I love this album from beginning to end. It's definately my favorite Prince album of the '90s and probably overall. Prince created his own "wall of sound" on this album and, I think, with the right promotion it could have had a number of hits taken from it.

PeteSilas said:

so a whole album is crap because of a bad video? or was it the rap? I always just overlooked the rap and enjoyed the music, didn't understand why people let one thing ruin something else.

MattyJam said:

I'll give you a clue:

[Edited 10/16/18 0:29am]

Agree, way too much of this fool in this album. It is still a good album (7.38/10), but the amount of filler cuts, overproduction and shitty rap in this album lards it down. The best cuts are the ones with Prince, and then the ones with him singing and playing guitar.

.

Damn U is still one of the very finest songs he ever made. Arrogance and the Flow are amongst the very worst songs he ever made.

jtfolden said:

NorthC said:

jtfolden said:

I love this album from beginning to end. It's definately my favorite Prince album of the '90s and probably overall. Prince created his own "wall of sound" on this album and, I think, with the right promotion it could have had a number of hits taken from it.

The funny thing about the Diamonds and Pearls tour was that it promoted both D&P and the upcoming album. He debuted Sexy MF on the tour and the single was released while the tour was still going on and it had the f word in it- no better promotion than that! It was a hit! But after the tour and the excitement that went with it was over, none of the singles were really big. It was often like that with Prince albums: the lead single was a hit and created excitement for the upcoming album, which also became a hit because all the fans bought it, but the next singles were always less succesful and the album went down on the charts.

Well NorthC you are partly right, Sexy MF was a flop in the USA and a hit in the UK/Australia/NZ and Europe, but it peaked and dropped quite fast when the novelty of the word Motherf**ker had exhausted itself.

.

My name is Prince was a flop as it is just a crappy song period, too much bombastic rapping, bragging and overproduced to heck. However the 3rd single Seven(7) was a hit reaching #7 in the USA and top 10/20 in most places and spending a good 10 - 15 weeks in the chart, mainly as it was a good and poppy song and had an interesting video. That song probably moved a few more copies of the album and got considerable airplay. Damn U was not a big hit, but still only had a limited release. However the Morning papers was a moderate success reaching Top 50 in most places and a radio friendly song.

.

Still Warners and Prince were underwhelmed at the reception to the album compared to Diamonds and Pearls. That album had a #1, a #3 and 2 more Top 30 hits (Cream and Diamonds and Pearls were both massive hits, and Gett Off was decent too, scoring well overseas). the album sold some 5 - 7 million copies, whereas Symbol went Platinum and not much more, only had a single Top 10 hit and then 2 Top 50 singles (MNIP #36 and dropped fast, MP was about #45) and Sexy MF and Damn U were unjustified flops (Sad as both were great songs). Globally Symbol settled around 2.5 million copies, still good, but well down on the previous album and it would still be his largest seller until Musicology (Excusing the hits/Bsides).

As is often the case with Prince albums,some of the single choices were questionable.For example,I can't see why "The Morning Papers" was released as a single.The song is decent but uneventful.

SoulAlive said:

As is often the case with Prince albums,some of the single choices were questionable.For example,I can't see why "The Morning Papers" was released as a single.The song is decent but uneventful.

i liked it, just one of my faves off the album and not the best tune on it. also, i found it interesting that he was playing the max during his final concerts, real ironic.

Rimshottbob said:

...it's a fantastic record that STILL sounds fresh as paint today... incredible musicianship, great songs, incredible melding of styles and tones, and it all works superbly well AS AN ALBUM..

I feel that the Symbol album is an important part of Prince's ouvre--a brilliant work filled with creativity and imagination, that managed to incorporate sounds and styles of the contemporary day. Prince was pimping a style, through parts imagery and sound, and noone can say that he never did this before! Here you have big-brass band, alt-lyricism, reggae, rave, Arabic tones, classic rock, R&B, Hip-Hop, and a-ma-zing vocal arrangements. Anybody else can chime in here and add whatever more was part of the mix. It was bold, glorious eclecticism.

>

was not ever a hip-hop album--hip-hop heads will affirm this--nor was it intended as such, IMO. Hip-hop was not the only stlye or facet of imagery presented in this dense project. Prince would never be that although he embraced a smidgen of the style, and some fans-of-old reverent to the "Prince-of-old" appear to have just lost their minds over the fact of this album. I am a rare one who believes that Tony M's presence with Prince was fine, that even the only other 1 Prince album that Tony M. contributed to was cool. He was a Minneapolis home-grown who NEVER obfuscated Prince's presence and style; at the greatest you could call them cameos, but merely accents, so 'dem naysayers need to "Gett Off" (and don't buy Goldnigga).

&

: My Name Is Prince

https://www.youtube.com/w...0g9Qkrc8nE

[Edited 10/22/18 15:17pm]

[Edited 10/22/18 15:18pm]

DarkKnight1 said:

This album sounds amazing on vinyl

206Michelle said:

DarkKnight1 said:

The most underrated album he ever created.

It’s a highly underrated album, absolutely. Tracks 2 to 11, as a group, fantastic. I don’t love me MNIP, but it has a place.

i could definitely agree with this although there are several albums that i have gone through love affairs with. MNIP is an exception, i thought then and still think it was the worst single of his career. Tommy Barbarella also lamented the fact that they worked so hard on the rest of the album and prince put out this thrown together single as the first release.

Purplegarden said:

Despite being a crappy-performing single that was not pop-friendly, "My Name Is Prince" is one of his most energetic songs made completely of swagger so I can understand his own enthusiasm for it as a note of positivity toward times to come. The classic Hip-Hop cadence that was done here was something that a lot of fans wouldn't like to hear from him and gives many pause from accepting that style from him, I guess, and I'll say too that it sounds a bit unhinged, but I like that in this song. I like the next-up sequence of "Sexy M.F.," too--another song where Prince just loses his mind rapping about that hot thang who has inundated his mind with the desire to merge. For me, those 2 songs just blow the roof off at the intro before things settle down into the following chase in the narrative.

PeteSilas said:

206Michelle said:

DarkKnight1 said: It’s a highly underrated album, absolutely. Tracks 2 to 11, as a group, fantastic. I don’t love me MNIP, but it has a place.

i could definitely agree with this although there are several albums that i have gone through love affairs with. MNIP is an exception, i thought then and still think it was the worst single of his career. Tommy Barbarella also lamented the fact that they worked so hard on the rest of the album and prince put out this thrown together single as the first release.

[Edited 10/25/18 1:21am]

I like "My Name Is Prince",even though it probably wasn't a good choice for a single I think of it as Prince's answer to LL Cool J's "Mama Said Knock You Out",lol

SoulAlive said:

i guess but don't you wonder how the album would have done if he actually released some of those great songs? Prince often left us scratching our heads with his choices for singles.

Germanegro said:

Despite being a crappy-performing single that was not pop-friendly, "My Name Is Prince" is one of his most energetic songs made completely of swagger so I can understand his own enthusiasm for it as a note of positivity toward times to come. The classic Hip-Hop cadence that was done here was something that a lot of fans wouldn't like to hear from him and gives many pause from accepting that style from him, I guess, and I'll say too that it sounds a bit unhinged, but I like that in this song. I like the next-up sequence of "Sexy M.F.," too--another song where Prince just loses his mind rapping about that hot thang who has inundated his mind with the desire to merge. For me, those 2 songs just blow the roof off at the intro before things settle down into the following chase in the narrative.

PeteSilas said:

i could definitely agree with this although there are several albums that i have gone through love affairs with. MNIP is an exception, i thought then and still think it was the worst single of his career. Tommy Barbarella also lamented the fact that they worked so hard on the rest of the album and prince put out this thrown together single as the first release.

[Edited 10/25/18 1:21am]

NorthC said:

SoulAlive said:

I like "My Name Is Prince",even though it probably wasn't a good choice for a single I think of it as Prince's answer to LL Cool J's "Mama Said Knock You Out",lol

You're not the first one to say that. A review in Spin magazine noticed the same, "but LL never ended a chorus by imploring, Hurt me!"

PeteSilas said:

NorthC said:

PeteSilas said:

i guess but don't you wonder how the album would have done if he actually released some of those great songs? Prince often left us scratching our heads with his choices for singles.

But how many good singles could you get from this album? Sexy MF caused some controversy because of the f word, but other than that... The Continental is a great piece of funkrock, but it changes to some mellow r&b halfway through... I really don't see any radio friendly hit songs on this album. The Morning Papers would have had a chance if it had a better chorus than Sha-na-na. The thing is, from this album onwards, Prince lost or didn't care about his gift for writing catchy pop songs. But he expected to have hits just the same and then blamed WB when he didn't... He was becoming old news when this album came out and had trouble admitting it. And made a whole lotta fuzz about it for the next few years. This album was the beginning of Prince's wilderness years, I can't see it any other way even if he still made some good music in those wilderness years.

well, i know this is gonna cause some arguing but three chain's o' gold would have fit nicely on the white rock stations, the kind that would play butt rock, god created woman would have done ok on some black stations, I don't know, it's a tough question to answer because we are so unused to hearing any of those on radio, that we'd think they'd be out of place. he had 7, my name is prince and he at least released a vid for morning papers too. He was definitely mainly selling to his hardcore with that album and he lost the momentum he got off of diamonds and pearls. You really can't control sales, especially in that business, one day your hot, the next day the kids are buying something else. Look at mc hammer, he was huge and no one thought he'd fall off the way he did. Prince's work ethic and his talent(and his dedicated fan base) allowed him to not suffer the fates of most artists.

The only aspect of wonder I would have regarding a successful choice of singles promoted for (and others) would be what exactly would capture the ears and imagination of a larger audience, yes. But I could only wonder what those choices would be and might only be partially correct in those I would have chosen, so that is a pretty much useless exercise for me. I have the utmost admiration of the artist and the patience + open mind to observe the totality of each project, but I also understand that the general public does not, necessarily. I guess I would say that time has a way of sorting these issues of what are the great songs that people love. I imagine that this is probably the way that Prince himself approached the conundrum, obviously, as he was the progenitor of it all and as such couldn't always make the best call in terms of what would be popular. He had his own perspective to deal with.

PeteSilas said:

i guess but don't you wonder how the album would have done if he actually released some of those great songs? Prince often left us scratching our heads with his choices for singles.

Germanegro said:

Despite being a crappy-performing single that was not pop-friendly, "My Name Is Prince" is one of his most energetic songs made completely of swagger so I can understand his own enthusiasm for it as a note of positivity toward times to come. The classic Hip-Hop cadence that was done here was something that a lot of fans wouldn't like to hear from him and gives many pause from accepting that style from him, I guess, and I'll say too that it sounds a bit unhinged, but I like that in this song. I like the next-up sequence of "Sexy M.F.," too--another song where Prince just loses his mind rapping about that hot thang who has inundated his mind with the desire to merge. For me, those 2 songs just blow the roof off at the intro before things settle down into the following chase in the narrative.

[Edited 10/25/18 1:21am]

i'd love for someone to name another artist in his realm who has that many quality songs that weren't hits.

"And God Created Woman" is heavenly just a wonderful track

1) Except for most of the straight-up love songs like "Love 2 the 9s," "Blue Light," & "Damn U," Prince hovered in Prince-world with this album, and I feel that you needed to be a devotee in some way to really get into the lyrical content of the rest of the album's songs. So therefore the chances for more popluar radio songs here were reduced.

>

2) Yeah, I think that Prince focused an effort at pop-songwriting with Diamonds and Pearls, then went with his own bliss in crafting Symbol. By this point in history he had certainly moved beyond his apex in popularity, but mightn't have given a frick about the news-flash of his slide from the zeitgeist while still wishing to attain the big cash payoff that he could indulge to manifest his own artistic visions, being the creative guy that he was, and "dissapear up his own ass" as they say. That's my own interpretation of the times. He had obtained that new corporate contract that jerked his ego rather hard but done him wrong by setting the goalpost for earning cash advances incredibly high.

Prince had his extra demands afterwards with the moneymakers--perhaps unreasonable at the time--that placed them at odds, and yeah, you could say that this had cast his career into the wooly wildlands of WTF obscurity for a time as a result.

NorthC said:

[1] But how many good singles could you get from this album? Sexy MF caused some controversy because of the f word, but other than that... The Continental is a great piece of funkrock, but it changes to some mellow r&b halfway through... I really don't see any radio friendly hit songs on this album. The Morning Papers would have had a chance if it had a better chorus than Sha-na-na.

[2] The thing is, from this album onwards, Prince lost or didn't care about his gift for writing catchy pop songs. But he expected to have hits just the same and then blamed WB when he didn't... He was becoming old news when this album came out and had trouble admitting it. And made a whole lotta fuzz about it for the next few years. This album was the beginning of Prince's wilderness years, I can't see it any other way even if he still made some good music in those wilderness years.

To creep from the topic of the merits of the album I absolutely loved this career trajectory. I'd actually consider the whole deal as a form of performance art--the self-immolation, as you will--as the artistic drive does not necessarily synch with commercialist goals. He was fighting in his own self-indulgent, crazy way to sharpen his own objectives and turn the tables within the music industry to put pressure on business to help him help them in his own way. I think that the man had done some good in whacking his way through the wilderness toward attaining greater economic prosperity and redefining business practice. Many will disagree!

i sometimes wonder what was going through his mind when he signed that contract, and that maybe he really had that much confidence in himself (who could blame him really) that he could will albums to sell 5 million a piece, of course, no one can do that. It all worked out for the best, he wrote slave on his face, was thought of as a joke for a few years but now, like Ali's exile where people called him a coward and stripped him of his title, some poeple see it as a brave, virtuous move that helped everyone out more. His biggest problem? it was his biggest strength, he was always ahead of his time, like many genius'. thank god he at least had his success, there are some brilliant talents that didn't get the timing right like sylvester, who were relatively obscure.

Germanegro said:

1) Except for most of the straight-up love songs like "Love 2 the 9s," "Blue Light," & "Damn U," Prince hovered in Prince-world with this album, and I feel that you needed to be a devotee in some way to really get into the lyrical content of the rest of the album's songs. So therefore the chances for more popluar radio songs here were reduced.

>

2) Yeah, I think that Prince focused an effort at pop-songwriting with Diamonds and Pearls, then went with his own bliss in crafting Symbol. By this point in history he had certainly moved beyond his apex in popularity, but mightn't have given a frick about the news-flash of his slide from the zeitgeist while still wishing to attain the big cash payoff that he could indulge to manifest his own artistic visions, being the creative guy that he was, and "dissapear up his own ass" as they say. That's my own interpretation of the times. He had obtained that new corporate contract that jerked his ego rather hard but done him wrong by setting the goalpost for earning cash advances incredibly high.

Prince had his extra demands afterwards with the moneymakers--perhaps unreasonable at the time--that placed them at odds, and yeah, you could say that this had cast his career into the wooly wildlands of WTF obscurity for a time as a result.

NorthC said:

[2] The thing is, from this album onwards, Prince lost or didn't care about his gift for writing catchy pop songs. But he expected to have hits just the same and then blamed WB when he didn't... He was becoming old news when this album came out and had trouble admitting it. And made a whole lotta fuzz about it for the next few years. This album was the beginning of Prince's wilderness years, I can't see it any other way even if he still made some good music in those wilderness years.

To creep from the topic of the merits of the album I absolutely loved this career trajectory. I'd actually consider the whole deal as a form of performance art--the self-immolation, as you will--as the artistic drive does not necessarily synch with commercialist goals. He was fighting in his own self-indulgent, crazy way to sharpen his own objectives and turn the tables within the music industry to put pressure on business to help him help them in his own way. I think that the man had done some good in whacking his way through the wilderness toward attaining greater economic prosperity and redefining business practice. Many will disagree!

PeteSilas said:

i sometimes wonder what was going through his mind when he signed that contract, and that maybe he really had that much confidence in himself (who could blame him really) that he could will albums to sell 5 million a piece, of course, no one can do that. It all worked out for the best, he wrote slave on his face, was thought of as a joke for a few years but now, like Ali's exile where people called him a coward and stripped him of his title, some poeple see it as a brave, virtuous move that helped everyone out more. His biggest problem? it was his biggest strength, he was always ahead of his time, like many genius'. thank god he at least had his success, there are some brilliant talents that didn't get the timing right like sylvester, who were relatively obscure.

Well if Prince had decided to 1/ sell out and release radio-friendly, mainstream audiences-friendly music only and 2/ reduce his output to one album every 2 years and promote each properly, reaching 5M copies could probably have been achieved. What was insane was to believe that he could keep releasing a record a year and make whatever music he wanted to do and sell those 5M. But I'm glad Prince didn't sell out and become a charts whore, and I'm even glad he tripped on WB not selling enough and that the whole name change/WB wars episode happened because those years were epic.

NorthC said:

What was going through Prince's mind when he signed that contract... He had a business to run! It's one thing to record in your basement studio, it's quite another to have a state of the art studio with staff working there on administration, clothing, technics... Prince was becoming a business man at this time, a brand, a man who had to pay his employees... The Prince of 1992 was a very different one from the Prince of 1982 and I guess he didn't realize that until after he signed that contract. [Edited 10/27/18 14:58pm]

so he'd make a dumb decision thinking he could sell 5 million every time when he never did that? even at his best? An artist can only do so much to sell, some of my favorite albums are hardly known, i've been listening a lot to TTD's vibrator and it blows my mind, lots of factors, sometimes the quality of music isn't even there, how many crappy songs make lots of money? Excellence has never guaranteed anything.

i don't know if he was too happy in those years, there is the od story that we all know of, he also flipped his car completely over at one point and fortunately wasn't hurt. And probably a good half of the folks here would say he really lost it during those years, mentally and musically. I always liked his music so it didn't make a whole lot of difference to me, I loved emancipation, the symbol album diamonds and pearls but not everyone does. just yesterday i was watching the eye hate u vid, what a song, what a group of talent as well.

databank said:

PeteSilas said:

i sometimes wonder what was going through his mind when he signed that contract, and that maybe he really had that much confidence in himself (who could blame him really) that he could will albums to sell 5 million a piece, of course, no one can do that. It all worked out for the best, he wrote slave on his face, was thought of as a joke for a few years but now, like Ali's exile where people called him a coward and stripped him of his title, some poeple see it as a brave, virtuous move that helped everyone out more. His biggest problem? it was his biggest strength, he was always ahead of his time, like many genius'. thank god he at least had his success, there are some brilliant talents that didn't get the timing right like sylvester, who were relatively obscure.

Well if Prince had decided to 1/ sell out and release radio-friendly, mainstream audiences-friendly music only and 2/ reduce his output to one album every 2 years and promote each properly, reaching 5M copies could probably have been achieved. What was insane was to believe that he could keep releasing a record a year and make whatever music he wanted to do and sell those 5M. But I'm glad Prince didn't sell out and become a charts whore, and I'm even glad he tripped on WB not selling enough and that the whole name change/WB wars episode happened because those years were epic.