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Thread started 11/16/18 7:54pm

SoftSkarlettLo
visa

The Rave album was a flop. Unfair?

I actually like the Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic album. I liked the guest appearances and how P utilised them for his songs - and I'm not even keen on collabs.

I read some album reviews that were mixed, saying it was a dead effort, and some tracks were "his worst of the nineties".

Do you think Rave was a good album? I say so, for a pop album. Not his greatest, but good.
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Reply #1 posted 11/16/18 9:33pm

Urine

I love it. I read the title song was recorded 10 years before the rest of the album, but sounds to me just as if it were from the same sessions.

I have yet to fully digest all his albums but this is one I regularly listen to.

My faves from it are Undisputed, The Greatest Romance, So Far, So Pleased and Baby Knows. I also love the Remix version.
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Reply #2 posted 11/16/18 11:56pm

PeteSilas

prince put out few albums i didn't like, rave was great, some top shelf tunes in my mind, some ok ones and some that left me indifferent. he and clive tried something that wouldn't work for prince, they did the santana thing with all the guests, prince didn't need any of that, unlike santana, he could do a lot more than play guitar.

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Reply #3 posted 11/17/18 1:49am

EmmaMcG

It was a decent album. A few really good songs but it's funny that on an album where he says "I don't follow trends, they follow me", and yet he was following in Santana's footsteps as an aging artist who packed his album full of guest appearances by younger artists in an effort to appeal to a younger demographic. It was essentially Supernatural 2.0 but the difference was that it actually worked for Santana.

Rave's lack of sales wasn't due to the quality of the music. It was due to the popularity, or lack thereof, of Prince in the late 90s. Record sales rarely reflect the quality of the record.
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Reply #4 posted 11/17/18 2:05am

NouveauDance

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The fairest flop of his career.

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Reply #5 posted 11/17/18 2:57am

MattyJam

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NouveauDance said:

The fairest flop of his career.

NouveauDance - could you just once resist the urge to dog Rave??? lol

I love Rave. My favourite Prince record of the 90s, no word of a lie. eye Love U But eye Don't Trust U Anymore, The Greatest Romance, Man O War and Wherever U Go Whatever U Do being the picks of the bunch, but there really isn't a song I dislike on the album.

[Edited 11/17/18 3:07am]

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Reply #6 posted 11/17/18 3:28am

MIRvmn

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I like this album smile The only songs I don't like on Rave are Undisputed and Prettyman but the rest is good, especially I Love U, but I Don't Trust U Anymore, Man O War and So Far, So Pleased
[Edited 11/17/18 3:30am]
Welcome 2 The Dawn
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Reply #7 posted 11/17/18 4:00am

milesb

Rave Into was better.

My password is what
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Reply #8 posted 11/17/18 4:43am

gandorb

This is one of the albums that I revisited after his passing that I enjoyed the most. No, it doesn't compete with the pure artistry of his best work. However, it is one of his most melodic albums, which is not surprising given that it was aimed for commercial success. So, it was a relative flop given it's commercial ambition but it wasn't a flop in terms of quality.

[Edited 11/17/18 13:31pm]

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Reply #9 posted 11/17/18 5:13am

NouveauDance

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MattyJam said:

NouveauDance said:

The fairest flop of his career.

NouveauDance - could you just once resist the urge to dog Rave??? lol

lol

.

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Reply #10 posted 11/17/18 5:19am

bsk3601

NouveauDance said:

The fairest flop of his career.


Agreed. Slapping Linn drum programming on the “plastic” production of that era was silly. The anticipation I had for the “guest producer” really set me up and let me down beyond my expectations. Since his death, I’ve relistened and found a few redeeming qualities about the album. However, the fact that it flopped was certainly justified. As a musician who publicly swore he didn’t care what critics and others thought of his art, he was desperate and transparently begging to be loved during this era. It was quite unnatural.
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Reply #11 posted 11/17/18 5:43am

thebanishedone

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Rave is not a good album,because Prince didnt put

any heart in making it except few songs.it was a calculated

attempt to cash in on Santana formula.do

you know that Prince argue with Clive Davies because

Clive didnt want guitar solo on a song

Man Of War because it wont be played on rnb radio with s guitar solo.

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Reply #12 posted 11/17/18 6:59am

ufoclub

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It’s not a good album as a sequence for me... but it has a few all time gems! But so do a lot of his albums.
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Reply #13 posted 11/17/18 7:14am

jdcxc

Man O War and Tangerine....beautiful

I Love U But Dont Trust U Anymore...one of his best heartbreak piano ballads. The songwriting and vocals are sheer bliss. Haunting. I would love to hear the rest of his work with Ani Difranco- interesting collab choice.
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Reply #14 posted 11/17/18 7:19am

jaawwnn

A bloated, guest filled mess with, yes, some really great tracks. It could have been a hit though, it was pretty on-trend for the crap that was successful in 1999. I think he was just in that part of his career where he had been around too long to appeal to anyone new but not long enough to be considered a legacy act.

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Reply #15 posted 11/17/18 7:48am

2freaky4church
1

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Maybe they should not have said it was the greatest album ever. Wasn't

All you others say Hell Yea!! woot!
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Reply #16 posted 11/17/18 8:03am

MattyJam

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2freaky4church1 said:

Maybe they should not have said it was the greatest album ever. Wasn't



I don't recall anyone saying that, but there was a lot of "return to form" talk, which every release from The Gold Experience up to HNR Phase 2 had.
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Reply #17 posted 11/17/18 10:00am

luvsexy4all

take out ther filler and u have a great album

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Reply #18 posted 11/17/18 11:59am

bonatoc

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luvsexy4all said:

take out ther filler and u have a great album


Like 3 songs.
I call it a maxi-single.

The Colors R brighter, the Bond is much tighter
No Child's a failure
Until the Blue Sailboat sails him away from his dreams
Don't Ever Lose, Don't Ever Lose
Don't Ever Lose Your Dreams
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Reply #19 posted 11/17/18 12:41pm

SoulAlive

It's a mixed bag.There are some really good songs ("So Far,So Pleased","Wherever U Go,Whatever U Do") and some mediocre tracks.

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Reply #20 posted 11/17/18 1:24pm

bonatoc

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"Wherever U Go, Whatever U Do" is some post "Holy River" gem.
It's also one of the sweetest songs ever, in the vein of "Sweet Baby".
There are fantastic moments, but it's like Prince restraining himself.
I hate Larry and his quarter notes and his preachy-preacha, as the french say, I can't help it.
I think I hate all the denial phase and the music it produced. He got Mayte sad, when they both were.
I'm so glad he got that sorted out. But the Smurf Spandex®, the squeaky clean rastas, the emboss in metallic electric blue,
and so little on the inside (starting with a disaster for those who raved about the savagery of the Trojan Horse live version to their friends).

No thematic link between the songs, just fragments, in no special order.
He looks bored and looking the other way even on the sleeve. He's not into it, right from the visual.
This is not "sexy". This is "bored".

Like "So Far, So Pleased". So far, I'm still waiting for the song to excite me.
Strange but True, I don't expect it to get better with time. Some wine goes sour after a while.

[Edited 11/17/18 13:28pm]

The Colors R brighter, the Bond is much tighter
No Child's a failure
Until the Blue Sailboat sails him away from his dreams
Don't Ever Lose, Don't Ever Lose
Don't Ever Lose Your Dreams
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Reply #21 posted 11/17/18 8:55pm

Hamad

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Rave was the first album I purchased from his music at the time it was released. Flop or not, always a have fondness toward that album for starting it all smile

Every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future...

Twitter: https://twitter.com/QLH82
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Reply #22 posted 11/18/18 3:18am

MattyJam

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Hamad said:

Rave was the first album I purchased from his music at the time it was released. Flop or not, always a have fondness toward that album for starting it all smile


Same.

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Reply #23 posted 11/18/18 8:14am

databank

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It was a flop because Prince and Clive Davis had a row and Arista ceased all promotion of the records hardly 2 months after its release. Prince did his short European TV shows mini-tour, there was the Rave 2000 pay-per-view in the US and that was it.

.

That + the poor choice of the first single ("Prince ballad for yo momma") + the fact that it didn't have a music video for a month after release + the fact that Gwen's label wouldn't allow a single release of So Far, So Pleased.

.

The album had a great commercial potential, so did TGE, those two could have been the next D&P, but D&P wasn't just huge because the music was accessible, it was huge because WB worked their asses to promote it for a whole year, and Prince played ball.

A COMPREHENSIVE PRINCE DISCOGRAPHY (work in progress ^^): https://sites.google.com/...scography/
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Reply #24 posted 11/18/18 9:30am

herb4

Nah, it was pretty bad; and fairly out of touch with "what's cool". There's some good tracks on it (Where Ever U go, Greatest Romance, Hot Wit U, Strange But True) but there's something sort of plastic and artifical about it and it lacks coherence. Feels manufactured and not from the heart. I'll still defend the DvD and think that "rave IN2" was a step up but I don't spin this one too much.

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Reply #25 posted 11/18/18 4:30pm

bonatoc

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It's the "Produced by Prince" (after all these years of absence, blah blah).
We had to much expectations. Even hardcore fans saturated a bit on this one.
But I'm glad some orgers got on the boat with an album I'm not crazy about.
It just goes to sho how much diverse people Prince can gather with his music.

The Colors R brighter, the Bond is much tighter
No Child's a failure
Until the Blue Sailboat sails him away from his dreams
Don't Ever Lose, Don't Ever Lose
Don't Ever Lose Your Dreams
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Reply #26 posted 11/19/18 12:31am

PeteSilas

databank said:

It was a flop because Prince and Clive Davis had a row and Arista ceased all promotion of the records hardly 2 months after its release. Prince did his short European TV shows mini-tour, there was the Rave 2000 pay-per-view in the US and that was it.

.

That + the poor choice of the first single ("Prince ballad for yo momma") + the fact that it didn't have a music video for a month after release + the fact that Gwen's label wouldn't allow a single release of So Far, So Pleased.

.

The album had a great commercial potential, so did TGE, those two could have been the next D&P, but D&P wasn't just huge because the music was accessible, it was huge because WB worked their asses to promote it for a whole year, and Prince played ball.

morris hayes tells a story about seeing prince standing on a desk and screaming at clive davis and other execs, he told clive something like "you can't play anything" not those words but something to that effect, he told morris "i ain't afraid of these guys" Prince had a lot of heart. Most stars get bullied by someone, not Prince. i do wonder what went wrong, prince blamed the company, the company blamed him but sometimes the public just don't buy the stuff. George Michael, Michael Jackson and terence Trent Darby have blamed record companies for sales but I don't really know, it's easy to blame someone, why wouldn't the record companies want these guys to sell? lots of it is just timing.

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Reply #27 posted 11/19/18 1:20am

MoBettaBliss

no

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Reply #28 posted 11/19/18 2:08am

TheFman

To me it was even worse then Emancipation. Even Musicology was better. That Rave period was all too weird in a bad way.
And that album was cringeworthy, a real winner in that category. Starting the awkward album cover, that title what was 10 years due the 'rave' hype. And that song was strained of any good idea or harmony. The rest of the album wasn't any better... Don't even talk me about its ugly nephew 'in2'.

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Reply #29 posted 11/19/18 3:16am

bonatoc

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TheFman said:

To me it was even worse then Emancipation. Even Musicology was better. That Rave period was all too weird in a bad way.
And that album was cringeworthy, a real winner in that category. Starting the awkward album cover, that title what was 10 years due the 'rave' hype. And that song was strained of any good idea or harmony. The rest of the album wasn't any better... Don't even talk me about its ugly nephew 'in2'.


Add rhythm to the list.
Maybe his worst programming ever. These sounds!
It's the pre-Breakdown Lasers era, here we have Super Mario jumping over mushrooms.
"Peew. Pee-Peew." goes the cowbell. After a minute comes the first yawn.
Lawd Alfred, bring yo hat back home! He's gone plastic mad!

[Edited 11/19/18 3:17am]

The Colors R brighter, the Bond is much tighter
No Child's a failure
Until the Blue Sailboat sails him away from his dreams
Don't Ever Lose, Don't Ever Lose
Don't Ever Lose Your Dreams
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