The last addition to my collection. Wanna know what you fans think about this box-set. The best tracks, the bad ones, please share!

As an album it's pretty poor, mainly just throwaways of his corny 90's stuff, but the couple of leftover 80's tracks are good.

All of th tracks that should have been on here ended up being considered for Crystal Ball II. Shame, really.

people like to crap on it for whats not on it and in doing so tend to forget it has a lot of cool stuff on it.

Love it........

Most of it is great, including the remixes.

The Truth: the only tracks you really need are the last two.

Awesome project! This was exceptional at the time and the first ecomm initiative of it's kind. Even then Prince was breaking boundaries. Remember at this time SSL wasn't widely used. Most people were afraid to put their credit card into a web page. Most people didn't even have an email address or even the internet!!! The proposition was to get 100,000 pre-orders and then the project would be manufactured. The packaging is awesome and the lyric website was a nice digital addition. The extra t-shirt in the package was also a nice surprise. Most people never had issues with the delivery service and I've only ever recently heard of such issues on this forum - 18 years later!

jcurley said:

Utter genius. CB the song is worth the price on its own

Agreed x 1000. The title track is godlike, for me probably his finest piece of music.

Movie Star, Last Heart and Make Your Mama Happy also great.

90s tracks like What's My Name, Interactive, Calhoun Square also very cool.

The Truth album is definitely the most consistent disc on it and should have been released as a proper album, as it's very good. Had he released The Truth as his proper 1998 album and put NPS (which has its moments imo) either on the Crystal Ball set or as part of a 3 disc set with the Chaka and Larry albums, and properly promoted it, I think he would've gained greater artistic respect, as The Truth's more stripped down sound would have been seen as a breath of fresh air following his arguably 'over-produced' earlier 90s releases.

Shame he filled out the CB comp with pointless remixes and rerecords though, when he had so much cool stuff in the Vault. But that's Prince for ya.

amazing, I mean it does have poom poom on it but I can give it the benefit of the doubt

I like it a lot. I love when Prince just does a big song dump like this and Emancipation. "Calhoun Square", "What's My Name", "The Ride", "Last Heart" and "Days of Wild" are pretty great. The Truth was a nice bonus disc and something we'd never really heard Prince try before.

It's a pretty damn good collection despite some flaws.

I have all but destroyed the case and the booklet from listening to it so much over the years.

Here's a review (or what it is?)... from Record Collector april 1998:



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Backside of the magazine:

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Love it. Contains my favorite Prince song, Last Heart.

There are some excellent songs on this set,but I think it was sloppily thrown together.

Crystal Ball the song is a classic...it's such a shame that the original Crystall Ball triple album was edited down to SOTT, but thats another story (and it's out there in full quality now anyway, almost 30 years later)..

for me the keeper is The Truth album... love it

the actual Crystal Ball 'official bootleg' is a bit of a wasted opportunity..it's messy and those remixes really shouldnt be on there....but I guess he was throwing it together like the bootleggers did back then (and still do I guess).... wouldn't it have been great to have received it in a globe kinda thing that was originally hinted instead of the puck..remember the delays being put down to getting the 'ball' sorted.... but I'd rather have it than not lol

love this album. have been re-visiting it and remembering why i'm drawn to prince's music to begin with

SoulAlive said:

Some i love: Crystall Ball, Dream Factory, Lovesign, So Dark, What's My Name, Movie Star, Get Loose, Last Heart and The Truth album (some songs not all of them)

jimino1 said:

Crystal Ball the song is a classic...it's such a shame that the original Crystall Ball triple album was edited down to SOTT, but thats another story (and it's out there in full quality now anyway, almost 30 years later)..

for me the keeper is The Truth album... love it

the actual Crystal Ball 'official bootleg' is a bit of a wasted opportunity..it's messy and those remixes really shouldnt be on there....but I guess he was throwing it together like the bootleggers did back then (and still do I guess).... wouldn't it have been great to have received it in a globe kinda thing that was originally hinted instead of the puck..remember the delays being put down to getting the 'ball' sorted.... but I'd rather have it than not lol

Pretty much sums it up for me - Love a lot of songs in this collection though - but very disappointed with the remixes.

I personally love almost all of the 1992-1995 material on the set. And The Truth is great as well.

darkroman said:

Awesome project! This was exceptional at the time and the first ecomm initiative of it's kind. Even then Prince was breaking boundaries. Remember at this time SSL wasn't widely used. Most people were afraid to put their credit card into a web page. Most people didn't even have an email address or even the internet!!! The proposition was to get 100,000 pre-orders and then the project would be manufactured. The packaging is awesome and the lyric website was a nice digital addition. The extra t-shirt in the package was also a nice surprise. Most people never had issues with the delivery service and I've only ever recently heard of such issues on this forum - 18 years later!

I agree, I was very happy with my order and I received the t-shirt which I wore and it was a cool bonus.

At the time, I was disappointed there was no booklet. I guess I'm still disappointed there was no booklet. I remember someone doing a web based booklet.

I remember listening to the CD a lot when it came out. I have looked at it a few times and thought about putting it in my car, I might this week.

As with any project with a guy who has such a large following a lot of hits and misses as you can see with the responses, but overall I enjoyed it and I am still sorry we never got the chance to get Crystal ball II.

Thanks to thedance for that review, I never saw that. Cool stuff

jcurley said:

Utter genius. CB the song is worth the price on its own

This.

To me CB is really a mixed bag containing "A to Z" Prince.

The high are really high, look at "Crucial", "Crystal Ball" and the 80's tracks (with "Cloreen" being the exception, a novelty track wasting almost 10 minutes for other more interesting tracks left out).

The low are really low.... I don't know how an atrocious track like "Poom Poom" saw the day of light, and the remixes are all in all worst than their original versions.

It doesn't flow well as an album, but it is a collection so it's normal.

In some kind of way, it is a frustrating release.
50 minutes any CD, uneven remixes, horrible edits and fades ("Crucial" screams "Crime!"), bad tricks like cutting portions of the already bottleged tracks or adding them sounds and segues from later tunes.... all this is simply P's "Slap In Face" to us for being so hungry for outtakes and unreleased tracks.

So it gave us what we wanted (more or less) but the way he wanted to not completely satisfy us.

I'm proud of CB and the best of it is really part of the best of P.

But it could be better and better if P really wanted to give us fans what we waiting for.

it is a Treat

To get discs of song from different time periods/album eras that you were able to fill in between the release music.
There is a lot of good stuff on there.
Most of my favorite stuff is from the 84-86 period, and I love the Truth album

I don't know he just didn't put them on disc by era 80s early 90s mid 90s etc

Love it , just for the songs Crystal Ball , Days of Wild, Acknowledge Me, Love Sign , Last Heart Etc and The Truth , finally acoustic album from Prince.