You need to make an album with one theme and make it a triple CD. The great bands from your era and prior are making box sets. The Eagles just came out with one.

None of this "i don't know what the fuck my music represents anymore." Get one theme. Funk? Go with it, 36 songs of funk. You will outsell Britney on the charts. Get with the program!

I would love a new mellinium 'Emancipation' style CD!

I don't mean style as in music, but as in his approach.

Imago said:

Define what you mean by approach.

There's itunes now. Who's going to pay for three disc, when all you want is three songs?
[Edited 1/1/08 21:23pm]

littlemissG said:

Well, with Emancipation, he embarked to outdo himself, both in the length of the album, it's message, and in the way he wanted to express himself. The songs are deeply personal, they're all encased in this sense that something special was going in his life. He was a strange creature in love when he did it.

Although he failed to fully express it in ways that his audience would totall connect to, it was the first album since LoveSexy where he was trying to reach out with this new found sense of something. In LoveSexy it was Spirituality. On Emancipation it was being in love and being free.

Unfortunately, on Emancipation he overreached, and underachieved despite.


But I applaud the effort, and rather like the album.

If he could try that yet again with a new album, another 3 CD Opus, I'd listen to it regardless if it was 3 hours of Planet Earth material.


I quite like Prince when he's showing off.

The problem with "emancipation" was that it sucked.

I'm talking about something along the lines of the "black album." Just one funk tune after another. This gives Prince a direction to grow in one direction on one album. Then what you get are different variations of intensity within funk itself. Same with rock if he went that way. The problem is, especially with Planet Earth and 3121, is he is all over the map, creating works that don't improve upon every creation. They just slide from one genre to another. He needs to work within one genre as he did with Musicology, which brought him back to the stage in the first place.

Rockability said:

I see where you're going with that.

I don't Prince's issue is lack of focus though--it's intensity and sincerity.

I mean, he was all over the place on Purple Rain but pulled it off nicely cause the songs were fierce, intense and personal. Everyone can relate to the feeling of abandonment on When Doves Cry, but you'd be hard pressed to find anyone who relates to some Digital Garden with banished ones.

Imago said:

You summed my thread up well. Focus. And you mention Purple Rain, which is one of his most steady genre albums. Think about it, he uses the same instruments on every song. Some are more up-tempo and funky, but they all have the same rock vibe, even "i would die for you" and "baby i'm a star." He just subtracted the guitar.

Rockability said:

Honestly, if I could hear one album with absolutely no jazz interludes or horns, I'd be thrilled.

Make sure your next loving wife is everlasting and strong.