Boston Herald
Monday, March 20, 2006

http://theedge.bostonhera...eid=131242

New York Times
Monday, March 20, 2006

http://www.nytimes.com/20...0choi.html

I can't access the NY Times review but great review by Boston Herald. Thanks for the link.

Critics' Choice | New CD's
Puttin' on the Funk, Playing Sly Games

By THE NEW YORK TIMES
Published: March 20, 2006
Prince
"3121" (Universal)

Prince doesn't sing any complicated messages on his new album, "3121." He has his perennial topics in mind: love, partying and sex (monogamous now that he has declared himself a Jehovah's Witness), with some salvation on the side. It's a friendly, happy, concise album, clocking in under 54 minutes and just about always putting the funk in the foreground. But within the grooves, Prince enjoys some sly musical games. It's not what he says, but what he plays, that gives the songs their snap.

When Prince went fully independent in 1996, his first impulse was to pour out all the music he made: triple and quadruple albums, cover versions, Internet-only songs, instrumentals. But since 1999 he also has been making deals with the major conglomerates, one album at a time, and giving them some of what they want: songs that reaffirm his gift for pop hooks and that also deliberately stir memories of his 1980's hits. With any luck the new songs could sound familiar enough to reach a generation raised on sampled 1970's and 80's R&B. He reaches back to "1999," for instance, in "Fury," a tale of pop ambition and parted lovers.

Yet he's experimenting too, perhaps goaded by atonal liberties of hip-hop. Working alone in the studio, Prince becomes the opposite of his onstage self. Instead of working in real time with live instruments, he goes for a dizzying mix of the handmade and the surreal. "Black Sweat" is an electronic maze of claps and bass thrusts with a whistling, sliding synthesizer high above, while the murky P-Funk vamp of the song "3121" carries dissonant distorted guitars and voices that have been sped up and slowed down. When Prince proselytizes in "The Word," the track is a shifty mixture of staccato acoustic guitar, washes of string sound, a lone saxophone, simmering electronic sounds and clipped percussion.

Meanwhile, when he's not being futuristic, his music holds a history of soul. "Satisfied" is an old-fashioned falsetto ballad, complete with horn section, "Get on the Boat" mixes James Brown funk with salsa, and "The Dance" builds up to an orchestral supper-club bolero.

Prince has done some careful ethical balancing to square his old lascivious self with his openly devout one, and on "3121" he shows his sense of humor about it. He's still a seducer, but one with boundaries. In "Lolita," he's tempted by a young girl, yet insists, "you'll never make a cheater out of me"; then he starts a call and response, asking, "What you wanna do?" She responds, teasingly, "Whatever you want," but when he says, "Then come on, let's dance," she says, with disdain and disbelief, "Dance?" Still, Prince understands what made him a star, and he's not giving it up. "I'm hot and I don't care who knows it," he declares in "Black Sweat," then immediately gets pragmatic: "I got a job to do."

JON PARELES

Thanks for posting it Byron. Wow!! Another good review of the album, I just may love the album as well; can't wait to get my copy Tuesday!!

Jon PARELES USUALLY DIGS pRINCE'S ALBUMS. He'S COOL.

Hopefully, readers of the newspaper will take note and buy the album this week!!

That would be great. That was a great review by both of them.