It's a little over my head too, but I like 'She loves me for me'!

The Rainbow Children is Prince's most successful "concept" album. He tried with Symbol and The Gold Experience, but those were tied together more by segues than by an actual "theme" (TGE suffers slightly from having it's original lead-off "Interactive" removed; a song that set the tone for the computer vibe).

TRC is pretty much a continuous theme throughout. The songs sound great on their own, but sound even better when listened to start-to-finish.

Having said that, concept albums are sometimes harder to absorb than normal albums (which are more "collections of songs").

It's not weird, its just something you haven't opened your mind to yet. It's a great cd especially #3 at the beginning. I just love the factg that he used playful bordem of his fans (to include me). Give it a while you'll get it.

trc1 said:

Opening your mind is one thing, but when garbage is dumped in, you tend to close it right back up for the time being.

love it cept for weddng song

ernestsewell said:

Then I guess your not muscially connected.

Stop looking for the same song everytime P puts out a cd. Gotta learn to explore. I don't listen to P every single second of the day. I gotta change and go else where to vibe on something new. Musicians explore. If they didn't then we would still be listen to the same tune instead of adding a few more notes applied in a different direction.

The Watchtower dogma throughout the lyrics kills it for me. Great music though.

trc1 said:

That's a large statement by you especially since you don't know me. I'm a musician, and am quite connected to Prince's music as I am anyone's I'm a fan of. TRC is trash, preachy, disconnected, and ridiculous.

ernestsewell said:

Yes it is a large statement. Explore a little. Let those of us who do get it enjoy it. He's got other cd's for you to enjoy.

TRC is one of my favorites!

I really and truly do not like Chaos and Disorder, but I'm not going to belittle it in a way to create pudding. I just leave it where I left it and groove on something else. Later i'll go back to it and understand it a bit.

trc1 said:

I don't seem to remember anyone telling you to burn your CD of TRC. I also don't remember saying I never explore music. You work with assumptions, I can see this now. I'll know how to handle you in the future. Thanks for opening my mind to that.

ernestsewell said:

I have no intentions of burning any of my cd's. I don't work with assumption I work with an open mind just not right now with Chaos and Disorder. It will stay in the closet til I'm ready for it. Until then, I'm going to be a "Dreamer" for a while. Some great knowledge there. Any your very welcome.

Rainbow Children is da bomb..great great album..did I already said great..and awesome.

I love the rainbow children. It's one of his best albums and a return to form, from the up and down, hit or miss 1990's. This is album is well instructed. It should be listen to in it's entirety. It's not the type of album where you can say i like this, that and other other track. You either like the album or you don't. I feel if there was ever a time prince should have sequenced an album as one track it was this one.

it's not the preaching per se, it's the content of the preaching. 'lovesexy's' lyrical content doesn't offend me.

ernestsewell said:

WTF I guess to each their own but still WTF

Dayclear said:

Me too, that is my favorite track off TRC. I remember when I was at the celebration in Minneapolis, right before the album was released. After I heard, "She Loves Me 4 Me", I wanted the DJ to play it again. I liked it right away, which is unusual for me, even with Prince songs.

stanleylieber said:

I like the preaching cuz to me it ain't preaching its just telling it how he sees it. BTW I am not by any means a JW not even if he came to my front door.

DieLon said:

Yes, this would be just you - you're supposed to listen to it all the way through.

Accujack said:

Ya'll must be too hip for the room then. And I don't mean this in a cool cat kinda way. Ya'll must be them three-minute hipsters that the radio is geared towards these days.

DieLon said:

It's the only Prince album in the last 29 years that I've loved all the way through.

Accujack said:

I couldn't agree more. I like albums that are created as a whole. Anything less is just a collection of songs. Must be my prog-rock tendencies. For some reason the only other album of Prince's that I see as being an 'album' and not 'collection' is Lovesexy. But then when you remember that it is non-tracked that is probably the reason. They are not quite the same though

DieLon said:

Someone ages ago said to listen to Herbie Hancock's Headhunters. I'd recommend it even if you don't like TRC. It'll make you think if nothing else.

DieLon said:

I thought it was just me!!! My fav track though is Everywhere.. I have that tune on repeat as I type..
[Edited 5/1/09 2:42am]

xenon said:

Never thought the album was as great as some of the hardcore made it out to be. Sounds inspid at times, reminds me of sesame street sounding 70's jazz and that's not a good thing.

Although, as ever, P smacks it live, and ONA was one of his best tours ever!!

I suppose everyone is ready to slap me for this... but I believe b-4 TRC Prince was trapped in serious rut. His songs were not that great. His music was searching and failing. It was like how much worse can he make sound. I will always consider NPS and Rave as two of the worse albums in his career because he began to sound absolutely burned out, trying to make dead horses live.

TRC, while may not have 'hits' on it, was a rebirth. It was the most exciting album I had heard from him for a while. I remember when I went to record sto to buy it, I was saying, "If this doesn't sound new and surprising, I am finished with this guy." It was new, and way more mature than anything he had ever written, musically.

So I can't hate on TRC. Without it, we would have never had musicology, 3121, or the Lotusflw3r. I believe TRC is where he made a U turn back in to a good position.

The Rainbow Children is Lovesexy as a full grown adult. An intolerant, narrow-minded adult, but an adult nonetheless.

The Bob George voice says it all. It's pretty much that same character, only instead of a glowering husband, it's now a glowering Old Testament God. The Bob George/Spooky Electric voice, after all, was the counterpoint to Camille. The slowed down adult voice versus the sped up child voice. And now, that deep voice serves as narrator for a whole album. Bob George has taken over. "I pay the rent in this motherfucker. And all you do is suck up food and heat!" That's the basic sentiment behind The Rainbow Children, innit? It also sums up his attitude toward fans. Look at Prince's post-TRC career. He's all business now. Cleaning up his lyrics, filing lawsuits, making deals, getting paid.

Prince the idealist, the childlike innocent, died with The Rainbow Children. It was a decade-long death rattle, actually. Which explains all his death imagery in the 90s. He resisted adulthood as long as he could, but it eventually caught up to him. The Rainbow Children was Prince's belated bar mitzvah.