I remember how empty Rave... left me feeling, but TRC satisfies completely.

I think the fact that people know that Prince hobknobs with Larry Graham and other JW's kills it for them, not necessarily the religious content, which he's incorporated into his music for over 20 years. Or maybe the fact that Christianity is blatantly in the choruses of a couple of songs. I was never uptight about his sexually explicit lyrics, so I'm not uptight with his religious ones. When thinking about the narration I do think it could have been clearer sonically in some places so people could understand what's being said, but it's not even part of every song.

Quite frankly I found the album revelatory when I first listened to it. He hasn't sounded this inspired in over a decade, and it shows in the arrangements, his playing, Blackwell's playing, the background singers' singing, etc. The addition of the Fender Rhodes on so many songs adds a new wrinkle to his sound that he hasn't attempted to this extent before.

Love the fact that I can hear his hand coming off the fretboard towards the very end of the title track, wish "Digital Garden" had been longer because it's exquisite, was unenthused about "The Work" before I heard it within the context of the album (it works better on the album than alone), "Family Name" makes me put pedal to the metal on the freeway once the mid section comes up throughout the end, love Johnny Bwell's tone and attack, Kenny G., err, I mean Najee doesn't relegate any of it to syrup like I thought he might, really dig the Blackwell's all over the place tom tom work on "Everywhere", the guitar work is wicked, subtle, sexy, and damn sublime, the subtle flute on the coda of the title track, the blatant flute in "Mellow", the screaming Prince does like he did in the good ol' days which had been missing (and which tells me a lot)...

It was all just so focused and had a sense of urgency compared to what he had been doing for years before. The obvious contrast of TRC compared with what he had been doing for years makes Prince seem like 2 ENTIRELY different people. People within my proximity hear it and ask me who it is. Once they know they go into a spiel about not knowing Prince could sound like that, not knowing Prince was still making music, etc. I don't give a gerbil's ass about what anybody says; if I were to compile the top 5 Prince albums TRC would be on my list somewhere.

Sports writer Scoop Jackson once alluded to a Kobe Bryant/Prince analogy with TRC that conveyed even he knew that Prince was ON again (though I doubt very many of his readers knew what he was talking about). It doesn't take up the entire article, and is short, but if anybody's interested I'll give you the URL.

Funny, with all of Graham's reputation on bass, and as much as I dig the old music he's played on with Sly & The Family Stone and with GCS, I find Prince's bass playing to have more of an impact on this album than the two songs Graham is on.