TheEnglishGent said:

kygermo said:

Hey to each their own, but there's some stuff on Indigo Nights that I think is super-dope. I love the "Girls & Boys/Song of the Heart/Delirious" medley, and the version of my beloved "Alphabet St." on there is fire too. Shelby's "Misty Blue" sucks out loud though. He should have done the right thing and released the show he did with just Josh, CC & himself as the power trio. Thats a great bootleg.

While I agree 100% about Misty Blue and the power trio show, you have to remember the power trio show had Shelby singing Baby Love. I usually skip it and I think it kind of tends to be forgotten given the awesomeness of the rest of the shows but she sets a new personal best for, put your hands up's on this one, with a full 10 of them in the space of 20 seconds. She could have made it more but did a couple of put your, put your, put your, put your, put your's to leave space to maybe beat this record one day. I guess she didn't want to peak too soon and have nothing left to achieve later.

I didn't want to put my hands up when I was at the show, I certainly ain't gonna put them up when I'm listening to it while I'm driving my car because I'd crash. And if I'm walking down the street listening on my phone and put my hands up I'd look like a bit of a mental. I don't think she thought it through.

I would only put my hands up in response to a request from Shelby in order to place them over my ears.

Kamasutra, Carmen Electra, Child Of The Sun and Planet Earth. There are things I really love on each but overall they're lazy efforts IMHO, they're the only albums I would call "weak".

jasminejoey said:

My least listened to Prince album is definitely NEWS...Why does everyone hate Rave? Is it because Larry Graham says the word God on one of the tracks? Or is it Prince's braids on the cover?

[Edited 11/13/14 10:13am]

No, because it was bland and souless. It even has the gall to be named after a great unreleased album.

satsuma27 said:

In Clouds I cringe when near the end the English girl says "Hot" in that upper crust Kate Middleton way.Might sound good to American ears but it really pisses me off.

Yeah.........I can't stand that either. Why not have Liv or that big bald lady sing that part? But there are many on AOA. I would add RectumErection to the list but I don't count that as a Prince album. Planet Earth is right up there with albums I will never listen to again. Jeez, just add those 3 up and I wasted about $30.

Shockedelicus said:

jasminejoey said:

My least listened to Prince album is definitely NEWS...Why does everyone hate Rave? Is it because Larry Graham says the word God on one of the tracks? Or is it Prince's braids on the cover?

[Edited 11/13/14 10:13am]

No, because it was bland and souless. It even has the gall to be named after a great unreleased album.

To each his own. For me, it's anything but bland and soulless.

I hated Diamonds and Pearls when it came out and it's still awful now. The tour was shit too.

V10LETBLUES said:

MattyJam said:

Really don't get why folks keep ragging on Planet Earth, which to me, is one of his better recent albums.

Admittedly, Mr Goodnight and Future Baby Mama are a bit bleh, but the rest of the record is solid imo. Perhaps some people don't appreciate the pop/rock sensibilities of songs like One U Wanna C, Guitar and the title track, but these are top drawer compositions to my ears.

All The Midnights In The World, Lion Of Judah, Revelation. For me the true problem lies with those 3 songs, though I'm also kinda skeptical with Planet Earth and The One You Wanna See, but there are things I like in both while the 3 I mentioned above leave me with a big WTF, similarly BTW to Cause And Effect and Fury. I'm not sure what branch of rock Prince was trying to emulate with those songs. It's not his typical Hendrix-inspired funk-rock, IDK what it is (I don't listen to much rock) but to me these tracks are terribly weak, with corny melodies, unconvicing arrangements, and nothing of the raw energy his rock songs usually have (Guitar, for example).

However there are songs I love, the aforementioned Guitar which is an all-time favorite of mine, Chelsea Rogers because it's a strong disco track and quite untypical for Prince, Somewhere Here On Earth because it's a beautiful soul ballad for late night girl-teasing ( ), and Future Baby Mama and Mr. Goodnight i'm totally in love with, they r probably too "plastic" for most folks here but given that I love the "plastic" sound, to me they are a perfect embodiment of everything I like about Prince: subtle, sexy and romantic.

But that doesn't save the album as a whole. I remember several times friends who aren't specifically into Prince but respect his work and don't mind hearing some at my place would suddenly hear the last 3 songs from PE and ask me "WTF is that lame shit? What's wrong with Prince to do such crap all of a sudden?". I could only shrug

databank said:

MattyJam said:

Really don't get why folks keep ragging on Planet Earth, which to me, is one of his better recent albums.

Admittedly, Mr Goodnight and Future Baby Mama are a bit bleh, but the rest of the record is solid imo. Perhaps some people don't appreciate the pop/rock sensibilities of songs like One U Wanna C, Guitar and the title track, but these are top drawer compositions to my ears.

All The Midnights In The World, Lion Of Judah, Revelation. For me the true problem lies with those 3 songs, though I'm also kinda skeptical with Planet Earth and The One You Wanna See, but there are things I like in both while the 3 I mentioned above leave me with a big WTF, similarly BTW to Cause And Effect and Fury. I'm not sure what branch of rock Prince was trying to emulate with those songs. It's not his typical Hendrix-inspired funk-rock, IDK what it is (I don't listen to much rock) but to me these tracks are terribly weak, with corny melodies, unconvicing arrangements, and nothing of the raw energy his rock songs usually have (Guitar, for example).

However there are songs I love, the aforementioned Guitar which is an all-time favorite of mine, Chelsea Rogers because it's a strong disco track and quite untypical for Prince, Somewhere Here On Earth because it's a beautiful soul ballad for late night girl-teasing ( ), and Future Baby Mama and Mr. Goodnight i'm totally in love with, they r probably too "plastic" for most folks here but given that I love the "plastic" sound, to me they are a perfect embodiment of everything I like about Prince: subtle, sexy and romantic.

But that doesn't save the album as a whole. I remember several times friends who aren't specifically into Prince but respect his work and don't mind hearing some at my place would suddenly hear the last 3 songs from PE and ask me "WTF is that lame shit? What's wrong with Prince to do such crap all of a sudden?". I could only shrug

I agree with you, however I think the whole album is corny... Inlcuding Guitar, Chelsea Rodgers, everything is just so bland, corny and laughable of that album. There is not one real song on there...

NPS is bad but at least it had 3 great tracks.

The Rainbow Children no other album comes close

No more opinions. NO NO NO

PLANET EARTH is the worst album.

Worse than NPS, worse than MPLS worse than The Rainbow Children.

Any true Prince fan that repsects him as a musician and his caliber and quality he once released like SOTT, Purple Rain, 1999, etc...

Knows the music on Planet Earth is horrendous. It's not PRINCE.

feeluupp said:

No more opinions. NO NO NO

PLANET EARTH is the worst album.

Worse than NPS, worse than MPLS worse than The Rainbow Children.

Any true Prince fan that repsects him as a musician and his caliber and quality he once released like SOTT, Purple Rain, 1999, etc...

Knows the music on Planet Earth is horrendous. It's not PRINCE.

So u like Carmen Electra and Kamasutra better than PE?

databank said:

feeluupp said:

No more opinions. NO NO NO

PLANET EARTH is the worst album.

Worse than NPS, worse than MPLS worse than The Rainbow Children.

Any true Prince fan that repsects him as a musician and his caliber and quality he once released like SOTT, Purple Rain, 1999, etc...

Knows the music on Planet Earth is horrendous. It's not PRINCE.

So u like Carmen Electra and Kamasutra better than PE?

not a PRINCE album..

i know the hard core fans try to be smart asses by saying exodus, kamasutra, indigo nights, gold nigga, chocolate invasion, etc...

i consider an official Prince album as a catalouge album released in stores.

not albums like chocolate invasion, or gold nigga, or a 4 disk on crystall ball kamasutra...

[Edited 11/24/14 6:55am]

[Edited 11/24/14 6:56am]

Rimshottbob said:

REALLY don't understand the hate for The Rainbow Children and NEWS... two of his finest examples of the 21st Century.... the musicianship on them both is outstanding, Prince sounds INSPIRED on them far more than he was the few years before these.

And I've really never understood why the subject matter is a problem for people... "waaah, he's singing about a philospohy I don't agree with!" Yeah? Get over it. In any music I listen to, I don't have to agree with what they're saying/stating/singing, I just have to feel the passion with which they're expressing it, and that's all over The Rainbow Children.

So you're saying that if TRC was released sounding exactly the same as it does now except the 'philosophy' in the lyrics was expressing admiration for what Hitler accomplished by exterminating so many Jews then you'd dig it as long as you could feel the passion?

The 'philosophy' behind TRC is offensive to thinking people and it's embarrassing to see an adult spouting that anachronistic nonsense.

That Akashic records crap is nothing but some 1970s, afro-having horoscope bullshit AND it's entirely incompatible with every version of the bible I know of. The JWs would not approve.

Women have a place - it's anywhere they want to be. There is no theocratic order. That's nothing but oppression to non-religious males. His comments about how everyone is so happy in Muslim countries shows his value of order over freedom. What he's talking about, in principle, is no different than real slavery. No education for women! Now everyone is happy! There's order because everyone knows their place.

In spite of his flamboyant dress and horniness, Prince has always been a conservative. He'd mostly kept it out of his music until this. To me, this album represents the worst humanity has to offer. It's intellectually lazy and philosophically corrupt.

Having said all that, the music is cool.

LOLZ

New Power Soul hands down

Seems like NPS is the winner (of losers) in the vote count.

I have to say, if we discount the intstrumental albums - that gets my vote (maybe a tie with MPLS sound).

feeluupp said:

databank said:

So u like Carmen Electra and Kamasutra better than PE?

not a PRINCE album..

i know the hard core fans try to be smart asses by saying exodus, kamasutra, indigo nights, gold nigga, chocolate invasion, etc...

i consider an official Prince album as a catalouge album released in stores.

not albums like chocolate invasion, or gold nigga, or a 4 disk on crystall ball kamasutra...

[Edited 11/24/14 6:55am]

[Edited 11/24/14 6:56am]

It's not being smart ass, it's factual.

You are making a subjective discrimination that's not being based on any objective criteria. I can understand someone wanting to exclude the video albums because they were meant to be "watched" and not only "listened at" and any record released under another name than "Prince", "Prince And The Revolution", "Prince And The New Power Generation", "" and "Prince & 3rdEyeGirl" from a discography, even though doing so considerably limits any historic and analytic perception of Prince's work as a whole (the side projects were a considerable part of his entire work), but discriminating audio "Prince" albums on the base of how they were released is just plain nonsensical. It's just as if I said "OK so only vynil records are real records so any Prince album that wasn't released on LP doesn't count". Everyone would say I'm nuts and they'd be right. Besides, if, say, Xpectation isn't an album, then what it it? It's not a single nor a EP nor a movie nor a chair nor a chainsaw, I think u shall agree. Still it has to be something, has it? It is not nonexistent and therefore needs to be defined as being this or that? So what can it be? An album. Similarly while it can be argued that The Time or Jill Jones were someone, there was no such band as Madhouse when 8 was released (though a mock-up band was created later for the SOTT tour) nor has there ever been such a band as the NPG Orchestra. Still, those albums have to be albums by someone, don't they? They didn't self-record themselves by themselves. Therefore logic dictates that they be albums by Prince. When Stephen King writes a novel under a pseudonym one has to admit in the end that it is a novel by Stephen King for the good reason that the name on the cover isn't a real person, and that it is not possible for a book to be written by no one or to write itself.

Trevor and I tried to push that logic to its limits in a past thread and we've decided that based on such criterias only "Prince" audio albums that were released on CD, were not "Prince And..." or even "", let alone side projects, that were not soundtracks or compilations of previously unreleased material or instrumental albums and that were not distributed only outside of the US nor by any alternative means would then "count" and we ended-up with a ridiculous list of 13 albums: For You, Prince, Dirty Mind, Controversy, 1999, Sign "O" The Times, Lovesexy, Come, The Rainbow Children, Musicology, 3121, Planet Earth and Art Official Age. We could even go as far as to exlude TRC because it wasn't released through a major label while we're at it and here we go with 12 Prince albums. If you wanna play that game then better play it for realz, huh? I've even heard some people claim here that albums they considered "bad" didn't count either, a very objective, universal criteria for sure. So we can also take out PE since you don't like it and we have 11 albums left.

There's no rational ground to your thinking. I mean no offence by this, it's reality. You can to justify your reasoning any way you want, there is no logical justification to it, nothing that stands a critical analysis of your reasoning.

So NOW you can say that as far as you're concerned u'd rather ignore such or such album the same way one is free to skip any song from an album or edit Tony M. out of songs for their own enjoyement, alone in the sanctuary of their home. But calling people who merely accept reality for what it is "smart asses" and trying to deny their right to call a cat a cat because you claim it's, in fact, a dog, isn't a statement: it's denial.

Peace

[Edited 11/24/14 13:07pm]

N.E.W.S. is my least favorite. First off I'm not much into his instrumental stuff. There are a few I like here and there (Venus DeMilo, Alexa De Paris and God [instrumental] come to mind). I hate that each song is 14 minutes long. Very rare that I have the attention span to listen to a song more than 8 to 9 minutes long. (The exception there, for me, is all 19 glorious minutes of Scandalous). I'm not sure I ever listened to N.E.W.S. more than once. Maybe I should break it out and give it a listen again.

Like others have said, it's all subjective to different tastes.

Rimshottbob said:

And I've really never understood why the subject matter is a problem for people... "waaah, he's singing about a philospohy I don't agree with!" Yeah? Get over it. In any music I listen to, I don't have to agree with what they're saying/stating/singing, I just have to feel the passion with which they're expressing it, and that's all over The Rainbow Children.

The resulting albums, Art Official Age and Plectrum Electrum aren't 100% successful, but damn - he's TRYING again... Art Official Age sounds fresh and inventive for the most part. At the very least he's created something that can divide opinion... better the fans and wider public be gushing about it and embracing it or feeling they have to speak out about how bad it is

Absolutely spot on! I can groove and sing along with TRC without agreeing with some statements being made. I hear the lyrics and uinderstand them (mostly!) but enjoying an art doesn't equate agreement on everything. You are so right that passion is the key aspect of this.

With regards to AOA, it does sound like a hunger or new found direction and creative outlet has emerged.

Planet Earth is the worst... not even close

i dont understand the hate that 20TEN gets... "Sticky Like Glue", Walking In Sand"," Lavaux"...i STILL have those songs in rotation in the car/phone/home

[Edited 11/24/14 20:30pm]

I dislike Art Official Age.

Planet Earth, 20Ten, Animal Kingdom are all tied for being toilet paper worthy albums. I'm so glad I didn't buy any of those stinkers. I heard the albums from a friend, and fast forward through them looking for at least one good (or decent) song......a wasted effort.

feeluupp said:

No more opinions. NO NO NO

PLANET EARTH is the worst album.

Worse than NPS, worse than MPLS worse than The Rainbow Children.

Any true Prince fan that repsects him as a musician and his caliber and quality he once released like SOTT, Purple Rain, 1999, etc...

Knows the music on Planet Earth is horrendous. It's not PRINCE.

And yet, sonically, many of the songs on it are the closest thing he's ever done to the SOTT era material. Especially the ones towards the end.

If people don't warm up to his output from the last 10-15 years or so then that's understandable, but I seriously don't get what would so much more offending about the songs on Planet Earth compared to what's on the several albums that came before and after it. Do people just dislike the album cover art so much or something? Are they opposed to the lyrics of the title track because they don't like environmental politics? Did they really hate disco so much back in the day so that they can't listen to "Chelsea Rodgers" for more than a few seconds?

You could pick any number of random songs from releases like 3121, Planet Earth, MPLSound and 20Ten and hardly anyone that's not heard the albums in their entirety would be able to tell they come from different projects. At least I don't personally hear anything on his 00s albums that would allow anyone to say that some of them would be "really good" while some of them would be "really bad". The most likely reason for that seems to be just a psychological need for differentiation among some fans. But scramble 'em up, they're made of the same cloth.