I once owned Exodus on cassette. I lost it many years ago. Yesterday I received through the post my Ebay purchase for the album and whacked it on last night.

First thought after such a long time – fucking brilliant. If I didn’t know better the guy must have been on some serious acid. Those segues are just nuts. But those aside, the music really is oozing with originality and a sound that only Prince had.

That whole era was awesome. Forget the wrangling with record companies and Prince’s spiral into insanity. Self indulgence? Hell yes! And thank god for that. Return of the Bump Squad, New Power Soul, big Fun, Get Wild… That deep, badass bass, sampling and dark keyboard sound he was carrying back then is just awesome. The good Life – great tune, and as for the Exodus has Begun… well, someone pass the spliff and drop the acid! 10 minutes of madness… Every single space in the songs filled with some weird sound or funky riff…

I do remember how annoying the segues got though…

I think he still has that sound in him. Occasionally it rears its funky head like 3121 the song… Its very reminiscent of those years. I wish he would give us more though. I don’t feel he completely explored it to see where it went. Instead he got “free” and gave us fucking Emancipation…

Tonight im going to re-explore the shaky ground that is NPS. He kind of returned to “that sound” a little for that album, but at the time I never quite liked it. Maybe I will hear it with fresh ears this time (I haven’t listened to it in years).

So, next purchase currently winging its way to me through the post is Gold Nigga… Is this good? I haven’t heard it yet. I don’t even know much about it.

Exodous is great. Prince is at his best when he focus on the funk. Exodous may be overproduced, but it is highly entertaining and it is very inspired of George Clinton. I only wish he sang the lead on all tracks, but the ENERGY....man!

By the way...Gold nigga is funky but contains way to much Tony M.

All 3 NPG albums bare little resemblence to each other.

Gold Nigga also suffers from too many segues, but unlike Exodus, they really are annoying and devoid of fun for the most part (I'm talking about the vocal/spoken ones here BTW, not the two short, and very fabulous, instrumentals, Oilcan and Goldie's Parade').

If you're familiar with the single '2Gether' and the Money Don't Matter b-side, 'Call The Law', you've already heard two tracks from the LP.

I quite like Gold Nigga - It has a similar band sound to (Think Love 2 The 9's, The Flow.....).

A lot of fans pass it up except for 'Johnny', which features Prince more prominently than the rest of the LP - But I'm a big fan of Deuce & A 1/4, and even Black MF In The House when I'm in the mood for it.

Yeah the NPG days were cool. Lots of cool songs from that time...and lots of Mayte too!

But his most creative period I think for me was...the Sign of the Times/Lovesexy era....the music during this was....AMAZING!

Rebeljuice said:

EXACTLY! I agree w/ u 100% -- by far his best period, it was all fresh. NPS hit and had the same songs, but different production - sounding much more watered down (plus no cussing thanks to larry graham).