I like much of it.

Supercute,
Underneath The Cream,
When Will We B Paid
High
My Medallion
When I Lay my Hands On U

Golden Parachute is one of the worst tracks he's done and Gamillah is boring. U Make My Sun Shine never did anything for me either. I liked Daisy Chain when it came out but not the rap. Did a no rap edit and it was better but I'm not keen on this track now.

There are definitely worse Prince albums for me, New Power Soul and Musicology spring to mind.

KingSausage said:

Vavoom was KILLER live. Saw him do it at Paisley. Was blown away. Too bad it wasn't on High. Or any good in the studio! [Edited 9/4/14 5:33am]

I love Vavoom, never heard it live though

TheEnglishGent said:

KingSausage said:

I think High would have been the worst Prince album if it had been released. I love Supercute and When Eye Lay..., and moderately enjoy Underneath the Cream, but there's so much fluff on the album. See Wikipedia track list below. I think the song High is one of the worst things he's ever recorded. "Supercute" "Underneath the Cream" "Golden Parachute" "When Will We B Paid?" "The Daisy Chain" "Gamillah" "High" "My Medallion" "U Make My Sun Shine" "When Eye Lay My Hands on U"

High and Peace became The Chocolate Invasion and The Slaughterhouse, the tracklist above only being an early configuration of those 2 in the end.

.

I fell in love with all the tracks from those sessions when they were released in 2001, as NPGMC tracks. For me they were a true return to form for , I still cherish them a lot so no, I wouldn't say High would have been one of his worst albums. Probably one of his best as far as I'm concerned. I was also sad to see that When Will We Be Paid and My Medallion (alongside a few others) didn't make the final albums cut in 2004, I sure as hell would have loved to have them integrated into an album's tracklist.

databank said:

databank said:

KingSausage said:

I think High would have been the worst Prince album if it had been released. I love Supercute and When Eye Lay..., and moderately enjoy Underneath the Cream, but there's so much fluff on the album. See Wikipedia track list below. I think the song High is one of the worst things he's ever recorded. "Supercute" "Underneath the Cream" "Golden Parachute" "When Will We B Paid?" "The Daisy Chain" "Gamillah" "High" "My Medallion" "U Make My Sun Shine" "When Eye Lay My Hands on U"

High and Peace became The Chocolate Invasion and The Slaughterhouse, the tracklist above only being an early configuration of those 2 in the end.

.

I fell in love with all the tracks from those sessions when they were released in 2001, as NPGMC tracks. For me they were a true return to form for , I still cherish them a lot so no, I wouldn't say High would have been one of his worst albums. Probably one of his best as far as I'm concerned. I was also sad to see that When Will We Be Paid and My Medallion (alongside a few others) didn't make the final albums cut in 2004, I sure as hell would have loved to have them integrated into an album's tracklist.

I enjoy most of the songs from that era, especially Peace, Vavoom, U make my sun shine, Gamillah and Props N' Pounds but theres also a few I really dislike like Northside, Golden Parachute, Judas Smile

KingSausage said:

I think High would have been the worst Prince album if it had been released. I love Supercute and When Eye Lay..., and moderately enjoy Underneath the Cream, but there's so much fluff on the album. See Wikipedia track list below. I think the song High is one of the worst things he's ever recorded. "Supercute" "Underneath the Cream" "Golden Parachute" "When Will We B Paid?" "The Daisy Chain" "Gamillah" "High" "My Medallion" "U Make My Sun Shine" "When Eye Lay My Hands on U"

BTW... I love the Tackleberry quote. It makes me laugh whenever I see your posts.

tollyc said:

Nah bro your wrong. I think High is a very good album. Title track may have been a minor hit with a good video. When will we be paid is a killer "black power" song. Supercute and Underneath the Cream are both superior to the mid-tempo stuff he puts out now. And Daisy Chain and My Medallion are very original and very muscular tracks that dont seem to try to hard to be "down" and dont sond like anything he's done before. The weakest track here is "Golden Parachute" about Clive Davis but overall a very good Prince that takes its cues from 70's soul/R&B similar to Diamonds and Pearls.

I would have preferred this than to the disaster that was TRC and all the drama that came afterwards.

NPS and HIGH are the best post wb records .. cant stand 'when eye lay' but otherwise mostly bearable music with a few blemishes that are cringworthy .. still better than all that rainbow thru 2010 mess

It still beats MPLSound.

If we just consider the tracks the OP gave as the tracklist, I'm not thrilled by most of it. I really liked My Medallion, but the rest are not that exciting for me. I'm glad to have them, and I like them some, but they're not great. And When I Lay My Hands on U clearly becomes a different thing live, but the studio doesn't get me.

TrevorAyer said:

NPS and HIGH are the best post wb records .. cant stand 'when eye lay' but otherwise mostly bearable music with a few blemishes that are cringworthy .. still better than all that rainbow thru 2010 mess

That's like saying Purple Rain was garbage, and you could go for some Jughead. "When Eye Lay My Hands On U" is fairly widely regarded as among the best of the "High" era tracks. Being a songwriter, and having musician friends doesn't make my taste any better, but I have asked many accomplished musicians about Rainbow Children, and most really like it. So those who play for a living seem to like TRC. Now I haven't met anyone who was big on the Darth Vader voice...NOBODY...

Probably:

Supercute

Underneath the Cream

Golden Parachute

When Will We B Paid?

The Daisy Chain

Gamillah

High

My Medallion

U Make My Sun Shine

When I Lay My Hands On U

But if you take away those 4 boring/horrid tracks and replaced them with some of the others released through NPGMC, it probably wouldn't be so bad. (probably Sex Me Sex Me Not, Vavoom (still pretty boring though), Silicon, Judas Smile).

Taken all together, all those Peace/High/NPGMC-download era tracks don't amount to much and it's hard to sit through the bunch of them all at once. It was probably best to release them the way he did. Nice little monthly surprises 1 or 2 at a time.

[Edited 9/4/14 15:22pm]

NouveauDance said:

It still beats MPLSound.

For sure, which isn't saying much. It didn't have enough top tier material to hold together as an album, imo. Golden Parachute could have just as well been called Background Music, as it was so uninteresting. It's funny the OP rates the song High as one of Prince's worst. I remember Prince saying at the Rainbow Children celebration that he was very frustrated that radio wouldn't play it. "How can a dope song like 'High' not get on the radio?" Anyone remember that?

SchlomoThaHomo said:

NouveauDance said:

It still beats MPLSound.

For sure, which isn't saying much. It didn't have enough top tier material to hold together as an album, imo. Golden Parachute could have just as well been called Background Music, as it was so uninteresting. It's funny the OP rates the song High as one of Prince's worst. I remember Prince saying at the Rainbow Children celebration that he was very frustrated that radio wouldn't play it. "How can a dope song like 'High' not get on the radio?" Anyone remember that?

I'm almost 100% certain that Prince never sent that song to radio. Anyone ever come across a promo for it? I mean, besides that single he used to sell at shows

Askani said:

again too many good tracks to discard the whole thang

everybody hates Golden Parachute i love that song, the horns are gorgeous

and i love how mellow and laid back it is. it's not groundbreaking or anything but

i still think it's great.

IstenSzek said:

everybody hates Golden Parachute i love that song, the horns are gorgeous

and i love how mellow and laid back it is. it's not groundbreaking or anything but

i still think it's great.

I actually like it. But I get a little drowsy by the halfway point.

I probably like half of those.

Worst? Naw man Nothing will ever top Indigo Nights

High would have been a cool album. I love about 70% of them tracks
I agree that it does have that "plastic" sound. But its plastic done his way
I understand why some people not pick at it. Im not sure how well received it would have been by the critics

Im very fond of this year 2001 NPGMC. It was a great time to be a Prince fan. All these tracks in 1 year
Sure some of it is filler, probably why it was given out so freely

It take to long to rate all those tracks. So i will guesstimate that i like andlove about 80% of year 1

BTW i love High and My Medalion

FragileUndertow said: