CRITIC'S CHOICE



Prince Returns, Trading Rebellion for Gentle Jams
By KELEFA SANNEH

Published: April 19, 2004

http://www.nytimes.com/20...ner=GOOGLE

hen figure skaters turn professional, what they're really doing is retiring: they keep touring, drawing fans to exhibitions around the country, but their days as serious competitors are over. Something similar happened to Prince after he split with his record company, Warner Brothers, almost a decade ago. He kept touring and releasing CD's, but he seemed to withdraw into his own private kingdom; in the cutthroat pop music industry he was no longer a competitor.

Over the last few months he has changed course again, making a series of public appearances to build anticipation for "Musicology," his return to the world of big-money pop. The album will be released tomorrow on Prince's own NPG label, but it is being manufactured and distributed by Columbia Records.

It is Prince's good or bad fortune to be making his comeback at a time when pretenders are everywhere. André 3000, Pharrell Williams and D'Angelo have invented their own versions of the Prince persona; Missy Elliott and Erykah Badu have chased his spirit across different genres and eras; producers like Felix da Housecat, Daft Punk and Brooks have updated his synthetic thwack for the dance floor.

What's most disappointing about "Musicology," then, is the way Prince reacts to all this sincere flattery: he doesn't. The CD is a casual exhibition of Princeliness, stocked with a handful of old tricks but no new ones. As usual, the songs are "produced, arranged, composed and per4med by Prince," with a few exceptions, and it sounds like the work of a formerly insatiable star who has figured out how to satisfy his own musical ambitions.

The album's first song is the title track, a dose of anorexic funk in which Prince adds nostalgic chatter to a gristly bass line. And there's a winsome, wispy ballad, "Call My Name," in which vague political commentary (transcribed, as usual, according to the same orthographical rules that prevail at your local middle school) melts into bedroom talk: "What's the matter with the world 2day? Land of the free? Somebody lied!/They can bug my phone, peep around my home, they'd only c u and me makin' love inside."

Mainly, though, "Musicology" is given over to gentle jams that never really get going. Prince sounds comfortable and contented throughout, which might be part of the problem. In 2001 he released a much better CD, "The Rainbow Children" (NPG), which used expansive and unpredictable jazz-funk tracks to tell the tale of a rebellious (and, not coincidentally, funky) tribe fighting against the bland and oppressive rulers of the Digital Garden. The new album could use a bit of that fighting spirit.

Interesting that Rainbow Children gets dissed by some for it's daring and then praised by others for the same thing. I'm looking forward to hearing Musicology. I too, thought Rainbow Children was already a good musical lesson for new jacks. I hope Musicology doesn't dissapoint.

You know, when I said that I was tired of the media dissing The Rainbow Children, I didn't want them to praise it at Musicology's expense!

But yeah... I think they're almost equal but different albums. However, Musicology is growing on me.