Good review of TRC in The Daily Telegraph.

While Michael Jackson and Madonna have huffed and puffed to impose themselves on the gobal consciousness this year, their exact contemporary from Minneapolis (all three were born in 1958) has drifted further into an eccentric world of his own creation, and come up with a genuinely startling album. It's been an age since Prince seemed to matter - though the influence of his early work on young acts as different as Basement Jaxx and Alicia Keys is obvious, and The Rainbow Children doesn't sound like it will find a home on MTV or Raio One's playlists. But it's so damned funky, filled with so many moments of beauty, and so utterly strange that it makes you want to go round knocking on people's doors telling him that the wee purple chap is back to his best. Just hope that he hasn't been there first if rumours that he has joined the Jehovah's Witnesses are true.
It's actually the quasi-religious probouncements that make the album so baffling. "One after another, the Banished Ones fled as they watched from the distance the destruction of the Digital Garden..." he intones at one point. The miracle of the record is that the jazzy grooves and exquisite ballads are so seductive that there's every chance that you'll keep playing it until the lyrics begin to mke some kind of sense and it yields its secrets.
The disgrace is that Prince isn't much of a commercial force these days, so this album is only available as an expensive import or on-line through the artist's npgmusicclub.com. At least it makes sense that he doesn't have to rub shoulders with his grubby peers in the marktplace.

That's the best review of a Prince album that I've seen in years...