Am I the only folk here who thinks that Prince's work of the second-half of the 00s is, by far, better and more inspired than the difficult 96-03 years?

in other words, do you prefer Musicology-3121-Lotus-2010 etc. over Emancipation-NPS-Truth-Rave-Rainbow Children, etc?

and other question: do you think that albums like Musicology, 3121 or Lotus could have been hit albums in the late 90s?

Weak as the 1996-2003 was, I prefer that one over the 20o4-2010.

During the first one we got, at least, an absolutely supreme album (TRC).

During the second, we only got crap.

i see so no break in music change from the start of his latest and largest religious madness. It's all one big period of music suicide.

Granted, Rainbow Children was an interesting and (musically) good album, but it was still full of ridiculous "spiritual"/jehova's witness mumbo jumbo. The sooner he understands that the majority of his fans don't want to know about his crazy beliefs and just want to hear great tracks the better. Let him believe what he wants, but dude he ever subject me to and make me pay for the likes of 20ten again, him and me are through. For ever!

personally i do find emancipation an inspired effort. There are atleast ten good songs on emancipation. Of course there is a ton of filler on emancipation and prince went way overboard. But the best stuff (the holy river, soul sanctuary) is very inspired.

NPS, on the other hand, is probably the weakest prince album i have heard and not very inspiring either. Rave isnt very inspiring either except a few songs (greatest romance, i love you, where ever you go)

I will say this: the 2004-2010 is far more consistent with alot better quality control. I am glad he isnt releasing as much filler as he was between 96-03. So yes in a sense 2004-2010 is better.

JoeTyler said:

Am I the only folk here who thinks that Prince's work of the second-half of the 00s is, by far, better and more inspired than the difficult 96-03 years?

in other words, do you prefer Musicology-3121-Lotus-2010 etc. over Emancipation-NPS-Truth-Rave-Rainbow Children, etc?

and other question: do you think that albums like Musicology, 3121 or Lotus could have been hit albums in the late 90s?

I prefer 2004-2010 to 1996-2003.

hhhhdmt said:

personally i do find emancipation an inspired effort. There are atleast ten good songs on emancipation. Of course there is a ton of filler on emancipation and prince went way overboard. But the best stuff (the holy river, soul sanctuary) is very inspired.

NPS, on the other hand, is probably the weakest prince album i have heard and not very inspiring either. Rave isnt very inspiring either except a few songs (greatest romance, i love you, where ever you go)

I will say this: the 2004-2010 is far more consistent with alot better quality control. I am glad he isnt releasing as much filler as he was between 96-03. So yes in a sense 2004-2010 is better.

Errr... hang on... 20ten? Planet Earth? Not as much filler music?!? Are you serious??!! These two apparent 'albums' are nothing more than tedious elevator music that need to be played with the treble down low and the base high, so you don't hear the nauseating lyrics.

On the other official albums he's done in this 'period' i can seriously think of maybe 5,6 songs that i'd choose to listen to again. If an alien came down and asked to listen to the little purple man, this 'period'... well, to be polite, i'd ignore it.

have to go with 2004-2010. I've enjoyed all of those albums, to some extent.

Emancipation has its moments, but Rave, NPS and most of that High/Peace stuff released through the NPGMC are complete wastes of time. TRC and ONA era stuff were a bright spot, but a little too lite jazz for Prince.

maybe i didnt make myself clear. I am glad he isnt releasing triple albums anymore (well except Lotus). I never want to hear a triple album from prince again. Both emancipation and crytal ball could have been great as single discs, but leave it to prince to wreck it with excessive and unnecessary material.

Anyway i like atleast 15 tracks from the past six years (if you include the chocolate invasion). So i guess i enjoy more of his recent output then some others do.

hhhhdmt said:

maybe i didnt make myself clear. I am glad he isnt releasing triple albums anymore (well except Lotus). I never want to hear a triple album from prince again. Both emancipation and crytal ball could have been great as single discs, but leave it to prince to wreck it with excessive and unnecessary material.

Anyway i like atleast 15 tracks from the past six years (if you include the chocolate invasion). So i guess i enjoy more of his recent output then some others do.

lol. fair enough

In my case, I clearly prefer the 2004-2010 era. Of this era, I only truly dislike MPLS (and still I dig 2 songs: another like me and dance4me) and I even enjoyed PE during 2007...(and I don't consider Elixer a proper Prince album...)

my problem with the 1996-2003 era is that he released albums that looked interesting (a triple album, an acoustic album, a return to funk/dance with NPS, a big "comeback"-Rave, an epic/organic album-RC) but once I heard them, I found them uninspired and disappointing: the triple album was full of filler and bad production, the dance/funk NPS album was very poor, the acoustic album was uneven and/or irritating at times (for my taste), the "comeback" failed miserably, the organic album was destroyed with that Darth Vader voice and the awful lyrics, etc...

In other words, during the 96-03 era Prince had the ideas but not the material/songs/focus...and that was disappointing and frustrating...

[Edited 1/10/11 6:43am]

In my case, I think that if I select some tracks off the albums released in the 04-10 'era' to compile a 'best of' album, that one wouldn't be by far as good an album as NPS was.

vitriol said:

In my case, I think that if I select some tracks off the albums released in the 04-10 'era' to compile a 'best of' album, that one wouldn't be by far as good an album as NPS was.

Sometimes, I think you're Tony M or something...

vitriol said:

Weak as the 1996-2003 was, I prefer that one over the 20o4-2010.

During the first one we got, at least, an absolutely supreme album (TRC).

During the second, we only got crap.

I actually like a lot of PE and Lotusflow3r, but I'd still take TRC/ONA/NEWS over everything in 2004-10.

JoeTyler said:

Sometimes, I think you're Tony M or something...

And sometimes I think you're one of the twins...

vitriol said:

Weak as the 1996-2003 was, I prefer that one over the 20o4-2010.

During the first one we got, at least, an absolutely supreme album (TRC).

During the second, we only got crap.

I'm with Vitriol here, except I think ONA Piano is the supreme album. TRC could/should have been a lot better IMO. And I also like a lot of the NPG music club tracks.

2004 - 2010 has some great tracks. Here they are:

Musicology

What Do You Want Me To Do

Call My Name

PFUNK

Glass Cutter

Boom

Colonized Mind

Sticky Like Glue

Beginning Endlessly

There are some others that are OK. But most from this period are train wrecks IMO.

I prefer 1996-2003 myself, I find myself listening to the albums from those years much much more, 2004-2010 does have some pretty good ones though..

1996-2003

if only for

The Truth

The Rainbow Children

One Nite Alone

Xpectation

C-Note

N.E.W.S.

which are all amongst my favorit prince recordings, and albums i still enjoy to listen to

entirely from start to end without hitting skip.

plus, that period also brought us

chaos and disorder

emancipation

crystal ball

kamasutra

new power soul

rave un2 the joy fantastic [plus remix album]

the vault...old friends 4 sale

the chocolate invasion

the slaughterhouse

and a bunch of non album tracks.

that's 15 albums [not even counting the 3 disc ONA live set], totalling in 20 discs of new music.

sure, not everything was great and some was just shockingly bad. but TWENTY DISCS !!!!!!!!!!!

2004-2010:

musicology

3121

planet earth

lotusflower

mplsound

20Ten

and a bunch of stand alone tracks (funk, song of the heart, radio and website releases)

plus the indigo nights album. kind of shows you how the creative well has dried up over the

last decade. or at least, his desire to release most of what he records. his albums have got

a bit more tight, but i can't honestly say they became more focussed, as everyone said they

would when he would just stop releasing everything all of the time. the material is just as

hit and miss as it has been since 1996. now we just get less of it.

so i'll go for 1996-2003. eventho i love the lotusflower album to death, it can't save what has

been a very poor 7 years in prince land.

just did a quick count and roughly he released

1996-2003: 200 new songs

2004-2010: 80 new songs

that's quite a big difference

Why has noone pointed out the arbitrariness of this division???

Are these clearly two distinct periods?

I can see '93-'95 and '96-2000, 2001-2003, 2004-2008, 2009-?

But why bundle the periods in that way? I don't see so much continuity between the successive periods - '96-2000 seems pretty distinct from the TRC stuff. 2004-2008 seems like a unit in itself with LF being a change in direction (irrespective of when the tracks were actually recorded...).

As I said, it all seems to be arbitrary, and if you're going to take arbitrary divisions, why not go by decades like another few recent threads did?

wasitgood4u said:

Why has noone pointed out the arbitrariness of this division???

Are these clearly two distinct periods?

I can see '93-'95 and '96-2000, 2001-2003, 2004-2008, 2009-?

But why bundle the periods in that way? I don't see so much continuity between the successive periods - '96-2000 seems pretty distinct from the TRC stuff. 2004-2008 seems like a unit in itself with LF being a change in direction (irrespective of when the tracks were actually recorded...).

As I said, it all seems to be arbitrary, and if you're going to take arbitrary divisions, why not go by decades like another few recent threads did?

Excellent point.

Chaos and Disorder and Emancipation are two of my favourite Prince albums so for those alone I gotta go with 1996-2003. Now, Newpower Soul and Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic are two of my least favourite albums and I quite like most of the 2004-2010 albums (the exception being MPLSoUND) so if you are talking about 1997-2003 vs. 2004-2010 I would go with 2004-2010.

hhhhdmt said:

maybe i didnt make myself clear. I am glad he isnt releasing triple albums anymore (well except Lotus). I never want to hear a triple album from prince again. Both emancipation and crytal ball could have been great as single discs, but leave it to prince to wreck it with excessive and unnecessary material.

Anyway i like atleast 15 tracks from the past six years (if you include the chocolate invasion). So i guess i enjoy more of his recent output then some others do.

Interesting. I love Emancipation and I would enjoy another triple album. I think it's funny that so many people say that Emancipation would make a great single disc but if you look at what tracks people would pick for that single disc there is very agreement about what the best tracks are.

Oddly, my problem with Crystal Ball was that there wasn't enough material. Each disc was under 50 minutes so the whole thing (not counting The Truth or Kamasutra) would have fit on 2 cd's. I always felt like Prince jipped us out of a full discs worth of outtakes. That third disc could have held an additional 15 tracks boosting the total number of tracks from 30 to 45.

[Edited 1/10/11 14:42pm]

skywalker said:

wasitgood4u said:

Why has noone pointed out the arbitrariness of this division???

Are these clearly two distinct periods?

I can see '93-'95 and '96-2000, 2001-2003, 2004-2008, 2009-?

But why bundle the periods in that way? I don't see so much continuity between the successive periods - '96-2000 seems pretty distinct from the TRC stuff. 2004-2008 seems like a unit in itself with LF being a change in direction (irrespective of when the tracks were actually recorded...).

As I said, it all seems to be arbitrary, and if you're going to take arbitrary divisions, why not go by decades like another few recent threads did?

Excellent point.

1996-2003: widely known as the era when Prince stopped being relevant and well-known all over the world by the new/younger generations. Poor sales, forgotten albums, Emancipation was, by far, the most famous album of this difficult era...

2004-2010: Prince moderate "comeback", amazing tours/concerts, the era of short-lived deals and Cds released by newspapers...

JoeTyler said:

Am I the only folk here who thinks that Prince's work of the second-half of the 00s is, by far, better and more inspired than the difficult 96-03 years?

in other words, do you prefer Musicology-3121-Lotus-2010 etc. over Emancipation-NPS-Truth-Rave-Rainbow Children, etc?

and other question: do you think that albums like Musicology, 3121 or Lotus could have been hit albums in the late 90s?

I became and enthusiast of P's work during the Emancipation Era so I'm partial to that music. Honestly, I prefer the first 10yrs of his career but, to answer your question and again, I'm partial and a lil jaded: I love the music post Emancipation Era. [img:$uid]http://l.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/i/mesg/emoticons7/3.gif[/img:$uid]

vitriol said:

JoeTyler said:

Sometimes, I think you're Tony M or something...

And sometimes I think you're one of the twins...

The problem with the 2004-2010 era: Prince's music contains nearly no new aspects, it's predictable as hell!

funkomatic said:

The problem with the 2004-2010 era: Prince's music contains nearly no new aspects, it's predictable as hell!

That's basically true. I quite like most of the music so it is not a big problem for me but he's not really pushing himself to try new things. As much as I don't like albums like The Rainbow Children and N.E.W.S. I do wish he would sprinkle things like that in between some of his more conventional albums.

2004-2010 wins for me cos've The Chocalate Invasion, 3121, MPLS and 20Ten. I don't think they would've had any greater commercial impact in the late nineties, dunno where you're going with that one.

1996-2003 probably runs it close purely on the songs quota.

JoeTyler said:

1996-2003: widely known as the era when Prince stopped being relevant and well-known all over the world by the new/younger generations. Poor sales, forgotten albums, Emancipation was, by far, the most famous album of this difficult era...

2004-2010: Prince moderate "comeback", amazing tours/concerts, the era of short-lived deals and Cds released by newspapers...

Yup, 1996 was the beginning of a descent into the wilderness, post-WB, where few listeners followed.

2004 marked a return to mainstream releases/marketing.

It doesn't seem like an arbitrary division at all.

JoeTyler said:

skywalker said:

Excellent point.

1996-2003: widely known as the era when Prince stopped being relevant and well-known all over the world by the new/younger generations. Poor sales, forgotten albums, Emancipation was, by far, the most famous album of this difficult era...

2004-2010: Prince moderate "comeback", amazing tours/concerts, the era of short-lived deals and Cds released by newspapers...

You are talking about popular taste/$$$/promotion. Not necessarily quality of the art, etc.