I'm not asking what you think is Prince's worst album... I'm asking what album you think helped to make Prince "irrelevant" in the mainstream.

Tough to say, but I'm guessing it was 1994's Come. It was the last WB album, and got very little fan fare. It also came after the relative commercial success of Diamonds and Pearls.

Yeah agree with COME. Although not a bad album the big let down was that at the time The Most Beautiful Girl had been a hit and he chose 2 release COME and most people were like wtf when it wasn't on it. Add 2 that the lack of promotion and videos, then war with Warners. By the time GOLD came out I think the damage had been done. People just didn't care anymore.

MantuaPharoah said:

Actually Chaos and Disorder was the last WB album in 1996, while he was still on the label, although they released a couple of more sets after he left. (The Vault, Very Best, Ultimate). And by the time Chaos came out, no one gave a shit anymore. It was all about the stupid name thing. The music was highly overlooked because of that. THAT is what hurt Prince's career.

However, as far as albums go, ATWIAD hurt him. He had a momentum going from Controversy through Purple Rain, and because he wanted to buck the system, it really hurt him. He lost a LOT of his Top 40 fans by doing that album. Parade didn't help either, and that movie. And let's face it, if it weren't for "Kiss", Parade would have been ignored even more, and "Let's Go Crazy" would've been his last #1 hit until whatever the next one was ("Batdance" I believe, or "Cream").

So my vote.....Around The World In A Day.

he's had a few where it seemed like he was doing his best to tank his career, though he always bounced back or radio found something to play from them: ATWIAD, Parade, Lovesexy, GB....

not that I think any of those albums are BAD at all.

really, it was the name change and the fighting with WB that did it. no album is responsible for hurting his career. his own actions (or inactions) of not promoting his own work during that fight is what did him in, on top of becoming a punchline for the name change.

newpowersoul said:

i think at the time it could have been hurtful to his career, though i think over time, that album will surface as a great hidden gem in his discography. i don't think it'll ever be a commercial success, but i think the critics and music geeks are going to come around on this album (no pun intended), if they aren't already.

Definately "Around The World In A Day".

Come was the beginning of the end as far as Top 40 success goes, although I think it had less to do with the album itself and more to do with the public perception that Prince was releasing this and future WB albums just to get out of his contract.

At that point his albums had almost no support from either the label or the artist, and consequently they tanked.

Anxiety said:

this album was released with such little fanfare, i don't know how it could have really HURT his career at all. i mean, there's been less promotion for albums since, but in those days, you might say this thing was barely released at all and hardly anyone even knew it was out.


i definitely came around to this album. i hated it at first, but that's because it came out in the heat of the summer while i was sitting in a hospital every day having the blood sucked out of me and replaced. Prince's dark mood and sound didn't really help matters much.

about 2 years later, i completely fell in love with it. it's one of my secret favorites.

hit/b-sides

the lable released this 2 early in his carear....
practicaly saying the best has allready come....

vainandy said:

It wasn't Purple Rain Part 2, so the fair-weather fans went elsewhere. But I don't know that it hurt his career. A career in music that lasts for thirty-plus years will have peaks and valleys.

I'm not particularly sure that an album could ever do the damage that his reputation as a litigious, cash-centric and spoiled nut-job have done.

newpowersoul said:

Remember Prince wanted to release Come and TGE at the same time to have an album by and an album by Prince competing against each other to illustrate how much better the new material was.

Of course WB wasn't having that, so TGE came out the following year along with TMBGITW.

It was probably Come, then add the name change thing, Chaos And Disorder and then a 36-song album that the casual listener didn't care about.

TRC, with all the religious mumbo-jumbo that only the hardest of the die-hard fans could appreciate. He has totall alienated mainstream with that one.

kenlacam said:

the mainstream had left waaaay before TRC came out

O+>

After having a minor "hit" with D&P, Prince blows his big chance for a true comeback and follows up D&P with this generally awful and bizzare "concept" album. Despite an obvious candidate for a strong first single ("Seven" ), Prince puts out the terrible "My Name is Prince." "Sexy MF" was alot of fun but would have worked better as the R&B targeted B-side to "7"....the rest of the album is pretty weak with the attempts at incorporating hip hop laughable.

ElCapitan said:

Definitely. The mainstream will have never heard of it.

Purple Rain.

I think the rise of hip/hop and house music hurt him most!

And face it: after releasing a serie of challenging, groundbreaking and daring albums (from Dirty Mind to Batman (a much overlooked masterpiece))... who would not run out of ideas?
He was relevant that whole period (well in Europe for sure). Unmatched in history - untill now! After 10 years, there is a new generation buying music who look for other idols: that makes someone irrelevant, especially when new underground music comes around the block: hip/hop and technical upbeat house music.

So, by the time he changed his name... he was already irrelevant.

If I have to pick an album: Grafitti Bridge - that was and is an easy one to ignore, even for a hardcore fan like me

emesem said:

I disagree with you that is a weak album but I think Seven would've been a good first single and then Sexy MF as a b-side as you say.

I don't really think 'Come' itself hurt Prince's commercial career, the material itself was sound - it was just the entire P.R. mess at that time that hampered the momentum.

Come didn't feature MBGITW, a number one single, Letitgo, a real buzz kill of a track, was the lead single, with no video or promo. Space was a brilliant song, and single, but again, no video and no promo. The album didn't stand a chance, not to mention Prince sabotaging it before it had even been released by removing top drawer tracks.

I actually thought recently how cool a video for Space would've been. Some of you might know 'Put Yourself In My Place' by Kylie Minogue, the video has a Barbarella theme, and this is pretty dorky to say, but I think it would've worked brilliantly as a video for Space with Prince in Kylie's part (she's basically stripping out of a pink space suit orbiting in a spacecraft) - I think it would've really suited the song and Prince's androgynous look, would've got tongues wagging no doubt - very camp, risque, but no more so than stuff he'd done before.

The more I look back, the more I think what a missed opportunity the 93/94 period was. I guess the name change and anger at Warners at the time fuelled and created a lot of the energy then, so without it, it might not have produced the same great vibe in the music, but there was so many great tracks then that were really distinct, and fresh, it could've done more than it did - Hit singles, better videos, remixes, EPs, all that stuff, I don't just mean sales and MTV rotation. It's a shame.

Back on topic: ATWIAD was a buzz killer, but again, it also showed Prince could do different things and he wouldn't be pigeonholed, a quality that stood him in good stead in the long term I think. Lovesexy's cover and relatively weak single choices and Graffiti Bridge the movie are also contenders, but again they each have their plus sides that would be hard to cast out from history if we had a time eraser

TheEnglishGent said:

True, true.

The Rainbow children, most hardcore fans didn't even like it, let alone casual listeners, it sucked on ice

Graffitti Bridge.

Emancipation
After all the hoopla surrounding his WB drama he finally set out to release something without adult supervision and under his complete control.

It was a big let down artistically and commercially, with all his bombast about how WB was curbing his creativity still fresh in our minds, with all his bombast, I was expecting something really great, but instead he releases a ho-hum album that sounded 4 years out of date on its release.
To me this album deflated some of his mystique in one fell swoop.
[Edited 7/23/09 20:37pm]

violetblues said:

Plus, it's not like he's releasing more music now. He could release a song a day if he wanted. But he's still following the old record label protocol...

SPOOKYGAS said:

You know, once you get over the shock of thinking this, it's actually quite true.

Se7en said:

how?

ElCapitan said:

it set the bar too high

NouveauDance said:

Which songs are you referring to that he removed from the final Come sequence? Would be interesting to know.

errant said:

Oh a variation of the "Prince is really an underground artist who happened to release a couple of mainstream albums" argument. Maybe.

Not sure it qualifies under the threads question of "which album made Prince irrelevant to the mainstream", but I get what you're saying I suppose. Still, he was going to peak with the mainstream with some point, every successful artist does, so I don't know if I buy into it.