow3r was good and I also enjoyed MPLSound which came bundled together as a separate album with Lotus.

Musicology and 3121 were fairly tepid efforts without any strong standout tracks.

His 90s stuff is very underrated and there is a lot of gems to be found on albums like Emancipation, Rave, Graffiti Bridge, The Gold Experience, Come and Love Symbol.

I would recommend any new fan to start with the 80s and work chronologically through his catalogue. At the end of the day, if you don't enjoy classics like Purple Rain, Parade and Sign O The Times then you're probably not going to like a good chunk of his later work.

Edited by Towelie
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I watched a documentary on Prince not to long ago and I feel they hit nail on the head reguarding this topic; "Prince has always had a great sound, but not always a great song." which I feel his newer music very much falls into this category. When he is on tv playing one of his newer songs, I very much think "man this sounds awesome", because it does. But I never find myself singing those songs afterwards. Through most of the 80s, he was able to put together some good songs to go with that great sound. But as time has gone by, the same thing has happened to him that happens to many great musicians, they just plain run out of interesting things to sing about. It might be success, or maybe it's being content with their life, but whatever the reasons they don't have the hunger that that did in their youth. But having said that, Prince can still pick up a guitar and jam the fuck out, and make some really AMAZING music. But his ability to put some great lyrics and melody's with that music appears to be over.

But truth be told, songwriting was always prince's weakest area. Lets face it, nobody is 100% the perfect package. Most of your best songwriters are average or slightly above average instrumentalists. While amazing instrumentalists on the other hand, tend to be weak songwriters. Honestly Hendrix and Chuck Berry were the 2 best guitar players with both skills.

Edited by Iron MikeyJ
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think that Prince is chasing trends nowadays as opposed to starting them. His last few albums have sounded incredibly sterile and generic. Whereas in the 80's up to the mid 90's he was able to sonically march to the beat of his own drum, even though he still had off moments like some of the cringeworthy rap stuff he tried to force into his early 90's material

All in all he is still incredibly talented but I don't get why he favors making boring pop music over trying to create original and novel pieces of work like he did for 20 years

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think that Prince is chasing trends nowadays as opposed to starting them. His last few albums have sounded incredibly sterile and generic. Whereas in the 80's up to the mid 90's he was able to sonically march to the beat of his own drum, even though he still had off moments like some of the cringeworthy rap stuff he tried to force into his early 90's material

All in all he is still incredibly talented but I don't get why he favors making boring pop music over trying to create original and novel pieces of work like he did for 20 years

He needed to put out a 1994-2014 compilation for the casual fans, and I think he's focused more on live shows than albums. With getting the publishing and master tape rights, I thought he'd be trying harder to get the entire back catalog out there.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...