I don't see why this album gets ratted on so much. Love 4 1another, Imagettin, Groove On, Free and the title track... there's some fonky shit on here! Plus, there's a couple of R&B/Slo-jams which are kinda cool if you can stomach that kinda thing.

I swear folks just hate on this record because it's Larry!!!

I like it, Larry Graham and his collective Graham Central Station. Been down with him since his days with Sly. He can't pick his neices and nephews

I have to be honest..I was let down by "GCS2000". I was spoiled as a kid by hearing Larry's greatness with not only Sly, but on those GCS records. Hearing "GCS" (debut 1974), "N.D.U.W.T.D?", "Release Yourself"....I mean those are classic jams. Bass classes 101....Even when he went through his "soul crooner" phase in the early 80's, it was still (somewhat) OK. When I heard he hooked up with P, I was expecting some surreal, nasty funk....It's cool that he introduced Larry to a new crowd, but I just didn't dig "GCS2000"'s production and songwriting.....I really wished P would have hooked up with Bootsy Collins and Bill Laswell instead. They were cranking out some killer stuff in the 90's.

Better that it's remembered... but I think Chaka's COME TO MY HOUSE is the gem of the "New Power Pack" that included NPS, GCS2000.

Check out "The Drama"...

SPYZFAN1 said:

Yes...I will agree with that. Chaka's was the best out of the "3 pack". She could sing the want ads from a newspaper and I'd be happy.

I bought 'NPS' and 'Come To My House' seperately.

I never bothered with Larry's album, not for any particular reason. It just passed me by. Is there a lot of P involvement? Is it worth tracking down?

Marrk said:

I bought 'NPS' and 'Come To My House' seperately.

I never bothered with Larry's album, not for any particular reason. It just passed me by. Is there a lot of P involvement? Is it worth tracking down?

Prince is all over it, much in the same way he is on Chaka's album.

It's not as good as Come 2 My House, but it's a fun, funky disc and better than most orgers would have you believe.

As I've stated many times I'm a huge fan of the sound of the so-called plastic years, and being there to go through them was a very exciting time for me to be a fan even after the craziness of the Come/TGE era. I was in my early 20's and those years are really "my" years in P's music in the end. I find there's a lot of delicateness, elegance in P's sound at the time. Check out his background vocals on the aforementioned The Drama on Come 2 My House, or The Sun, The Moon, the Stars: elegance incarnated! For a dandy freak like me this was just the Prince I was glad to see grow up alongside myself, though he was 20 years ahead of me in age. There is also a very typically black vibe to the Newpower Pak and most of P's work at the time, that may not be to the taste of those Prince fans who are mostly listening to rock (and yeah I know, some of the true funkateers here dislike the plastic years, too, but when u look at the "favorite non Prince artists thread" u can see that the great majority of the people here are NOT into black music besides Prince, and I don't see how they could possibly dig Newpower Soul, Come 2 My House or GCS 2000 which are so totally R&B).

GCS 2000 was always my least favorite of the (for me) astonishing Newpower Pak trilogy, and to me this is because of Larry's songwriting, which was obviously much weaker than Prince's at this point in both their careers. Regardless Prince arranged and played on all the tracks and in the end the sound palette is his, and it grooves, and it's full of positive vibes. Love 4 One Another is a sheer moment of greatness for me. And Larry's bass is all over the place: regardless of his decline as a composer, Larry remains an incredible bass player (I've seen him live several times, his playing gives u the chills, just as Chaka's voice BTW, one really has to have seen those 2 on stage, as in being there, not on Youtube).

I never quite understood how Larry, a legendary musician, got so much hate from the fandom, if not as a personal vendetta against him for alledgedly exposing P to the JW faith (as if P wasn't grown enough to decide weither he wanted to adhere to a religion or not!). Too many people have personal problems with prince, as if he was a person they knew in real life and he owed them to live up to whatever expectations they had. Fan's psychological/identity problems are irrelevant when it comes to talking about art.

GCS 2000 may lack the awesome energy and evocative lyrics of both Newpower Soul and Come 2 My House, but nevertheless it's a nice addition to the lot. And GCS 2000, alongside Rise Up, is arguably the best thing Larry recorded since 1979 in terms of artistic ambition, if only because it benefited from Prince's and Michael B Nelson's musical vision (the horns on all three Newpower Pak albums are mindblowing if u ask me, the Honheads surpassed themselves)!