NouveauDance said:

I didn't think it was that bad.


But I do agree promotion had a lot to do with it.

But it was more heavily promoted than Musicology, 3121 or even Planet Earth.

Shit, I remember after 3121 was released, Anxiety posted a thread titled "Does Prince realize he just released an Album?"

TheVoid said:

Carlos' album was better promoted.The first two singles ("Smooth" and "Maria,Maria") were excellent choices.These tunes are catchy,radio-friendly and uptempo.It's not surprising that both songs went straight to Number One.

Since the mid-90s or so,Prince seemed hellbent on releasing ballads or slow jams as the first single from his albums,which makes very little sense.He's more "known" for his uptempo songs.

BorisFishpaw said:

i always wonder what that album would have sounded like if he had been
able to release it independent, withouth a record label deal.

it was reported back then that clive asked him to go back and cut some
more contemporary/radio friendly tracks, right?

so i'm wondering what was on that album in the first sequencing. i'm
thinking "beautiful strange" and possibly some stuff we haven't heard
yet?

altho i believe that "y should i do that?" was considered for it too,
which is not exactly an improvement on any of the album tracks, lol.

but as the album stands, it has a handfull of good, solid tracks that
sound interesting and keep you returning. they're just interlaced with
so many so-so songs that go nowhere or have no point besides having
some appeal to radio (in prince's mind).

i used to combine that best few tracks from "rave" with the
few solid tracks from "nps" and they made for an interesting
album that was better than both of the invidivual ones imo.

EmancipationLover said:

My guess is that 'TGRES' was picked as the first single because of the success that Prince had with "The Most Beautiful Girl In The World" a few years earlier.Both tunes are similiar,musically,and I think Prince and/or Clive Davis was hoping that lightning would strike twice.It was a bad decision.The first single from a Prince album should be something "explosive".'TGRES' didn't stand a chance.




This is true.

SoulAlive said:

brian adams has been doing the same thing for about a decade, release slow
song after slow songs once he'd had such a huge hit with "anything i do".

for a while there i thought prince would get stuck in the same groove

having said that, i have to admit that i fail to see how TGRES is such a
bad choice for a first single. it's not that slow, it's mid tempo and it
is a good song imo. i liked it from first listen and it is more radio
friendly than a lot of other stuff on that album.

i still don't understand how he didn't manage to put "so far, so pleased"
out. with a cool vid of him and gwen together, it would have gotten loads
of airplay on radio and tv, i'm sure.

in the end, he released TGRES and Man O War, which were both just prince
tracks on an album full of colabs. what was that all about? problems with
those other artists' labels in releasing colabs? i thought they were all
on arista at that time?

concerning the actual content of the album, i think it's striking that he
decided to keep "beautiful strange" for his own indi version of it, that
he released outside of the arista deal. since it's probably the strongest
track on the whole package of those 2 albums, that tells you a lot imo.

"TGRES" is an okay album track but it doesn't sound like a "hit" to me.It's too subdued."So Far,So Pleased" has all the makings of a classic uptempo Prince hit.It's like an updated "U Got The Look"....sexy,catchy and featuring a female guest star.I think it's the most 'obvious' single on the album.

I agree with you...it's silly to make an album full of cameo appearances and not take full advantage of that,promotion-wise This would be like Carlos Santana releasing a song like "El Farol" (which features no guest star) as the first single from 'Supernatural',lol.

IstenSzek said:

Well, I do know that the original version of the album submitted was more
shorter and more 'rock' orientated. It wasn't more contemporary/radio friendly
tracks that Prince was asked to add to the album. It was more R&B tracks
(of which The Greatest Romance was one). So Clive Davis/Arista considered the
original version of the album to be too 'white' or 'pop' and wanted a few more
'black/R&B' tracks added.

Other tracks recorded around the time that were being considered for
Rave In2 the Joy Fantastic were;

R U Ready?
I Ain't Gonna Run
Livin' 2 Die (Our Lives)
Y Should Eye Do That, When Eye Can Do This?
What Should B Souled?

.
[Edited 5/14/10 5:41am]

yeah. "so far, so pleased" was the most obvious hit potential song
from that album.

iirc there was some stuff about it being intended for single release
but it coincided with no doubt's release schedule or something and
then it was not released.

shame. it would have been interesting to see where it would have gone
when released as a single.

but given this project, the single would have been released, without
promotion and then the video would have been ready 4 months later,
with prince taking stabs as clive davis for the single not being on
mtv.

BorisFishpaw said:

thanks boris. i've always been curious about this song.

he intended to include it on Crystal Ball II didn't he?

still hope it surfaces some day in the future

IstenSzek said:

Yeah, "What Should B Souled?" was one of the tracks confirmed for
Crystal Ball II before it was shelved.

in 1999 the 80's were still seen as "the decade that style forgot" and Prince was seen as a weirdo who released a triple album of bland crap every second week.

The moment the lead single was heard to be a fairly unimpressive piece of work no one bar big fans were interested. The blue suit didn't help things.

At least that's how I remember it from my teenager at the time perspective

IstenSzek said:

Yeah,I think there was some kind of problem.No Doubt (or their record label?) had a conflict/disagreement with releasing "So Far,So Pleased" as a single.I don't know why this was a problem.Different artists from different labels collaborate on singles all the time I can't believe that both sides couldn't work something out.

It's a shame that "Rave In2" wasn't released officially instead, as I do think
it's a much better album (though it could still do with re-sequencing).

I also think that The Greatest Romance could have been a moderate hit if
everything had been organized better... i.e. Video released at the same time
as single (if not a week or so earlier), and just as importantly, for Prince
to actually play the song when he made TV appearances. This was the end of the
90's, to have a hit you needed to hammer a song home and play it to death.

Also, the album cover was terrible! Looks like a bad bootleg. While I didn't
mind the blue suit and Prince's look around that time, the pose used for the
album cover was awful, as was the typography. There were many much better
images that could have been used instead.

IstenSzek said:

I agree about 'So far so pleased' - a video with Gwen Stefani would have been good for the project.

About 'The Greatest Romance' - the Jason Nevins mix never seemed to be off the radio so if the video was released with the single (as Boris pointed out) it may have done a lot better

double post
[Edited 5/14/10 6:06am]

Would anyone agree that the song "I love you but I don't trust you anymore" is worth the the price of the Rave album? What an amazing beautiful yet sad song in my opinion.

jobyjayy said:

Agree one of my favourite Prince songs ever. Love the live version at Montreux too

Who said it bombed? Any of Prince's albums fail to do anything because of one thing: PRINCE. When he drops a project and drags his feet with it (how long was it before a video even came out to promote it?), he only has himself to blame.

Also, as usual and typical of Prince, he released the worst song on the album as a lead single, instead of the obvious radio-friendly and stronger tracks like "So Far, So Pleased", "Baby Knows", or "Man O War", and worked at pushing them to radio stations.

When you do duets with some of the biggest names in the industry, THOSE are the songs you release! 1999 and you DON'T release a Sheryl Crow or Gwen Stefani duet? Prince was a dumbass for that.

BorisFishpaw said:

It was crystal clear that Prince was fed up with it about a week after he started promoting it. You watch him do the rounds of those lame European TV-shows and half the time he's just moping -- and indeed, playing a song that wasn't the single!

Prince just oozed that this wasn't "his" album, that Clive Davis had had too much input -- but that was crazy, because he'd been the one to shop it to Clive, specifically to get a Santana-like hit.

But that was in the Spring/early Summer of 1999, and now we're in late Autumn of 1999 and of course Prince is tired of the album. And the album is barely available in shops when he informs the world that his fans can expect to be buying it a second time in a short while: when he'll release the "proper" version via 1-800-New-Funk. (My guess is that he said this after the $11 million cheque from Arista had cleared and he thought he could do whatever the hell he pleased.)

I mean: it was released on Nov 9, and by the end of December he was taping a TV-special (which itself turned out to be one major fuck-up) that more or less completely ignored the album. I think Prince started blaming Arista in early Feb 2000 for it being a failure.

The collaborations weren't collaborations, the songs weren't any good,... Rave was just one idiotic thing after another, and the only one to blame was Prince.

IstenSzek said:

"able"? WTF? Who was stopping him? It was PRINCE who shopped the album to major labels.

IstenSzek said:

IIRC he presented Clive with a pop/rock album, and Clive wanted more R&B tracks. I don't know whose idea it was to have collaborations, but I guess that was part of the design when Clive came on board, and Prince decided to do a Santana.

IstenSzek said:

I came across it recently, thought about listening to it, then glanced over the tracklist and remembered why I hadn't listened to it in 10+ years: it really isn't any good.

BartVanHemelen said:

you're right. it always did seem very childish and stupid that he went
to a major label and kept yelling his contract was only 1 page and he
was calling all the shots, blablabla, but then he turned around and he
blamed the label for everything that went wrong.

i found it weird that when he supposedly had that much control over it
he scrapped about half the album in favor of more rnb type songs that
clive told him to go for.

remember the tros tv show debacle? that was a sad, sad thing

fact of the matter is that he seemed less than interested in it all at
the time of the release and certainly shortly after.

even his live shows from this period sound dull and uninspired for the
most part.

IstenSzek said:

Because Gwen was doing her own thing, and thus the record label didn't want interference from this track. Return of Saturn was coming in April 2000, and by late 1999 the promo plan for that album was being drawn, and a Prince-collab would draw away attention from this important release.

And they weren't on the same label, AFAIK.

BartVanHemelen said:

Did you see the MTV TRL exchange between him and Carson by any chance?

I'm wondering what you thought about Prince's attempt at "educating" Carson's audience about the industry.

I do not that Prince really wanted to "come back on the scene" with a hit album. I mean he peppered his album and singles with language that suggested it.

In one of the remix versions of "TGRES" he raps about his involvement with
Eve and says, "2gether we make the remix a big seller..."

...so apparently he thought it was going to be well received.

ernestsewell said:

I was stunned that he didn't take advantage of Kate Bush's obviously distinctive voice.

I mean, she has a very devoted fanbase and he could have onboarded some of them if he did it right.


But the strangest thing is that buried these ladies (Sheryl Crowe, Kate Bush, Gwen) so far down in the mix that they might as well have been that underwhelming talent, Bria Valente. You can barely tell it's Gwen Stefani for fucks sake (I for the record can't stand her voice, but it is distinctive, and she was quite popular).

It was VERY strange to include them, promote them as guests, and then bury way way down in the mix. Also, when he said he'd have a guest producer and that producer ended up being "Prince" I don't think anyone was jumping for joy.

erik319 said:

How did I miss this?


!!!

TheVoid said:[quote]

ernestsewell said:

That's long been noted, and it's true. If Gwen and Sheryl were mixed higher, even for just the single (ie "Radio Edit"), it could have done something.

It reminds me when "Scream" with MJ and Janet came out. The first pressings had Janet VERY low in the mix and even she noticed that. She called MJ, Jam and Lewis and told them to change it, and they did. Later pressings had her a bit higher in the mix.

Yes, pretty much all of Prince's so called duets have the other artist
buried so far in the mix that it's a wonder why he even bothered to
include them.

Also, to me, a "proper" duet would involve the 2 artists taking it in
turns to do lead vocals, not just have both of them singing the lead
line at the same time like Prince always seems to do.

You could pretty much take out all the guest artist's contributions
and most people probably wouldn't even notice they were missing!