Hey, if the Black Album had been released before Lovesexy, what would the outcome have been? Prince was in his element / prime around then. Coming after the Sign of the Times album, how do you think fans and critics would have viewed the Black Album?

I can tell you that all my friends (college) that heard both albums in 1988 asked for me copies of.....

Black Album

No one really liked Lovesexy.

Guys just loved Bob George!

I can also tell you that Lovesexy was a sharp most disappointing drop in public reception to a Prince album. I remember peeps saying that Alphabet St didn't really sound that good...

Smillan said:

Well, this has been discussed quite a bit on here in the past, bit that's cool. I think it's an interesting period in P's career myself and I'll say here what I've always have said; I personally think The Black Album is not only one of P's best albums but one of his most important albums that he has ever recorded. It shows P's state of mind at a critical time in his career. Sure, the making of the album has been downplayed as P just coming up with some party songs to play for Sheila's birthday party. Which could very welll be true. But I know, somewhere down the line, P started seriously looking at this as a release for an album. P was pissed at the word on the street that he had lost his edge for funk and had sold out to the white pop audience. Which very well could have been true as well. P always wanted that pop market from the get and he gotten it by different means. That's cool. But he took to heart what the black folks was saying and obviously P hadn't lost his funk. I think the main reason P went into the style of music, blending funk with heavy jazz and classical forms during 85 and 86 was to seperate himself from the Ready For The Worlds and so forth. Other acts were heavily biting off of P's sound and style from 82-84 and he had to distance himself from them. Thus, u get him developing a "new" thang. Which was very creative. What caused the backlash more than the music though was P's lack of black women in his visual efforts. Purple Rain and UTCM both employed non black women as his love interests and that wasn't overlooked or taken lightly by black folks. Especially black females. The same black females that have championed P all of his career. They simply felt slighted. That was what fueled the backlash of P "selling out". Plus the media wrote about P going soft musically charged up P and that was his reation; The Black Album. That's why he titled it what he did. This is to prove to ya'll that yes, I'm still black and yes, this is for all the blacks out there who think I've lost it. Bob George alone, is one of the most hardest and most o.g. thuggish-iest cuts EVER recorded. It's more convincing than a lot of hardcore rap and this is coming from a non rapper. P was ahead of most rappers by doing this type of cut as well where a lot of gangasta rap didn't hit untill the 90's. P did this in 87. If this album had been released after Signs, which I wish it had, then P would have been shot through the roof with his sales and his popularity. It would have been like when Denzel did Training Day. He blew many folks minds, black and white simply because they didn't know Denzel could get down like that. But Denzel had always been like that. Same thing with P. P has always shown rage in his music, dating back to Sister. And much of the 1999 album. P more than likely, because of cuts like Bob George, had second thoughts of releasing it. I know WB wanted to release it cuz it would have sold twice as much, if not more, than Signs did. I've never been crazy about the Lovesexy album, as a whole. I dug some of the songs, but overall, nah. I like cuts like Positivity and Anna Stesia and the title track. And even I Wish U Heaven. But I could never get with Alphabet St and Eye No and Dance On. If he had released the two albums as a double. U know...the Good side and the evil side, that would have been something. He fucked with that concept anyway on the Lovesexy tour.

The fact that album had no author or name would have given it that curiosity factor. People would wonder who did it.

Not a peep.

I remember that time very well in late 87, as news hit the papers that this album had been pulled, I even managed to get myself inadvertently mentioned in a national newspaper over it. However I am not sure what his european following would have thought of it, P was riding on the tide of the critical success of SOTT, particularily outside America, and the Black Album would have surely put a stop to that. Blackguitaristz view is very interesting on this though, something i would never have thought of, but it would seem P was beginning to feel torn between two sides, hence the release of Lovesexy, which would have been a sort of finding a balance album. There is no doubt, the Black album would have sold a bomb in America, and P might even have established himself as one of the originators of gangsta rap with it, shortly after Ice T and Public Enemy arrived on the scene, but I seriously think both owe alot to P for breaking down barriers, which he had started to do back in 1980 with Dirty Mind.

by the time the mainstream public got to hear the black album, it was simply too late

Smillan said:

it was released before Lovesexy ...