so i read deez threds n often get inspired to give some prince record another spin that i may have really hated before .. such is the case with mnplsound .. i am starting to like it more .. i dont mind ole school company now and i always loved dance 4 me and here. BUT omg another like me and chocolate box are a real challenge, not to mention no more candy for u. those are the kinds of songs that embarass me as one of the few prince fans in my state.

it occurred to me recently that i have often wished to hear prince sing the prince songs done by others such as the time or the family or any of them really. i had convinced myself that somehow it would be better. especially the family. in many ways i think the family album is prince greatest ode to suzanna .. but i also think there may have been an ahem racial element that prince related to in suzanna but may have also been a missing component in making it work. that said hearing prince or the white guy in family sing something like jungle love would seem wrong, just as perhaps prince singing on the family record would seem wrong in what he was trying to relate to suzanna at that time in that way .. which to me seemed very france euro styled. the FACT that the time shiela family and even the likes of vanity were so talented ADDED many new colors to the prince pallet that prince only somewhat captured on his own in voicing such as camille or bob george. in fact it coloured the music so well i would say it is as essential as any horn lick by eric or atlanta or any drum beat or keyboard sound on a song such as dmsr.

what has changed is that at that time prince was working with TOP talent and now unfortunately he is not. BUT he still writes as tho he has bands like the time at his disposal, but he is just doing it all himself.

so...

a song like "never be another like me" really really bugs me sung by prince .. attached to my self imposed fantastical mythology of who he should be right now .. a mature gracefully aging genius still blowing my mind every day .. to a song like this really puts a damper on my purple dream .. BUT .. imagining it sung by the time .. and performed by the real time .. its reall not that bad and kinda works in that setting .. and i suppose thats the point of MPLSOUND but its missing the TALENT he used to have to color it properly .. as is its a demo presented out of context of its birth intention .. and in this understanding i can also realize that prince would do well to have 3 or 4 musical outlets, this would distribute his sound properly as it should be heard. what is now is a compression experience .. only 8 colors on a palet can get boring after a while no matter how great the art is .. it all begins to look/sound the same

i theorize that perhaps the problem with prince output is that he needs to separate PRINCE sound from TIME sound from FAMILY sound from VANITY sound from SHEILA E sound and just give us a record with that old PRINCE SOUND .. but instead we get all those other sounds mixed in with prince sound and it diminishes what was the definative prince sound IS and homogonizes the true prism of his different stylings under one id that in my opinion doesnt work as well and often sounds a little flat coming from just prince.

i see prince more as the man or human element of his music where as some of his side work allows him to be a total jerk .. as with the time .. i dont wanna hear prince sound like a jerk but i really dont mind if morris does cuz it works so well with him.

thats it for now

That was really hard to follow, but not a bad theory, BUT how do u explain away GB, then?

Sure, u got JIR (and Question of U, which I've always found overrated). Or was GB the beginning of him blurring the line between Prince and the pet-projects (it was all released as a "Prince" album).

Basically, you're saying that Prince ahd to manufacture all these other identities to help him maintain his own (probably also manufactured) and that when he stopped doing that he lost himself.

But maybe he just started choosing shittier pet projects - Carmen Elektra, mayte, TC Ellis, Goldnigga, Tamar, Bria...

I dont know why folks had a problem with OSC and loved D4M from jump.

i think i might be saying that i am happier hearing bria sing prince new bria record than i would be hearing prince sing bria new record. if i am not saying that i might think about how much i really like graffite bridge and love the performances by the other lead singers .. there are a couple of clunkers and perhaps they should not be all on the same record .. might have gone over better as a couple of different projects and just prince singing songs like purple rain time and vanity. but i wouldnt want to hear prince singing nasty girl or even release it or round n round .. i think they sound great as is

so perhaps gb should have said movie soundtrack featuring prince the time tevin campbell etc...

then there is the wendy n lisa factor .. for example .. wendy and lisa can sing lead on a prince record and it works but i dont like when tamar or whomever sings lead on a prince record .. it sounds out of place .. i wouldnt want morris day on a prince record ... unless its on drums

so tamar should be her own record and prince should have other offshoots as well .. the only thing worse than tony m would be prince singing tony m lyrics .. that would be heartbreaking .. so it works both ways good and bad the music is just healthier sounding that way

yeah i dug dance for me right of the bat but that old school took a while .. i think the production sounded too plastic y i had a hard time listening without getting annoyed. and the camille voice sounds wierd to me .. like its some kind of imitation camille programmed sound that is supposed to duplicate the original camille sound but doesnt quite

Yeah. I got what you were saying, but I'm not sure your theory holds out completely, since he's had protege projects in the later years too. But I definitely agree with the overall thesis - thank god Elixer is a separate album, and 3121 would be (IMO) a WHOLE lot better without BL&B and Incense and Candles (could we please consider that a Tamar track too, just to get it off the album).

I know ppl love Future Baby Mama, but I can't stand it, and I think it's another one for your theory...

Like wasitgood4u says, he still has protoge's working with him. I think what this thread is really saying is, 'I wish it was 198x again'.

no i dont really want 1984 again .. here is another thought .. when prince was surrounded by proteges way back when they were people on his upswing. in my mind they are more people he related to that came from a similar background/style as him and accentuated even improved on parts of his personality that come out in his work.

move to tony m period .. at this point he had abandoned revolution and most side projects of the era and it seems to me that somewhat egocentrically he decided he could do rap ... or at least add rap to his music successfully. prior he admittedly did not like rap or what it represented musically .. so in other words it was not part of his background upbringing or style .. he added it out of ego of "i am successful i can do anything" when reality says no u cant .. his experience and musical knowledge afford him the thought that he can do anystyle of music but he chooses to homogonize his past successes into his own id and branch out in new directions with side projects. he does not recognize his amature status in these new unfamiliar directions and thus we get empty boasting that tarnishes the clout he had in his previous work that relied on his musical strengths.

again tony m may have been bearable or at least forgivable had he been regulated only to say goldnigga or some other non prince singing record. but instead prince incorporated it into diamonds and pearsl and symbol record .. thus tainting the prince id. in the same token there are a few songs on exodus that i think should have been on a prince record. gold experience was prince moving to the next stage of homogonizing all his musical personality onto one record .. he became tony m and was rapping all over that record .. p control, now .. a song like 319 or i hate u may have played out better by the time

i agree that he has protoges now but because they are mostly not successful, he incorporates protoge songs into his own records still .. thats why we have bria but also mplsound with prince doing everything when those songs should have been sung by a different personality. a song like chocolate box may make for a decent time record but on a prince record falls flat and annoying. in fact the bria record may have had more success if not packaged with prince. it may have garnered its own fan base. compared to high expectations of a prince record bria is a let down.

a song like feel better may have been a hit for say tony m type, it has a great hook .. but i really cant stand hearing prince rap. thus it ruins a prince id record.

he does jazz but its not a madhouse record its a prince record and really not great like madhouse was. i think also prince has traded technical ability for talent. there is something special about the 1984 people he was surrounded by but i dont think any of them had the technical skills of his more recent bands. i wouldnt want 1984 but i do think prince has been fishing from the wrong pond for his musicians for about 20 years. he needs more passionate musicians less technical musicians.

all in all if his current proteges were as successful as they were in 1984 some of the less PRINCE sounding songs could go to all of them and what we would get on a prince record would be pure prince .. the cream of the crop .. while his lil experiments that arent so great would get distributed amongst his other projects and no one would really care if half the songs were flops, it would work withing the context of the project.

a single like dance for me backed with here makes a great prince id start .. everything else on those records would get sent off to other projects and likely sound better that way.

... to this day S.O.T.T. is one of my least favorite albums because I know P cut out the Wendy & Lisa compositions on this album and Chaos & Disorder is another album I didn't like at first listen. I knew (as well as my fellow orgers) that this was a Vault album and P was just fulfilling his contractual obligations with this album.

MPLSoUND & LoTUSFLOW3R are two good albums, IMHO ...

Not having liked virtually anything since (and including) Musicology, MPLS is an album I'm especially ashamed of.

I still can't conceive to this day how could Prince have done that.

vitriol said:

Not having liked virtually anything since (and including) Musicology, MPLS is an album I'm especially ashamed of.

I still can't conceive to this day how could Prince have done that.

Co-sign!!

If that's what Prince thought the Minneapolis Sound sounded like, then his Alzheimers has progressed more than I originally thought!

yeah but imagine if the time had recorded that record in 1984

You lost me after four words of that unintelligible bullshit. Type in fucking English!