remember this great album? prince even did that show sinbad hosted, the classic talkshow "vibe!"

if there ever was a time that prince was irrelevant and lost his mind, it was this period. i remember watching that vibe show and thinking "who the hell is watching this show?" "why is prince walking with a cane?" "why does mayte appear to be preprogrammed?" "is larry graham insane?" "who the hell is tina graham, and why is she on stage?" "stauros? what the hell are they talking about?"

Is this the show where Larry Graham told Sinbad that they "researched it" and discovered that Jesus was killed not on a cross, but on a pointed stick (stauros)?

Which reminds me. What other meaningless, bullshit show did Prince and Larry Graham perform "The Christ" on -- and in the background there was a huge sign that said STAUROS? All I remember is that it was some black awards show but for some reason Celine Dion was in attendance. These were CRAZY days!

I'm off to order the newpowerpak.

Is this thread about NPS or about The Christ in stauros thing??

Anyway, that whole stauros period was strange, indeed. I call that his dark period. Thank God he's lightened up!!

loudawg said:

He performed 'The Christ' on the Essence Awards.

According to The Vault:

Prince's ideas about "stauros" are from the Jehovah's Witness religion, which claims that Jesus died on a pole or a stake, not a cross. The Greek word "stauros", which was translated into "cross" in many Bibles, meant just one piece of timber. The symbol of the cross comes from ancient false religions, according to Jehovah's Winess. The cross wasn't used or worshipped by the early Christians.

You can see at that time that Prince was just delving into his new faith, a bit of a transition period certainly.

I always heard that Romans actually crucified victims on a T not a cross, and they put the nails through the wrist and ankles, not the hands and feet as in the usual depiction.

metalorange said:

The wooden cross, or the wooden stake - it all comes from the ancient symbol of the saviour God-man who died hung/nailed/crucified to a tree - it's the wood that is the motif here, along with the two thiefs eitherside.

Solar allegory time again folks.

I've only seen one performance of The Christ (on the Rave Un2 DVD), and i can catergorically say that it is the most cringe worthy performance prince has ever given. That part where Larry starts to sing will go down as the nadir of prince's career.

As for New Power Soul, well its not as terrible as some make out, but its certainly not classic (with the exception of Come On). 98-2000 were definitely the years where he seemed to have lost his sense of direction. I believe it was the knock on effect of Emanciaption - "the album he was born to make" being such a failure. All he needed to do was release The Truth as a commercial stand alone album, and critics would have welcomed him back with open arms, but unfortunately he went off on this tangent.

Its funny that 1998 was exactly the year that I became serious about Prince, and discovered his back catalogue.

NouveauDance said:

Religion. What can you do about it? Since the beginning of time, people have been searching for meaning and answers. Egyptians had all these ideas about gods. At one point people thought the world was flat. After we achieve our personal goals and have free time left over, one starts to ponder the meaning of life. Imaginary gods and heavens are created to make people feel better about themselves. Politicians and churches use the fear of god to keep people in check and to avoid chaos. What a sad thing it is, to realize that once loved ones are gone, they're gone forever. That once your life is over, it's eternal unconsciousness. It makes you wonder whether life is truly a gift or not.If there is a creator, or creators, why would we be with the creator after death? Walking on clouds, talking with loved ones who have passed away. Doesn't make sense. I'd love to talk with Larry and Tina Graham about my nihilistic nature!

Certainly not his best body of work, but one of is more rounded albums, Come On is indeed one of his fattest joints and deserved much more commercial success than it received, but hey that's P for ya, can't see the woods for the trees!

AWJ

P.S. And as for the Larry Graham influence and his performance on the Rave DVD it did indeed taint the whole experience, but when you join a cult you inevitably mix with fruit cakes!

Keep slapp'in that Bass Lazza and keep ya Bible in the hotel room!

AWJ said:

Mad Secks, When U Love Somebody, Freaks, Come On, and the One are good trax.

God I miss Larry!

AWJ

2 bad sarcasm

AWJ
[Edited 3/30/06 5:54am]

I've always liked NPS. I just got my NewPowerPack in the mail last week, although I haven't listened to Larry yet. The Chaka sounds pretty nice...mellow.

God, I despise that album - with the exception of "The One' it sounds like a bunch of noise - a cacaphony of instruments.

http://www.play.com/play2...g=72&pa=sr


Just saw this on play.com

What's EV classics?

Sly said:

I believe it stands for EXTRA VALUE i.e it's been official reduced in price!

AWJ

1sexymf said:

You sound like my 67 year old dad talking about ALL pop music...

I laughed at this:

http://www.theonion.com/c...node/46712

A lot of the criticism towards NPS is hold-over from the time of it's release, much like that often expressed towards C&D.

At the time, NPS was kind of the straw that broke the camels back. Fans had stayed loyal through the and 'slave' affair, on the pseudo-promise that the best stuff was being held back until he broke from Warners.

That happened, and we got Emancipation -- Which largely sounded like a watered down, sanitised, version of the stuff he was doing on The Gold Experience -- I think folks gave that album an easy time, it had enough decent stuff on it to make a single LP after all, and the rest, well you could see it as just being the icing on the cake - in any case, it was a TRIPLE album of new material signalling a new, free, no-holds barred era, with promise of even more to come (Crystal Ball was mentioned in the liner notes).

Then EMI folded, which put an end to Emancipation, but then there was the JOTY tour still in progress and the Truth, an acoustic album -- something new and different, and Kamasutra, something different again.

The Truth was restrained and disappointing, Kamasutra was pure masturbation -- so up comes Crystal Ball, and the whole FIASCO of that, which bordered on fraud!! It sounds funny, but I remember people talking about calling the Bad Business Bureaux at the time because credit card info had been taken, and all we had to go on were recorded messages and telephone staff who had no record of our orders!

Crystal Ball turns out to be an unsatisfying mush -- largely a batch of songs from recent years, interspersed awkwardly with the odd legendary 80s track and a bunch of wasteful remixes, all poorly edited together.

In amongst all this, the media had lost interest in Prince other than making a quick jibe the name change and about how he intended to release YET another multi-CD set of stuff only die-hards would be interested in -- AND, yes, AND, the whole Larry Graham THING was starting to crysalise.

!!..... After all this, the next record that comes along is NPS, which sounds just like a condensed replay of Emancipation, but with Doug E Fresh in the mix too!

Oh, it doesn't stop there, after NPS, we get the whole issue of Prince suing fan website ordeal which involved a 'divide and conquer' tactic too, lots of bad feelings about that - PLUS (!!).... the increasingly odd religious outbursts, that at one point I remember bordered on some fans getting upset at some comments made in interviews regarding race (or could be construed in such a way)!



Phew!

THAT'S where the hate for NPS comes from IMO -- I liked the album at the time, I knew it was nothing new, it was treading water, but it was fun, and the live shows in support of the record were fun for me -- So I can still listen to NPS now and enjoy it. Rave, Musicology and 3121 feel like they follow a similar trend to me, only I don't have the same rose-tinted specs on when I listen to those albums.

As it stands NPS is a concise, cohesive collection of pop-funk, much like the said albums above. And, you know, it was never meant to be taken as a Prince album, YES it has him on the cover, he does all the vocals etc, etc - So it's Prince in all but name, but Prince was a free-agent at this point - if he wanted to have the name 'Prince' on it, he would've had it, the NPG moniker is there for a reason -- It was born out the JOTY tour, and as such he saw it as a light-hearted, frivolous party record - Which, in the end, it is.


Thank you, and good night.

Lou?? is that u? I'm talking about loufromtheoldschoolnevagivinconnieabreak
LOL

loudawg said:

[Edited 3/30/06 14:54pm]

1sexymf said:

Think about how it would have sounded with the Exodus Band. That shit would have been off the hook as a band effort. Instead he handed the reigns to kirky j

But I actually love this album. Listened to it the other day and loved nearly the whole thing

NouveauDance said:

Excellent analysis of the times and circumstances that lead to the release of NPS. Except that NPS was genuinely poor. I mean, I agree that the times did favor an unfavorable assessment, but too many songs do sound like filler, in most cases due to uninventive arrangements and production. Even Rave or Emancipation have more redeeming aspects. To this day, just the thought of some of these songs depresses me. Come On, The One and Wasted Kisses are interesting enough for my Nano.

In other words, the unauspicious times only made NPS more "hatable" : it was already pretty easy to dislike.

I just realized this is a LouDawg thread.

Always fun how new albums bring out the fans.

Aerogram said:

I remember that reviewer from Minnesota said Newpower Soul is less funky than a GreasyMeal album and Prince was so pissed he responded on his love4oneanother website.

Like some others said, this release depresses me. I havent played it in ages. It takes me back to those dark times in Prince fanmdom that nouveau wrote about.

omg its Lou

I often spend whole days figuring out if I despise this album or Chaos and Disorder more. NPS is shallow plastic funk-lite. There is no lasting resonance to it.

A career low.

Newpower Soul was my "he better kick ass with the next release" or else record.

The first single? The One?...

well hold up.. the first song I heard from the set was Mad Sex because the local radio DJ played it before Prince hit the stage during the last leg of the Jam of the Year tour... 'Twas okay, but I think I was more excited because it was a new "Prince" song right before he hit hit the stage in an hour or two.

But The One???!!!? Claire Fischer strings and that fretless bass?!!!??? I could look beyond the flaky-lyrics because musically that shit is still a classic. Fast -forward through the Vibe performance yadda...yadda...

June 30th... Releases by Maxwell, Outkast and Prince on the same day....

Well I call myself saving the best for last...
Outkast Aquemini.... classic.
Maxwell's Embrya.... classic.

well... let's talk about the last song I heard that day:
Like Funky Music

this was the day I finally had to come to the realization that not everything Prince does is going to be classic, in fact I pretty much had to admit that Prince was capable of suckage. I'd pretended for a while that it wasn't true...

but Like Funky Music

It was a week or two before I realized that Wasted Kisses appeared 40 tracks later... but that song isn't that great and it didn't save this album

So it was then I decided that he'd better kick ass with the next album or he's going on the back-burner...

I guess I can continue the story when someone does a Rave Un2 the Joy Fantastic - The Lost Classic! thread.

Certainly not one of Prince's best albums for sure, but then, he once said he wanted to release music for the here and now, I don't think he meant for NPS (surely it should be NS?!) to be a long-term classic, just some funky music for that moment in time. After all, fans are always on at him to release anything and everything the moment he records it. Well, this is what you get. After the disappointment of this, he finally started rationing his music again.

But like most Prince albums, everybody has a different favourite. One person likes The One and Wasted Kisses but nothing else, somebody else insists Mad Sex and Come On are the only classics, etc etc.

Personally, I played this album a lot on several long coach journeys over a month and came to really like it. Personally I like Newpower Soul, Push It Up and Freaks On This Side the best, and aspects of Shoo-bed-ooh (it's got a great phat drum sound) and the end of When U Love Somebody.

I got this album on the same day I got Maxwell's "Embrya". I listened to Newpower Soul once and just kept on listening to "Embrya" until it was four in the morning.

NPS is still to this day his worst album. No objections allowed!