Prince - The Rainbow Children
review by Ian MacDonald for UK monthly magazine Uncut http://www.uncut.net/, February 2002, issue 57
2 out out 5

Squiggle goes cosmo-Biblical

Prince (he resumed the name 18 months ago when his final contract with Warners expired) is now 43, a Jehova's Witness, and no longer a Sexy MF -- or at least no longer allows himself the luxury of cussing. A large chunk of his repertoire has consequently become off-limits, although the pleasures of the flesh clearly remain legitimate inspiration.

The Rainbow Children is, it seems, the first fruit of this new phase of Prince's imponderable spiritual life. A completely integrated concept album with every lyric scrupulously laid out to avoid any misunderstanding. The Rainbow Children appears to be Prince's personal take on the Jehova's Witness belief-system. Beyond that, it's difficult to say what it's about or, indeed, to care very much. With the exception of the anthemic "Last December", the music, though lithe and limber in a jazz-fusion-funk bag, lacks melodic distinction, while the vocals are delivered in a variety of electronically treated styles that are irritating at first and increasingly so on repeated exposures.

Where they aren't platitudinous calls to unity, the lyrics are the album's chief barrier to easy appreciation, apparently consisting of a self-created mythology ("the new translation") concerning a salvation-bound elect who are here on earth to do "the work" of recruiting new members and sorting out those ("the banished Ones") who aren't coming along for the ride. "The opposite of NATO is OTAN", the Enlightened One informs us, among other curious pseudo-revelations. Woman, it seems, must be content to be subordinate to man in this religious order. (Proverbs 31:10 is mentioned as ostensible justification for this.)

Prince has obviously taken trouble over this bizarre product and the actual playing and production are beyond reproach. However, so obscure and eccentric is the libretto of TRC that it's difficult to conceive fo the album as anything more than yet another purely private function form a man whose talent continues to dissipate itself in elaborate self-indulgence.