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Thread started 12/24/13 8:10pm

thebanishedone

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Chaos and Disorder very underrated?

When Chaos and Disorder was released i was stunned at bad reviews that album got.After 10 years of being burried deep in the mix Princes guitar comes back.Yes there are fillers that dont fit the style of the album but rockers were strong.I Like It There, title song and Dinner with Delores are very good songs.Dinner have a kick ass guitar solo.And the songs aee goid and different then usual i can do it all aprouch.so was it because of the feud with WB or what?
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Reply #1 posted 12/25/13 3:06am

SoulAlive

To me,the album sounds like a throwaway.A few songs are decent,but I seldom revisit this album.

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Reply #2 posted 12/25/13 4:16am

funkaholic1972

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I am amongst the ones that really quite enjoy this little mid 90's gem. At least it was something a bit different and it had lots of energy, things that really were missing on the Emancipation album.

RIP Prince: thank U 4 a funky Time...
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Reply #3 posted 12/25/13 4:48am

thedance

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I enjoy it as well, well some of it:


I heart the first half of the album, really the first 4 tracks are dope: plus Zannalee and Had U.

If only the album had included Empty Room, maybe instead of I Rock Therefor I Am..

Then it would have been a lot better (of course!)... wink



Prince 4Ever. heart
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Reply #4 posted 12/25/13 5:30am

novabrkr

It's just what it is - an album that was bound to generate mixed reactions. It's obviously not an attempt on Prince's behalf to create a focused album, although I wouldn't say it's stylistically as all over the place as some say it is. A record like Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic was far more frustrating with its sprawling overall sound.

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Reply #5 posted 12/25/13 5:52am

EddieC

I like it--and except for I Rock Therefore I Am and Dig U Better Dead, I think it goes well together. I Rock I could do without completely, and while I like Dig U Better Dead, it seems out of place stylistic. It's very much of its time, with the yearning vaguely New Age spirituality of Into the Light and The Same December (and maybe Dig U Better Dead), the whole embattled artist vibe on several tracks. I even like Right the Wrong. Lose the cops on Zannalee (and maybe a couple of sound effects on Chaos and Disorder)and the whole of I Rock Therefore I Am, and it's pretty solid.

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Reply #6 posted 12/25/13 7:18am

MIRvmn

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It's a good album cool
Welcome 2 The Dawn
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Reply #7 posted 12/25/13 8:54am

errant

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Somewhat. Not very.
"does my cock look fat in these jeans?"
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Reply #8 posted 12/25/13 8:55am

databank

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I love it. The only thing that I don't feel comfortable with is the sequence of The Same December, Right The Wrong and Zanallee. While I believe these tracks are strong and could have worked well as barebone bass-guitar-drum tracks I always felt they were ruined by the addition of keyboards and (in the case of Right The Wrong) horns. This overproduction just give them a sort of "Nashville meets Broadway" vibe that makes me uncomfortable.

Except for that I always found that record to be energetic and brilliant. It's a logical continuation of The Undertaker and one of P's darkest albums. Chaos And Disorder and I Like It There are just as energic as any of Lenny Kravitz' best 90's jams if not more: Chaos And Disorder is like an improved Are You Gonna Go My Way (same chords if u pay attention: I always dreams of P playing the 2 back to back as an uninterrupted jam) and I Like It There is almost a homage to the grunge explosion of 5 years earlier. Dinner With Dolores is a brilliant and capable homage to the British pop-rock wave that flooded the world back then and, with more promo, could actually have brought a whole new audience to P. I Rock Therefore I Am is THE shit! P at his funkiest, really I love that jam so much and the mix of rock and rap and a rare inclusion of raggamuffin' in P's sound is cool! Once again, though, the horns are quite unnecessary. Into The Light and I Will are beautiful epic ballads with very strong melodies, the kind only P knows how to do (even though once again ITL would have been more in tone with the rest of the album without horns). Dig U Better Dead has a delicious Terence Trent D'Arby-like depressed feeling that really resonated for me with the vibe of some songs on Vibrator, and Had U is a delicious closer and a mignificent "fuck you" to WB.

In a way it's a very 90's album, it has bits and pieces of almost everything that was hip in the mid-90's and the mere fact that it was different from quite anything P had done before save The Undertaker made it pretty fresh. Honestly I think without these horns and keys all over the place it would have been well received: look at how The Undertaker received rave reviews less than 3 years earlier: isn't it odd that 2 albums that are SO similar get such a diferent response? I think the keys and horns were behind this: they just don't fit there!

[Edited 12/25/13 9:12am]

A COMPREHENSIVE PRINCE DISCOGRAPHY (work in progress ^^): https://sites.google.com/...scography/
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Reply #9 posted 12/25/13 3:05pm

KAB

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My take on C&D back in 2005!!!!!???


http://www.prince.org/msg/7/159658
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Reply #10 posted 12/25/13 3:38pm

hhhhdmt

Decent record at best. I'd give it a 5 out of 10. The title track and Zanalee are very good. The rest are decent at best.

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Reply #11 posted 12/26/13 6:24pm

DakutiusMaximu
s

Worst album ever by Prince except for 2 great tracks- Into the Light and Dig You Better Dead.

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Reply #12 posted 12/26/13 6:39pm

NoVideo

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I think it's a good collection of random songs - it doesn't sound much like a coherent album, but there is some great material on it (The Same December, Into the Light/I Will), but there is also the absolutely dreadful I Rock, Therefore I Am, which is one of the worst things he ever put to tape. I'd say it's rated about where it deserves.

* * *

Prince's Classic Finally Expanded
The Deluxe 'Purple Rain' Reissue

http://www.popmatters.com...n-reissue/
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Reply #13 posted 12/27/13 12:09am

Risico

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I think it's rated just about right in most quarters. Some gems, but mostly throwaways and castoffs with little connective tissue to unite them.

I've seen the future, and boy it's rough...
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Reply #14 posted 12/27/13 5:34am

muleFunk

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The bad reviews was the attempt by WB to attack Prince for leaving.

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Reply #15 posted 12/27/13 6:48am

BartVanHemelen

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thebanishedone said:

When Chaos and Disorder was released i was stunned at bad reviews that album got.After 10 years of being burried deep in the mix Princes guitar comes back.Yes there are fillers that dont fit the style of the album but rockers were strong.I Like It There, title song and Dinner with Delores are very good songs.Dinner have a kick ass guitar solo.And the songs aee goid and different then usual i can do it all aprouch.so was it because of the feud with WB or what?

No, it was rubbish. I felt it sounded like an obviously contract filler which seemed to have been recorded on an afternoon and padded with third-rate leftovers until it was approx. 40 minutes long -- which turned out to be quite close to the truth. The lead single was abysmal and slightly racist ("dancin' like a white girl").

It is immensely overrated amongst Prince fans, who focus on it having guitars and ignore the shiteous songs. There are at least two absolute stinkers on this album -- "Right The Wrong" and "I Rock, Therefore I Am" -- but these are closely followed by the one-two punch of "Into The Light"/"I Will" which are so flimsy that even combined I hesitate to label them a song (and they are infested with plenty of those godawful self-help lines he plucked from some esoteric nonsense book). The version of "Zannalee" is an inferior one (and let's be frank, it is barely more than a riff anyway); "Dig U Better Dead" somehow manages to be worse than goofy; the title track is basically a riff from the live version of "Peach" with some astonishingly idiotic lines on top, which are punctuated by utterly unnecessary sound effects.

The second half of the album is virtually unlistenable, and the first one isn't much better with the sole highlists being two poprock tracks that would have been okayish B-sides for a side project.

But the real kicker is the ending, with its bitter "Had U". Basically Prince remaking a Nine Inch Nails track and lamenting how hard things are for him, the multi-millionaire rock star. How unfair that his record company offered him a recording contract that promised great riches (in exchange for very hard work) and empty gestures and he signed it against the advise of his entourage because he wanted to boast about having a bigger recording contract than Madonna or Michael Jackson.

C&D was one of two albums Prince presented as his final WB output, despite him owing them three albums. WB were not obliged to accept these, but Mo Ostin and co figured they'd rather be rid of Prince and his whining (let's not forget that WB was going to release Exodus on the condition that Prince stopped badmouthing the record company in interviews, which apparently was too much trouble for Prince). Prince may have intended those final albums as Fuck Yous to WB, but in reality these screwed his fans (who had to pay good money for substandard product).

The worst part? C&D and The Vault are still miles better than anything Prince put out afterwards.

© Bart Van Hemelen
This posting is provided AS IS with no warranties, and confers no rights.
It is not authorized by Prince or the NPG Music Club. You assume all risk for
your use. All rights reserved.
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Reply #16 posted 12/27/13 6:51am

BartVanHemelen

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muleFunk said:

The bad reviews was the attempt by WB to attack Prince for leaving.

Yes, because record companies are in the habit of sabotaging their own releases.

© Bart Van Hemelen
This posting is provided AS IS with no warranties, and confers no rights.
It is not authorized by Prince or the NPG Music Club. You assume all risk for
your use. All rights reserved.
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Reply #17 posted 12/27/13 8:40am

NoVideo

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muleFunk said:

The bad reviews was the attempt by WB to attack Prince for leaving.

How exactly do the record labels influence how critics review an album?

* * *

Prince's Classic Finally Expanded
The Deluxe 'Purple Rain' Reissue

http://www.popmatters.com...n-reissue/
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Reply #18 posted 12/27/13 9:23am

1725topp

I really dig Chaos and Disorder, giving it a 7.5 - 8 on a scale of 10. I like most that it is different from other works of that era that I also like, such as The Gold Experience and Emancipation, because I love when Prince's following album is quite different from his previous album. Also, he is playing the guitar as well as ever, and I like the lyrical content.

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Reply #19 posted 12/27/13 9:33am

1725topp

BartVanHemelen said:

muleFunk said:

The bad reviews was the attempt by WB to attack Prince for leaving.

Yes, because record companies are in the habit of sabotaging their own releases.

*

I don't know if "the bad reviews was the attempt by WB to attack Prince for leaving," but there is substantial evidence that several record companies have sabotaged their own releases for various reasons, such as using losses to gain a tax cut, wanting one artist to sell more units than another artist on the label, or just "bad blood" between the label and artist, especially if the company wants to renegotiate the artist's current deal. Again, I don't know or think this is true in the case of the bad reviews of Chaos and Disorder, but I wouldn't be surprised if WB made it known to ragazines, such as Rolling Stone and others that they were not fully backing this release. And we all know that most of the ragazines are the handmaidens of the record companies because they need the access to the artists.

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Reply #20 posted 12/27/13 9:41am

LayzieKiddZ

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Very good guitar work. I wish Prince played as much guitar as he did on this, rather than sparingly like on most of his albums. It has a very garage rock sound, which I love. Very hard.

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Reply #21 posted 12/27/13 8:01pm

excited

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it's in my top 5 faves. his vid to 'i like it there' is my best prince vid, his suit is one of the coolest he ever wore razz

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Reply #22 posted 12/28/13 4:02am

iZsaZsa

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excited said:

it's in my top 5 faves. his vid to 'i like it there' is my best prince vid, his suit is one of the coolest he ever wore razz


He's absolutely gorgeous.
What?
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Reply #23 posted 01/01/14 10:30am

raddahone

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thebanishedone said:

When Chaos and Disorder was released i was stunned at bad reviews that album got.After 10 years of being burried deep in the mix Princes guitar comes back.Yes there are fillers that dont fit the style of the album but rockers were strong.I Like It There, title song and Dinner with Delores are very good songs.Dinner have a kick ass guitar solo.And the songs aee goid and different then usual i can do it all aprouch.so was it because of the feud with WB or what?


feels like there are sleepers on this album ready 2 bee played by 3rd eye girl...
~honey is b-ing 1 with the 1~
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Reply #24 posted 01/04/14 10:35am

EdwardsJ33

Yes, very underrated. I like it; always have!

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Reply #25 posted 01/04/14 2:33pm

thanks2joniand
u

not underrated. amazing how prince can release an album only 40 minutes long and manage to still only produce have of a good album....lol

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Reply #26 posted 01/06/14 4:09pm

eyewishuheaven

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Though I listen to it rarely, I like it a lot (apart from I Rock and Dig U). I'll listen to this album 50 times before I listen to even one full disc of Emancipation once. Along with the Oprah interview, it was a weird year... confused

PRINCE: the only man who could wear high heels and makeup and STILL steal your woman!
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