I re-discovered that album recently and I love every single song on it. That album is so sexy...lyrics and all. Anybody with me?

GiGi319 said:

I heard Chocolate Invasion for the first time earlier this year...and it!!

Whats the track list?

dance4me3121 said:

"When I Lay My Hands on U"
"Judas Smile"
"Supercute"
"Underneath the Cream"
"Sex Me, Sex Me Not"
"Vavoom"
"High"
"The Dance"
"Gamillah (Instrumental)"
"U Make My Sun Shine"

I listen to this album everyday..Has become one of my favorites.I had Vavoom on repeat for almost 30 minutes at work today..lol

This album and the Slaughterhouse have been playing on my ipod for the past two months. They're both required listening for me at some point during the day.

For me The chocolate invasion had existed in various forms on my own mixes of tracks from the NPGMC downloads. The fact that these songs were collected in one unit both made me re-evaluate the tracks individually, but also explore why they were selected over others.

When Eye Lay My Hands On U is just pure purple seduction. The slow creep of the verses just draw you into the raucous chorus that just drip with desire and passion. And the Santana inspired guitar solo shows Prince can meet the masters and still teach them a thing of two. I remember hearing WELMHOU and just being floored by it. Why wasn’t it on an official release.

Same can be said about Judas Kiss one of Prince’s funkiest trips to the land of electro. I remember hearing this and just smiling broadly for the whole time – here was in a nice little 6:35 package everything Prince was about. The hook me straight away beat, the cutting guitars, and the layered vocals, the rock break down, then the parliament funk fused “chocolate invasion starts here” chant section. This is one of the guaranteed get up and dance tracks in my house.

There was something ever so cool about getting a new unreleased track every month in the early days of the NPGMC. Especially when you got a track like Supercute. I always saw this as twin to E-male off emancipation, in the way it delves into some of the darker sides in its musical structure and topic. This was one of the tracks I thought would end up on Madrid to Chicago – maybe it was the airplane sfx at the start of the track.

Speaking of twins – here is the Gemini twin to Pink Cashmere – the beautifully arranged Underneath the Cream. Dripping in the juices of sex (no pun deliberately intended) this is such a sensual song, that there is nothing like putting it on in the background and going to work. Oh.

There was always a degree of guesswork associated with several of the tracks in those early days. Sexme? Sexme not? Is a case in point. I would always listen to the sounds and instruments used to create the tracks to try to place them in the musical journey of P. This felt like an emancipation track, like Style. Funky, but funky filler for me.

Similarly VaVoom sounded a little too close to Peach to sound fresh to me. It also reminded of a sped up version of Poor Goo. It just feels a little too easy for Prince to toss out these songs (and I’m sure it’s not) but it feels that way. Just not one of my favourites.

Prince gonna get you High again. First time I heard this song I was begging for a new album to hit the stores. If this was track one, you bet it would be a smash. I just love this song. The bass synth just bubbles along and works as a nice bed for when the true funk synth hits. I can’t say enough about this song, it’s the one that I always made the $100 US (so at the time it was $200 aussie) worthwhile for me.

The Dance was a song that missed me in the download days. I remember still being on dialup so I ended up being a little bit more cautious about what I would download. For some reason I always expected it to be Dance with the Devil, lol. It wasn’t until it was available in this package that I heard it. A pretty enough song, but again something about it just didn’t grab me. Of course when it resurfaced on 3121 I found myself coming back to this version more and more.

Gamillah always felt like a TRC outcast. Of course I didn’t know it at the time I downloaded it cause TRC wasn’t even out then. But hearing it again now, this is where I feel it placed, and maybe better suited.

U make my sun shine was a tad disappointing for me. I always expected more from this collaboration. It just seemed a little Boys II Men for me. Maybe it was a Graffiti Bridge track given new breath, but it just never really grabbed me.

Listening to these tracks as an album now leaves me feeling a little dissatisfied. Not for what they offer, but how as a set they feel a bit disjointed. Maybe it was because I got use to hearing the tracks on my compilations that made them seem less cohesive anywhere else. Having said that though, I wouldn’t give up having them as part of the npgmc experience for anything.

Swa