squirrelgrease said:

I'm in the minority in that I feel One Nite Alone - Piano is a top-ten Prince album of all time...

Well, I'm with you in that minority.

Huggiebear said:

TwiliteKid said:

jtfolden said:

You say that like it's a fact.

Would you disagree?

Partially, yeah. In that specific case, I might choose Let's Go Crazy over Dreamer but would take No More Candy 4 U over Horny Toad any day of the week.

1. 20Ten
2. LOtUSFLOW3R
3. 3121
4. The Rainbow Children
5. Musicology
6. One Nite Alone...
7. Planet Earth
8. C-Note
9. MPLSoUND
10. One Nite Alone... Live!
11. The Chocolate Invasion
12. N.E.W.S
13. The Slaughterhouse
14. Rave In2 the Joy Fantastic
15. Xpectation

aiden said:

Huggiebear said:

2006 as it had the 3121 album , the only one that was really a shade of his best work.

2001 the worst year as it had the wretchable Rainbow children.

I'm totally the other way round! Love TRC, 3121 should have been a single

Co-sign.

A

1. 3121

B+

2. Musicology

3. LotusFlow3r

B

4. 20Ten

---

C+

5.Planet Earth

6.The Rainbow Children

7.One Night Alone (Live)

D-

8.MPLSound

9.One Nite Alone

10.Elixer

F

11.Crappy NPG-Online albums

12.C-Note/Expectation

13.NEWS

yes, from this decade, I only own 3121, Musicology, Lotus & 20Ten

and btw, the "decade" ended in Dec/31/2009

[Edited 12/5/10 9:13am]

The Rainbow Children is something I like to pretend never happened. Awful lyrics and except for the last three tracks awful music. A slap in the face of many of the fans that stuck by him through the difficult 90s. Borders on blasphamy as far as "religious" records go.

emesem said:

The Rainbow Children is something I like to pretend never happened. Awful lyrics and except for the last three tracks awful music. A slap in the face of many of the fans that stuck by him through the difficult 90s. Borders on blasphamy as far as "religious" records go.

Bless you, I can't understand why people love the Rainbow children, even without the ridiculous lyrix about Anti Semitism, homophobia and dogmatic evangelical christianity, the musicality is lacking.

A few ok ballads like Last December and She loves me for me mixed in with experiments like the Wedding Feast and the title track where Prince tries to sound like God or Satan or whoever it is the JW's worship (Because a God who hates gays is not God in my book). The best track takes the beat of 1984's erotic city and theres absolutely nothing competent let alone commercial. I think the only reason people like it, is because there are a lot of people on this site who are also Dogmatic Christians, becaus ethis album is so lacking in any form of musicality or professionality, its bizarre why anyone would like it.

Besides with ernestsewell gone (He has an account on Flickr - Ernest Radio Network) some one has to be the left wing atheist gay dude that keeps it real around here.

My album rankings

Great

3121 8/10

Good

MPLsOUND 7/10

Lotusflow3r 6/10

Satisfactory

Musicology 5.5/10

20Ten 5/10

Planet Earth 4/10

Mediocre

ONA 3/10

ONA LIVE 3/10

Poor

NEWS 2/10

Indigo Nights 2/10

Tragic

Rainbow Children 0/10

Huggiebear said:

emesem said:

The Rainbow Children is something I like to pretend never happened. Awful lyrics and except for the last three tracks awful music. A slap in the face of many of the fans that stuck by him through the difficult 90s. Borders on blasphamy as far as "religious" records go.

Bless you, I can't understand why people love the Rainbow children, even without the ridiculous lyrix about Anti Semitism, homophobia and dogmatic evangelical christianity, the musicality is lacking.

A few ok ballads like Last December and She loves me for me mixed in with experiments like the Wedding Feast and the title track where Prince tries to sound like God or Satan or whoever it is the JW's worship (Because a God who hates gays is not God in my book). The best track takes the beat of 1984's erotic city and theres absolutely nothing competent let alone commercial. I think the only reason people like it, is because there are a lot of people on this site who are also Dogmatic Christians, becaus ethis album is so lacking in any form of musicality or professionality, its bizarre why anyone would like it.

Besides with ernestsewell gone (He has an account on Flickr - Ernest Radio Network) some one has to be the left wing atheist gay dude that keeps it real around here.

My album rankings

I agree. I've given that album a C+ because there are three or four tracks of pure musical greatness, but the album as a whole is a mess: the Darth Vader voice, the a-w-f-u-l lyrics (worse than a Black Metal album or whatever), the lack of memorable material (overall). For me, the 2001-2003 era was Prince's nadir.

I include The Rainbow Children in my list of "Awful/Hugely Controversial Albums Released by Big Stars", the kind of album that you "admire" because it was completely misguided, completely mediocre by that artist's standard or other negative reasons: Bowie's Never Let Me Down, Madonna's American Life, Duran Duran's Liberty, U2's Pop, the late-80s work of Stevie, etc are just some examples...

Huggiebear said:

Bless you, I can't understand why people love the Rainbow children, even without the ridiculous lyrix about Anti Semitism, homophobia and dogmatic evangelical christianity, the musicality is lacking.

A few ok ballads like Last December and She loves me for me mixed in with experiments like the Wedding Feast and the title track where Prince tries to sound like God or Satan or whoever it is the JW's worship (Because a God who hates gays is not God in my book). The best track takes the beat of 1984's erotic city and theres absolutely nothing competent let alone commercial.

EXACTLY! Overall, it's just a big mess - "absolutely horrible music, performed well" is probably the most positive thing I can say about it. Every once in a while, I pull this abomination out to listen to it, thinking maybe I can find something to save it and there really isn't much.

Great

3121 8/10

Good

MPLsOUND 7/10

Lotusflow3r 6/10

Satisfactory

Musicology 5.5/10

20Ten 5/10

Planet Earth 4/10

Mediocre

ONA 3/10

ONA LIVE 3/10

Poor

NEWS 2/10

Indigo Nights 2/10

Tragic

Rainbow Children 0/10

I think that list might almost match mine perfectly! The only one I'm still not sure about is LotusFlow3r...

My favorite of the decade is 3121 followed closely by Lotusflower and TRC.

3121 easily his most consistent albumof the decade. A stellar album from start to finish. Lotusflow3r and 20TEN are pretty close too, with MPLSOUND not far behind those three.

Planet Earth and Musicology were both patchy

TRC is a jumbled mess.

Man, I'm surprised by all the love for 3121! I'm crazy about the title track, but apart from the synth sound in 'Lolita', the rest of the album is, like, wallpaper to me.

Planet Earth gets smashed a lot, but really, I'd take 'Somewhere here on Earth' over any song on 3121 (except, again, for the title track).

No disrespect, just sayin'.

eyewishuheaven said:

Man, I'm surprised by all the love for 3121! I'm crazy about the title track, but apart from the synth sound in 'Lolita', the rest of the album is, like, wallpaper to me.

Planet Earth gets smashed a lot, but really, I'd take 'Somewhere here on Earth' over any song on 3121 (except, again, for the title track).

No disrespect, just sayin'.

I absolutely love Somewhere Here On Earth. I think it's one of his best ballads of the last 10 years BUT that it's sitting on a sub-par album. I feel the exact same way about the brilliance of The One being relegated to New Power Soul. Both tracks deserve to be on better releases.

SHOE should have been on MPLSoUND.

Great

The Motherfucking all high Rainbow Children 10/10

Lotusflow3r 9/10

20Ten 9/10

ONA LIVE 8/10

Good

Indigo Nights 7/10

ONA 7/10

MPLSound 7/10

Satisfactory

Musicology 5.5/10

Planet Earth 4/10

Mediocre

NEWS 4/10

Poor

THE SLAUGHTERHOUSE 3/10

THE CHOCOLATE INVASION 3/10

Tragic

3121 2/10

[Edited 12/6/10 2:33am]

aiden said:

Huggiebear said:

2006 as it had the 3121 album , the only one that was really a shade of his best work.

2001 the worst year as it had the wretchable Rainbow children.

I'm totally the other way round! Love TRC, 3121 should have been a single

I agree with U, Aiden:

TRC is great,

3121 is yuck

eyewishuheaven said:

Man, I'm surprised by all the love for 3121! I'm crazy about the title track, but apart from the synth sound in 'Lolita', the rest of the album is, like, wallpaper to me.

Planet Earth gets smashed a lot, but really, I'd take 'Somewhere here on Earth' over any song on 3121 (except, again, for the title track).

No disrespect, just sayin'.

plus I get mighty defensive over TRC, one of my all time favourite records by anyone

to say that the chocolate invasion is a 3/10 is a bit too much imo, its atleast a solid 5 if not higher. Underneath the cream, when eye lay my hands on you, high, its a good album IMO and clearly better then Planet earth

Musically, this decade started off and ended well. In between the music was not so good.

No matter what you may think of its lyrical content, TRC contains a lot of good songwriting, excellent performances, strong production and obvious hard work.

Most of those who detest it, simply can't get past the lyrical content, which is their loss.

ONA is a very fine succesor, many good songs, excellent performances, heart felt.

Lotusflower, disc 1, is also a very good, solid, well performed album. Like TRC, you can hear the effort that was put into it and it has lots of good songs that are performed and recorded in an excellent fashion. John Blackwell is essential. Great music really.

In my opinion the quality of the songs, performances and production on the other albums, such as Musicology and 3121 is generally weaker. It contains a lot of quite superficial songs and sounds all in all and much more commercialised.

That's probably why those albums paved the way for his 'return to the mainstream'.

Which I kind of dread, because the 'mainstream' pretty much sucks these days.

Overall, this was a decade for me that Prince lost me. It could have something to do with my life getting too busy to sit and memorize his music like I used to do, but there has been something missing from his music for me since the 90s... maybe it is a personal touch, but I can't put my finger on it. His music when it was personal over the last decade (TRC comes to mind) is something I can't relate to at all, and so much of the rest of his output seems to be just... songs. He used to write personal music as if he was singing to someone he loved or singing about the pain he was in, but now they just seem to be impersonal and maybe that is where I disconnect as well.

He is still an amazing performer when he has to be, but I don't know if I can honestly say that any of his albums from the last decade has touched me. Most of them have a song or two that I enjoyed, but I don't put a CD on for a song or two. An album should be like a good book. It has a feeling of being put together with a purpose instead of just a collection of songs put back to back. I am not talking about a theme album, but there should be a flow (Rock song, funk song, ballad...etc.) and (with the exception of TRC) that hasn't seemed like it has been the case for a while.

I will continue to listen to him, but I don't go out the first week to get his music, and for the most part (with the exception of the hardcore fans... or 'fams' lol) not many people are talking about him. When they do a greatest hits for the last decade, I don't think you'll have a lot of songs that have gotten mainstream attention. Does that mean they suck? Not always. It just means that most people have stopped listening for some reason. Maybe that reason is that he isn't making something interesting enough to warrant the attention. Prince the celebrity gets far more attention than Prince's current music.

I am not turning my back on him, because I still hope that he'll come out with that song that blows me away, or that b-side that makes me play it for my friends, but there hasn't been a song that does that for me for a long time.

I'd have to say some of his best stuff was on TRC, but even then, I don't listen to it much. Occasionally I'll put it in and play it, but I usually have no interest in hearing the album twice in a row. Years ago, I'd put the CD in my car and play the disc over and over and over until I knew it by heart. I haven't done that to any Prince CD in well over a decade.

How many years has it been since you've heard 'new' Prince music coming from the car next to you at a stoplight?

The Rainbow Children.

One Nite Alone - Piano & Voice.

N.E.W.S.

Lotus (single disc).

[Edited 12/6/10 7:58am]

madhouseman said:

He used to write personal music as if he was singing to someone he loved or singing about the pain he was in, but now they just seem to be impersonal and maybe that is where I disconnect as well.

I can kind of relate to this. There is less passion, less songs from the heart, but I have accepted that his music has become less personal, less heart felt. It becomes hard tho' when you don't find the music itself isn't that great either.

madhouseman said:

Overall, this was a decade for me that Prince lost me. It could have something to do with my life getting too busy to sit and memorize his music like I used to do, but there has been something missing from his music for me since the 90s... maybe it is a per...

Nice post.

At least for me, and how I feel nowadays and how I used to feel about Prince and his music, you summed it up perfectly.

[Edited 12/11/10 14:05pm]