JoeTyler said:

whoever dislikes this album is NOT a true Prince fan

[Edited 4/28/15 11:12am]

hahahha, don't be a dick

A fantastic record. Great songwriting, great production and still sounds fresh.

I agree. 3121, Lotusflow3r and AOA are pretty fantastic albums. I would rate them as the best since Come.

jaawwnn said:

RaspBerryGirlFriend said:

Listened to it yesterday, it has some great stuff but quite a bit that I don't care for.

I absolutely love:
3121
Fury
The Word
The Dance

I don't mind:
Lolita
Black Sweat
Satisfied
Te Amo Corazon
Get On The Boat

I don't care for:

Incense and Candles
Love

I despise:
BLAB - Blah

Far superior albums for me are:
Rainbow Children
Lotusflow3r
Planet Earth
Art official Age
The Vault

TheEnglishGent said:

KingSausage said:

RaspBerryGirlFriend said:

Pretty much. I really like the album myself, I'd say only TRC breasts it in the parameters defined by the title, but why do people feel the need to make ridiculous statements about who is and isn't a fan based on their appreciation of one title from Prince's vast discography?

Tits crazy, isn't tit?

Lol, massive Freudian slip there apparently

Militant said:

A fantastic record. Great songwriting, great production and still sounds fresh.

Agree. This is the most complete sounding Prince album.

Lotus there is too many fillers... Planet Earth is just drop dead boring!! AOA is a good concept but bland and missing some energy... Rainbow Children another great concept, too spiritual lacks excitement as a whole... 3121 some misses but for the most part some great songs and his strongest output as an ALBUM as a WHOLE since The Gold Experience.

LOL What? 3121 is so bad. It was definitive proof at the time that Prince still couldn't write a hit pop album despite all the "comeback" hype that his (100% hits-reliant) Musicology tour had generated.

It has a good number of songs as uninspired, embarrassing and desperate as Rave - Love, BLAB, Lolita, and the especially bad Incense and Candles don't have an ounce of inspiration, genuine-sounding emotion, a sense of fun, catchy hooks, or lyrical wit. They're completely paint-by-the-numbers tracks where Prince thought he was sounding hip and current again.

Black Sweat is marginally better, albeit a bit annoying (maybe it's me, but a perpetual alarm that sounds like it's warning of a nuclear attack doesn't make for a good hook). Fury is decent, but Prince stupidly turns down the guitar in the track, leaving the recorded version listless compared to the rocking version we first heard in the live SNL performance.

The Word is actually hypnotic and original in its sound (which is truly rare on an album like this), but the lyrics couldn't possibly be any dumber. Lines like "Don't you wanna go get saved?" are only a marginal step above "Roses are red, violets are blue..." in terms of writing. For a song about such profound spirituality, couldn't we have had even a hint of subtlety or symbolism here from the guy who once wrote challenging yet simultaneously accessible songs with metaphors about rain that was purple?

Let's see. The Dance was a fine song, but I think it sounded about, oh, a hundred times more tormented and melancholc before Prince added a goddamn mariachi band playing cha-cha-cha in the background. Te Amo Corazon is harmless but just as forgettable. Satisfied is the same boring R&B ballad that On the Couch was the album prior. Get on the Boat is the same old standard James Brown biter that Prince never seems to evolve beyond (he regurgitated almost the exact same song later with Turn Me Loose, and no one talks about that one anymore either).

I don't understand how anyone could willingly listen to this thing in full again. At least the title track sounds interesting - kind of a warped, futuristic version of 1999.

[Edited 4/29/15 6:02am]

Militant said:

A fantastic record. Great songwriting, great production and still sounds fresh.

THIS

it still sounds a lot better than the vast majority of the late '00s stuff released by other artists

hard to believe 3121 is 9 yo time F flies...

[Edited 4/29/15 7:30am]

ludwig said:

JoeTyler said:

it has 5 stars material songs and many other 4 or 3,5 stars songs, no filler or at least no stinkers

Incest and Candles is one of the crappiest songs that prince has ever released.

Did you mean to write that?

It's a great album but I'm going with Art Offical Age for that title.

For me Art Offical Age is a Top Ten Prince album my favorite since Lovesexy.

RJOrion said:

ludwig said:

JoeTyler said:

it has 5 stars material songs and many other 4 or 3,5 stars songs, no filler or at least no stinkers

Incest and Candles is one of the crappiest songs that prince has ever released. I hate it with a passion.

The rest of the album is pretty good.

[Edited 4/28/15 13:52pm]

Hell, if the song was named Incest and Candles then it might be worth a good listen.

.

3121 is a solid effort. The down points for me are Incense and Candles and I thought Get On The Boat was a weak closer. Black Sweat is too piercing for me to enjoy at all.

.

I was so pumped to hear the title track with Sonny on bass and Michael Bland on drums. Kind of a quirky beat that harkened back to Gett Off.

.

I liked Lolita until the American Idol performance which was one of the worst TV appearances I've seen Prince mail in. No band, no energy, just an older star with a couple sluts dancing around him. Came off creepy to me.

.

As far as 2000s albums, the musicianship and warm feel of TRC and even Musicology were better albums in my book. But 3121 was a good commercial effort for a pop album.

Reading this thread I've learned The Rainbow Children "breasts" 3121 even though the latter has the song "Incest and Candles" on it. Amazing stuff.

3121 makes my top three of best Prince albums from the last 20 years along with The Rainbow Children and LOtUSFLOW3R.

I like Incense And Candles! There I said it! I know there's others on hear that like the song. It's not that bad.

the intro of I&C alone is worth the price of admission, and the sexy lyrics are a plus; the rap part is catchy as hell; top quality mid-'00s commercial R&B song

[Edited 4/29/15 10:36am]

I still say that RC is his last real Album responding 2 the Old Princely label quality!

3121 goes in a pile with everything else Prince has done since about 1987.

Not Quite as good as it once was.

[Edited 4/29/15 14:37pm]

joyinrepetition said:

3121 is a fantastic album!

It works for me. I'm not saying best, but it's still in heavy rotation.

with proper medication there's hope for all who feel this way..

joyinrepetition said:

I like Incense And Candles! There I said it! I know there's others on hear that like the song. It's not that bad.

someting about this song I like too..........and I really got into 3121 mostly because I was excited about his Vegas residency..........he needs to do that again..........that being said, I liked Fury and The Word but that was about it

LOTUS

[Edited 4/29/15 19:45pm]

I think it's ok, but i think it's probably his most overrated album.

[Edited 4/29/15 22:50pm]

Really?

People really love and defend this album?

Okay. Wow.

You clearly don't hear what I hear, which is a barrel-scraping Prince on autopilot for most of this, devoid of all the personality that made him so special for so long.

I do like 3121, Te Amo Corazon, Black Sweat... er, what else?

Fury is a terrible lyric, and a passionless, flat performance, completely devoid of any fury, in the album version... Get On The Boat should be a funky jam, but it's bloodless, performed robotically...

Love is like a terrible Madonna outtake, The Word sounds like a boyband outtake, Lolita would have sounded dated if it had been released 30 years ago, nevermind in the 00s... Beautiful, Loved & Blessed had its name changed at the last minute, it was originally called 'Banal, Pointless and Dull', Incense And Candles I actually don't hate, but I'd never actually listen to it with another human present in the vicinity...

Satisfied isn't bad, it's just a tired retread of stuff he's done much better before... The remake of The Dance is, by definition, a tired retread of stuff he's done much better before.

So pretty much a miss all round. The average Musicology is much better than this, and of course The Rainbow Children is an actual album with actual music on it, so that's clearly better.

However Planet Earth was so bad it actually made this thrown-together, no-direction-having, jaded, boring, stinky hash of an album seem relatively listenable and cohesive. Boy was this not a good time to be a Prince fan... At least there were the 02 performances, which were good fun, if not exactly legendary.

What makes it worse is that the title track kicks it off in fine fashion, sounding inventive and fresh, and you're thinking, ah, he's going his own way here, trying something interesting, and then the rest of the album is basically a series of letdowns, some passable, some wince-inducing.

There is nothing on here close to being 5-star material. There are several stinkers.

Thankfully Lotusflower, though average itself, painted over this misstep somewhat for me.

Fresh-sounding? Great songwriting? Don't make me laugh.

The production is generic and banal and desperate to fit in to the chart sound of the times (in general), and the songwriting is mostly lacklustre and occasionally embarrassingly juvenile.

Other than all that, yes, this is an absolut classic album...

It's definitely in my bottom 5 Prince albums.

[Edited 4/30/15 0:33am]

[Edited 4/30/15 0:38am]