Sorry but i looove this album. There is a lot of snobbery around liking this within hardcore fans for some reason but it rules.
Love Prince in this era and this tour was first P one i ever went to.
And that tour introduced mayte whom has turned into my 15 year old sefs idol. goodbye madonna, hello mayte.
This album has the best songs ever..... THUNDER, LIVE 4 LOVE, INSATIABLE.
Anyway, there u go. Love it
xxxxx

I can't deny that I have dismissed this album as average in comparison to the 80's.

But in its own right, it's beautiful in so many ways.

Thunder is one of those songs Prince just does so well and only he can pull something like that off. The lyrics are simple, but at the same time, so complex. I'm still trying to figure out what they mean. The mix of the different instruments he used was even better.

Live 4 Love, I didn't get at first, but the more I listened, the more I liked it. I really like the opening riff and the lyrics are totally cool. I'm not so into Tony's rapping myself, but it worked so well for this song.

The title track is also beautiful. Simple, but still very pretty.

The list goes on and on, so I'm gonna stop b4 I get ahead of myself.
Average, sure... but this is where Prince makes average look good

I've been a fan for 25 years and I love D&P too. It's a fun, funky album.

It's an EXCELLENT album of Pop, Funk, Rock and Soul. A treat to the ears!

The album brings back so many memories and shows that Prince is AWESOME!

"The One and Only Daddy Pop!"

my husband's fave

D&P was the beginning of the second great era Prince´s career, after two rather mediocore albums in Batman and GB, then P served us up D&P in 1991 an absolute monster album and tour to boot. It might sound wild to say it, but it is in my opinion an album which challenges 1999 in depth, although it is far more polished which maybe is the reason why many hardcore fans dont rate it so high, add to this that P spent most of his time touring Europe and Asia.

From 1991 to 1998 gave us D&P, Symbol (which is an extension of D&P), Come, TGE, C&D, Emancipation and Crystal Ball, plus The hits/ B-sides.

We are probably now witnessing the third Era of Prince´s career, again after the release of the shoddy Rave and NPS.

from 2001 to present we have got TGE, Choco invasion, Slaughter house, NEWS, ONA, ONA live, Musicology, 3121 and PE. Not to mention all the other stuff which was released at NPGMC.

It's very good.

thunder
cream
willing and able (shame about the rap portion tho)
strollin
gett off
insatiable
money don't matter 2night

all very nice. i guess live 4 love is not too bad either, but
once again ruined by the rapping.

one of the albums i loved most when i got it and hated most
once i got used to it.

Yeah, that was one of the lucky albums to make it to my Xbox 360 hard drive. It was a difficult decision between it and 1999.

IstenSzek said:

true, That ass Tony M did major damage to it, especially live, Rap is mostly crap live, but Tony M rapping put all that into level of depravity that is rarely ever witnessed, even the studio stuff with Tony M is beyond all corners of the imagination, and what Prince saw in him is to this day still a mystery, he was simply .....

forget it, the words for such waste have not been invented yet

I love the whole cd...As far as aerobics and dancing go...it's the perfect length. It's a mix of songs that are both racey, and classy.

This is one of my favorite Prince albums.

On a 2 dimension plane, this album is basically:
1) commercial
2) the results of a very prolific Prince
3) combinations of the best & worst of the early NPG

I listened to it just now for the first time in quite a while. Another example of me dismissing it as average, I think I've heard it just more than 10x since I got it 3 months ago.

Thunder is a brilliant song. It's like a combination of sex meets religion and music plays the third party somewhere... I'm still figuring it out. The combination of the vocals and different instruments and varying intensity shows a potential amazing album. If it's all based from that one track.

Unfortunately, it sets the standard too high. So "Daddy Pop" came off as... not really a prize winner. This includes the first input from the NPG... and the rap at the end kinda ruins any chance of it making an impact.
The title track brings things back around... beautiful music and the duet is great... brings out the strength of Prince's lower register.

The "ride" through the album varies. I lost my train of thought during Cream, so my mind wasn't where it should have been.
Gett off is fun, just like always. "Walk, don't walk' has a really good message, but it being short kinda makes it disappear.
Money Don't Matter 2night... I can remember hearing just on "The very best of..." and it automatically became a favorite. NPG at one of its best performances. Love the back-up vocals and the music... and Prince's vocals.

Push brings the calibar down. When they told Tony to "get on the mic," I was just don't encourage him, he's been ruining songs left & right. And as hilarious as Prince is in his "rap"... it sounds like he's in dire need of sleep (sounds more than just delirious, haha).
Insatiable is sweet, beautiful, what more can I say?

Live 4 Love... just beyond amazing. Definitely my favorite efforts from the NPG throughout the album. And Tony's rapping actually works for me here, the one exception . I was listening to some of the lyrics and some of the things he said made a lot of sense. Love the vocals throughout... and the storyline itself... Prince is giving a few examples of why he'd ask the question "can I live 4 love with all this hate goin' round?" ...perhaps its him looking for his own answers.
Prince's & Michael Bland on drums

I might experiment, take out some of the heavy NPG tracks that lower the quality of the album... and see if I come up with a different answer as to what I think about the album. I gotta say, though, this has been the most intriguing listen I've had of a Prince album in weeks... but the semester's coming to an end, so I'm starting to relax and chill again

Love love it

Diamonds & Pearls was an album where you definitely had to be there at the time of its release to fully appreciate its impact.

The hype beforehand, kicking off with the limited edition 'official bootleg' of Gett Off, was amazing to experience as a fan. For the months before the album's release, you knew that this was going to be something huge - and it was!
Not only was Gett Off a great track, but there was that excellent video AND those impressive remixes/alternate versions. Everytime I looked at the packaging of the single and saw those words; 'from the forthcoming album, Diamonds & Pearls', I kept longing for the album's release. And then along came Cream to whet the appetite even more.
I'm not sure that any Prince album since Purple Rain has been hyped quite as much as Diamonds & Pearls was and what made it even more special was that the hype was created purely for the album itself. There was no accompanying movie selling it.
And as for the album itself, at the time it sounded just so dynamic and new for Prince, especially after the previous two albums which, as good as they were, sounded like Prince wasn't moving anywhere beyond the sound he'd already created.
Tony M worked, just about (unlike the album), and I remember when Radio One played Daddy Pop on the Friday before the album's release and my jaw just dropped - it sounded nothing like anything Prince had done before and I was dancing around the room like a mad thing.

Looking back and it's easy to see that a few of the songs rode purely on the strength of the hype. I still love Daddy Pop, but it's more because of the excitement I associate with it when remembering how great it used to be hearing a track before the album's release in the pre-internet days when that was a much harder thing to do.
I think Gett Off and Cream have probably survived the best, and oddly I think Push is an under-rated song that still sounds okay
Apart from the obvious Jughead, I think the weakest songs on the set are the last two; Insatiable and Live 4 Love.

But one thing was for sure; it was an exciting time to be a fan in that period and it's still one of the albums where I can play it all through without skipping a track (yep, even Jughead).

Great album,awesome cover.Love it,and all the vids from it 2!

i love this album too. great memories.. prince's real last big hit.

the only irratation is the continuous rapping/talking which dirupted the excellent music.

Haystack said:

brilliant post, sums up very much how it was

Haystack said:

That is absolutely true. I guess if you're a new fan and you're hearing albums like Purple Rain and Sign O' The Times for the first time, Diamonds & Pearls isn't going to stand out that much. But back in '91 it felt like a creative rebirth. It seemed like he had peaked with Sign O' The Times and his career was winding down--with each album a little less interesting than the one the preceeded it. But with D&P he was back on top with three hit singles and a fresh, new sound. More importantly, he kept that magic going for the next 5 years and gave us new classics like the Symbol album and the Gold Experience.

I remember reading an interview where someone said something to the effect of "Prince takes your thing and does it better than you could ever do". I think Prince was really energized by that first incarnation of the NPG and they drove him to a whole new level.

December1984 said:

Interesting post. The 2nd part about the interview... I have heard that b4... Prince takes what he hears to the next level... and the NPG did drive him to a new level... something quite different from the Revolution.
I'm still relatively new... so coming into this album, I wasn't expecting much, but some of the songs the first time around weren't what I'd call good... I dont think I liked Daddy Pop, Strollin', Willing and Able, Push and Jughead at first... now, I like them all BUT Jughead... I could never listen to that again.

Going thru the 90's is something I'll have to do once I get Emancipation... then I can see the progression he went thru and see for myself whether it was for better or worse. I really like and The Gold Experience, Come as well. I think is on a diff. plain/plane that D&P, though... not that its better... maybe more intersting/consistant I dont know. I haven't owned them long enough to see for myself.

Goes to show I've got lots to learn yet... but I have no problem with that. Prince's music should always be a learning experience

As i have said in another post/thread Symbol was an extension of D&P, it is on first listening a better sounding album, but the more you get into it, the weaker it gets, D&P suffered from two things, too polished and Tony M, otherwise it would have shadowed SOTT, Gett Off is one of the hardest funk/rock songs you will ever hear, it bites into the bone, Cream is like its title, simply cream

The interesting thing to me is though, how thru out the yrs, we start to intpret music differently, like age grabs us, for example, in 20 yrs, no one will remember a Madonna album for musical reasons, or MJ, outside of the fact that thriller was a big seller, but i seriously think 1999 will go down as one of the greatest albums of all time.

You may say i am topic wandering, but i mention it coz D&P was the 1999 of the 90´s

Just listened through it again.

This time, I skipped over Daddy Pop and Push... just to see what kind of sound I'd get.
I think I kinda lost my focus after a while

But "Live 4 Love" is something else... I don't know what it is... but that song just feels so powerful. and Michael Bland's drums... but also the lyrics... I can't quite pinpoint, but its something special, I tell ya.

Prince sometimes likes to start his albums, at least the ones where he has a band backing him... with something he came up with and played all by his lonesome. Musicology was another example, and some say that it's one of the better tracks on the album.
Thunder is just the same way... it's very impressive. The vision he has and most of it is down with the music alone. Only he could concoct something like that.

DreamyPopRoyalty said:

Live 4 love is absolutely amazing, i have seen this song live, it tore the place to bits, and you are right, Prince does have a thing with starting an album wild and by the 3rd track the balled starts, it is a formula he seldom strays from

I feel sorry for you in some ways, so much to listen to and so little time to listen to it in, you should be happy if you dont get Emancipation for Xmas, otherwise your family wont see you at all, lol

Whitnail said:

Yeah, I've noticed he always doing those ballads on the 3rd track... and those are among some of my favorites.
Your concern is sweet, but I always try to look at things from a positive POV. Being towards the end, I can look at everything that's happened and I can see each place in the storyline of his life and know what happens b4 and after each album... so there's less suspense. Although I still kinda feel bad for him at some points, like during Come where he's kinda depressed and I worry how he's gonna make it through... even though I know in advance that he does.

I think I made a pretty good dent in his work over the summer and I usually give him a listen after I got upstairs for the night, up for an extra hour listening... that way my thought pattern doesnt get interrupted.

But hey, if Emancipation isn't under that tree... all that more time to spend with SOTT.
I take the negative or what doesn't happen and turn it into a positive. Something I've done plenty of times since stepping into this complex world. There's so much to do that there's no time to let anything get u down for too long.

DreamyPopRoyalty said:

I thought this would be the last place on earth i would ask this question, and definately that you would be the last person on earth i would ask...

But what does POV stand for, I have never been able to figure it out...

Whitnail said:

POV= point of view

DreamyPopRoyalty said:

I like this album alright. The thing that holds it back from being great (or even good) is that there are too many songs on it. Whenever Prince puts "too many" songs on an album (your mileage may vary), there's always some just downright dreadful filler.

D&P needs to lose, at the very least, both Jughead and Push. And as much as I used to enjoy Walk Don't Walk, it hasn't aged well at all for me and is just taking up space. And an argument could be made that Prince never needed Tony M. and the Gameboyz, but the one contribution on that album that stands out as unnecessary is the one in Live 4 Love. Get rid of all of the above, and this album would be a classic for me.

lottielooloo1968 said:

my husbands as well

D&P was around when we hooked up, and we used the title track in our wedding