I have been listening to Lotusflower consistantly since its release. Not a bad track on there (don't know how anyone can't like $...its the best thing he's done in ages). MPLSound is ok...but I really only listen to Chocolate Box and Dance 4 Me. I made a playlist incorporating those tracks (along with PFunk, In a Large Room...,and a few other fave tracks from the last few years) into the Lotusflower album and its become the most listened to "album" for me since Emancipation. I do wish he edited and took the best tracks from both albums and Elixer into one CD. One of the things I always loved about past Prince albums is that you could get a little of every genre of music on one album. I don't like how he seperated the "rock" tracks and the "dance" tracks onto seperate CDs. Just my opinion.

I like some songs on both albums, but I consider Lotus to be a very dreary album. Certainly it has some awesome and impressive musicianship, but the overall effect is a downer when listened to as a whole. So I rarely do. Broken up into individual pieces and listened to with other things, I can appreciate the songs more.

MPLSound is a huge plastic disappointment to me. It's danceable in parts, but it lacks the sly wit and bombastic energy that defined the Minneapolis sound for me.

I am.

MPLSound doesnt reach the quality of the 'original' Minneapolis sound at all.
Just because he uses those synthlines and Linn-drums again, doesnt mean the music is in the same league of his old work.
Compositionwise MPLSound is a very poor album IMO. 'Never be another one like me' and 'Chocolate Box' sound like he is trying to compete with the Black Eyed Peas (why should he???), 'Hey Valentina' is banal, moronic 'kiddie-pop', 'Dance 4 U' is not as strong and convincing as anything on the Camille-album.
Some of the ballads SOUND rather 'stylish' but its not like he has to put much effort in writing and producing that kind of songs, he has done it (way too often) since The Most Beautifull girl in the world.
When it comes to the drumpatterns on MPLSound I would like to say: just because he uses the Linn again, doesnt mean he uses that 'machine' as brilliantly as he did in the eighties. Its not about the sound of it, but about the quality of the programmed patterns. The Linn-beats on MPLsound are mostly very blatant sounding, rather 'samey'. No beat is in the league of those of songs like If I was Your girlfriend, When Doves Crey or the Ballad of Dorothy Parker.

Lotusflower appears more adventurous and experimental on the surface, but when you take a few listens to the album, you (at least I do) notice the same problem MPLSound suffers from: a lack of strong songwriting / compositions.
A song like 'Boom' has rather 'promising' quasi-psychedelic verses, but repeating the word 'boom' as some sort of chorus, is a cheap bid IMO.
Soundwise a song like '$' reminds me of the playfull quirkieness of the Parade era, but the song itself simply isnt as well written and composed as 'Girls and Boys' and 'In all my dreams'.
Another complaint I have about the Lotusflower album is that it all sounds so 'stylish' in a way too controlled, polished way. The guitar-playing is technically good, but it doesnt really touch me (I much more prefer the pissed off angrieness of Chaos and Disorder and The Undertaker). The production is 'tastefull' to a point it doesnt really 'grab me' at all. In that sense it reminds me of boring seventies jazz-fusion, or, even worse, the ultra-slick, polished sounds of veteran artists making big bucks in the Las Vegas circuit.

To conclude:
- On both albums the quality of the songwriting / compositions is mostly mediocre or even poor.
- The production is not really offering any 'relieve' for that: its either to blatant and easy (MPLSound) or too slick and quasi-stylish (Lotusflower).
- I think on both albums he is holding himself 'back', and more or less portraying 'images' of how he thinks he wants to be perceived, instead of really expressing his emotions, doubts and desires. Its like he is trying to reach his listeners through a 'filter', instead of truelly expressing himself.

I don't like them. They're mediocre at best. I've seen it said that our "expectations are too high" That's a load of crap excuse for tolerating mediocrity.

Prince's music always had a certain flow with me and that has been sorely lacking in his music as of late. It's kind of like someone plugged up the dam of creative energy or something.

His music had a flow that was consistent throughout an entire recording. Meaning it would flow from beginning to end, through him and through me by way of cd, cassette, etc. Lotus and MPLSound have absolutely no flow. Which was most disappointing in MPLSound as I was hoping that Prince had remembered where he came from musically and was really going to put the effort into regaining his flow. He didn't.