To me,the low point was Prince's feud with Warner Bros.

Writing "slave" on his face a few years after signing a $100 million contract He willingly signed the contract,nobody forced him to do it.He was no slave.

I'm not saying that he didn't have some legitimate issues,but I think he handled it all wrong.

Buttox said:

Writing slave on his face and alienating the mainstream. He should have said he was a prisoner to his contract....slave has much more sinister and horrific connotations in the US and it was ridiculous for a multimillionaire to depict himself as such

I agree.

Mikado said:

Glad to see the org has come full circle.

we're still waiting on that one person who will go "yeah i was really into prince back in 1977
when he was totally unknown and just doing his thing but once he was signed to WB all his
talent just went to shit. so yeah, everything from 1978 up to 2016 was subpar drivel"

come on now, we know you're out there

meeting him

TrivialPursuit said:

"Days of Wild" sounded like garbage after he changed all those lyrics. Give me the CB version any day rather than the NPGMC era version.

Also, Prince removed Days of Wild from TGE and put a live recording on CB because he thought the "Play that MF-ing bass" and "Free the slave" chants belonged to the song. We March was also remixed to sound similar to the Live Experience arrangment, unless I'm incorrect.

TheFman said:

meeting him

Ouch! I'm really sorry to hear that.

The last decade. I think ‘Art Official Age’ was his last solid album, but I hated all the others. 2010 is boring, for some reason PlectrumElectrum just pisses me off, and the Hit N Run albums are weak.

Such good lists. I want to co-sign a post, then I get to the next one, and want to co-sign that too. Which is sort of a bummer to realize. Missing is the saxophone rabbit holes, and live solos.

Rave Era

that album just lost me very spotty he got very bored with it also

Buttox said:

TheFman said:

funkaholic1972 said:

Well, I would say Emancipation was a real low to me. After a few bumpy years with albums (Come, TGE and Chaos & Disorder) that didn't really convince me like his earlier stuff he was already losing me as a faithful customer. But he kept saying Emancipation was the record he was born to make, that he saved his best material for this album and now that he was finally free from his WB contract he would finally unleash all this great material.

It got me all hyped up, until I went to the record store to buy it. I always bought new Prince albums on the first day of release without listening first, but that day I got a hunch to first listen to it because it was an expensive 3 cd album. My oh my, was I disappointed after I had reached the end of cd 3! It sounded like lifeless sugary plastic drivel to me. I left the shop upset and in disbelief and didn't buy the set until I could purchase it really cheap, just for completeness sake. It seemed my Prince had completely lost it artistically and musically. Also I hated the way he looked and styled himself during the 90's, it looked so out of touch with that era. It diminished my interest in Prince for at least 5 years, until TRC was released.

Absolutely the same for me. I know some people think Emancipation is one of the best things he ever did - maybe even the best - but I was so disappointed when I heard it and it never grew on me at all. That and 20Ten are two of the lowest points for me.

He lost me for a while around 2000-2001 after RAVE and the online-only content of NPGMC. He was only touring the US at the time and in the days of dial-up, it was near impossible to access his new music... not that what he was recording around that time was actually worth bothering with. His religious ramblings didn't really help either. He won me back with the ONA tour (musically).

dodger said:

At the time Emancipation was a big disappointment to me. It signalled the end of my golden era after I become a fan in 91 and loved absolutely everything up to that point. . Of course it has its moments but on the whole it sounded so plastic and lifeless and the change of band and sound was for the worse to me.

I felt similarly about Musicology at the time it came out. What a letdown after the musical creative explosion of TRC-Xpectation-NEWS etc, to return to plastic-sounding Prince by numbers. Musically, I was expecting TRC 2 or something different but still new for Prince, not a solid but uninspiring little album of songs that sounded like weak photocopies of past glories. This was when he started getting overtly nostalgic in his song-writing rather than looking forward. A mistake imo.

I have now created my own playlist of the Musicology material with other stuff from around that time that makes it more palatable and less 'plastic' sounding.

Guess he needed the money and he made a mint on that tour, so cool for him .

MarshallStacks said:

I felt similarly about Musicology at the time it came out. What a letdown after the musical creative explosion of TRC-Xpectation-NEWS etc, to return to plastic-sounding Prince by numbers. Musically, I was expecting TRC 2 or something different but still new for Prince, not a solid but uninspiring little album of songs that sounded like weak photocopies of past glories. This was when he started getting overtly nostalgic in his song-writing rather than looking forward. A mistake imo.

I have now created my own playlist of the Musicology material with other stuff from around that time that makes it more palatable and less 'plastic' sounding.

Guess he needed the money and he made a mint on that tour, so cool for him .

+1

For me, 1997 to 2003 and 2011-2016 era could best be described as desperate and lost...

RJOrion said:

TheFman said:

meeting him

what had happened?... do tell.

What was bad about meeting him?

Poplife88 said:

Symbol album sucked...then he changed his name...He totally lost me for about 2 years after that. I had no idea Come was even released. A friend of mine gave me a tape of Gold Experience songs and a bunch of unreleased stuff I hadn’t never heard before...all was forgiven after that. I’m still not a fan of Symbol beyond 7 and God Crated Woman.

I find this really interesting... you were totally on board with Diamonds and Pearls, but put off by ?

Pretty much the whole of the 90s when we went by a symbol.

My least favorite album musically is probably "The Vault: Old Friends 4 Sale" so that would be my musical low point for me

eyewishuheaven said:

I have a variety of low points.

1. Becoming the symbol. Just ridiculous, seemed like career suicide to me.

2. Going on Oprah right after his son died. My heart broke for Mayte as I watched and it just didn't make sense to me.

3. Larry Graham/JW stuff. I sure missed his 'old' performances after that

4. His rambling on interviews about Chemtrails and such.

5. This has nothing to do with his career, but his affinity for very young women was kinda creepy to me.

inovio said:

For me, 98 - 01.

Sure there were a lot of dissaointments in the 90s, but I could accept that. I felt there was always a lot of really good stuff, just nothing consistent over a whole album. Loved Gold/Come, The Undertaker, The Truth, a lot of Crystal Ball etc. and a lesser amount on GB, D&P, Symbol, C&D, Vault...but ammassed, it's a hell of a lot of good.

It was Rave where I really thought he'd had it. Just everything about it I couldn't bear. 'I Love you' was and is the only song I like. The least amount of any album. Also, the look, the chasing to try and be relevant, duets, produced by Prince, it was painful. The Live New Year video I've barely ever watched. I found it crushingly low. Although I didn't attend any concerts during this period, from what I remember, there was alot of truncated songs and medleys that I could never understand the point of, it felt like desperation.

Rainbow Children is what turned it around for me.