Since 3121 opens with "From the lotus flower..." and has the reference to "it's going down, ya'll, like the wall in Berlin," thoughts obviously continued in Lotusflow3r, is there a larger storyline being weaved through the three albums Prince released in a row? I'm including Planet Earth because it came in between, and because it has 3121 references as well. And then of course there's the infamous 3 in the Lotusflow3r title; I hate to be one of those people who read something into every little thing, but what the hell...it could be another way of tying the idea of putting three things together. Or maybe it was just an annoying thing that means nothing.

Just curious if maybe viewing the albums as a triple set would change the way I look at the albums individually and wondered if anyone else saw these as a comprehensive thought.

i consider "musicology", "3121" and "planet earth" a kind of trilogy.
all are easy on the ear, rather unfocussed albums with a lot of nice
songs that sound a bit more like mix tapes then actual albums.

lotusflower is the first one since the rainbow children that sounds
as if it was put together with a broader concept in mind and with a
real sense of purpose.

the reason "3121" and some of the material on Lotusflower share the
same concept is that the actual song "3121" comes from the sessions
that also yielded a lot of the lotusflower material.

iirc it's been reported that ever since the recording sessions for the
"3121" project, prince has been putting aside tracks deliberately for
the "Lotusflower" project.

who knows, perhaps "planet earth" contains another track from those
sessions, although i don't think any hard evidence has come up for it.

personally, whenever i listen to the song "f.u.n.k." i can't help but
think that it's possibly another track from those sessions. perhaps it
was bunched in with the lotusflower tracks at one point before prince
picked it as an appropriate response for the whole PFU affair. but that
is purely speculation on my part.

lol

i HATE numbers-i'm confused

Crystal Ball and Emancipation are surely trilogies. These 3 are not.

No. I don't get a trilogy vibe from these 3 together. Hell, I don't get a trilogy vibe from Musicology, 3121 and Planet Earth.

Efan said:

No.

IstenSzek said:

I do too. And they got better with each release, PE being the strongest. I hate Musicology, and 3121 is a good album for the most part. But yeah, for whatever reason, they seem to be brothers. Other examples that are similar are

Dirty Mind/Controversy/1999

ATWIAD/Parade/SOTT

GB/D&P/

Come/Gold/Chaos

I see it more like there's two strains to Prince's post-Millenial output: The more 'organic' sounding stuff and the commerical-orientated pop/R&B.

So thats:

1. TCI/TSH, Musuckology, 3121, MPLSound
2. TRC, Xpectation, NEWS, ONA, Lotusflow3r

Planet Earth kinda straddles the two, but I include it with the latter (because I like it and pretend 'Mr. Goodnight' doesn't exist)

So no, not a trilogy for me.