I'm listening to a One Nite Alone Tour bootleg, the April 20th, 2002 show, and it never cease to amaze me just how much of a rejuvenation, and re-invention his recorded music would have, if he would sing, play, and perform in the studio like he does on stage. The last 2 studio albums has been this side of stale. I thought after Rainbow Children, he would use the recording process from that album for subsequent releases. The paint-by-number songs bury some truly unique (for Prince) songs ("The Word", "All The Midnights In The World").

Next album I hope he ditches his current rhythm section and 3121 concept, up his songwriting
game a little.

I'm convinced that since The Rainbow Children, Prince has been writing albums that are deliberately meant to be easy to translate to live performances.

Musicology, 3121, and Planet earth appear to be deliberately designed so he could replicate them relatively easily live, and mix them up easily if he wanted to.
Classic old songs like "Kiss", "When Doves Cry", "If I was Ur Girlfriend" and the like, all sound very different from their album versions when he plays them live. I've heard very close approximations, but they sound dead compared to his studio versions often (except If I was Ur Girlfriend).
Not true with Musicology, 3121 and the later albums--the songs almost always sound better live or sound extremely close to the album versions.

I think he's moved to the new business model of releasing albums which end up promoting tours, rather than launching tours to promote albums. Though my theory doesn't hold much water since Prince also performs fewer of his new songs at his shows than the classic material.