The Rainbow Children is so extremely overrated among the Prince 'fams' IMO.

Sure, it has a more organic, live-sound then most of his earlier albums, but he is overindulging himself in boring jazz-rock, and a message and lyrics that are far too obscure to make sense.

Just because it sounds 'different' on the surface doesnt make it a masterpiece. On a musical level, Prince does nothing new on that album, and his lyrics are simply annoying and cringeworthy.

IMO the last time Prince made a real impact, was with the Lovesexy album, a record that incorporated everything he tried before: electro-funk, psychedelic rock, jazzy passages, multi-layered arrangements echoing the spirit of George Clinton and Frank Zappa.

After that his albums became hit and miss, but most of the time offering a handfull of great tracks, like Cream, Sexy MF and Dolphin.

After that it went downhill quickly. Emancipation, New Power Soul and Rave are simply poor albums. The rainbow Children might sound more organic on the surface, but it is simply as bad as that plastic albums that came before.

Hands down

SIGN O THE TIMES

Chasing said:

Yeah, I agree, but....
Its like how can he or anyone top themselves after that!
He set the bar so high that ANYTHING after that was almost certainly going to be a letdown.
.....not to mention how truly bad some of the music he devised later contrasts so harshly to make the difference so stark.

Ugot2shakesumthin said:

i honestly believe he had no idea what to do after 'lovesexy.' you can hear him groping around for a new direction for the next few albums but it was like, what could he possibly do next?

i love the '91-'93 jazz explosion, but it almost seemed like he was pulling back and coasting on a default jazz setting, waiting for something new to grab him.

it's a real shame the 'the dawn'/'come'/'the gold experience' stuff came when it did. it all got messed up by his label war. the original conception of the 'come' stuff would have been fantastic.

3121 was flat and said nothing new. why do so many people dig that album so much? i don't get it or see it

Riverpoet31 said:

Prince was trying to show who he was at that stage in his life. The words were nothing like I had heard before.

It's a matter of opinion.You think it's overrated, we don't.

Vendetta1 said:

Yeah, I totally am not down with ANYTHING JW but I will take heartfelt joyous excursions like Everywhere any damn day of the week over the Prince by Numbers crap he's releasing now.

Emancipation

3121
Prior to 3121, The gold experience.

phunkdaddy said:

Yeah, I remember we all went bananas when it came out here, we waxed lyrical over it for months. Within 24 hours there was a rate tracks of 3121 to SOTT tracks on already, and comparing songs to equivalent tracks off purple rain.