Controversy

Purple Rain for me.

Lovesexy

Dirty Mind

The bootleg of The Black Album

alexzander said:

Exodus

rlittler81 said:

purple Rain, when it came out.

For You.

19mf99

I was 12 and vividly remember the moment.

For me Emancipation. I became a fan in about 2001 and started off working my way through the classic 80's stuff (as most new fans do) which I loved. Then I found a cheapish copy of Emancipation so picked it up but did so with a bit of trepidation having read the typcial press narrative about Prince losing his way in the 90's, putting out too much material etc. Suffice to say while I didn't love every track, I still thought it was terrific and I knew from that point I would likely enjoy his output from any era and hence became a 'permanent' fan!

1999

1999

1999. Musically and lyrically there was nothing like that album. I would put my headphones on, lay back and just lose myself in that universe that Prince had created. I can't even count how many times I played that album. Man, I studied that album!

kingricefan said:

1999. Musically and lyrically there was nothing like that album. I would put my headphones on, lay back and just lose myself in that universe that Prince had created. I can't even count how many times I played that album. Man, I studied that album!

Well said! Headphones is the best way to listen to 1999.

controversy

The first Prince albums I got were Love Symbol and Diamonds and Pearls that I got together at the same time. I remember consciously thinking Prince was my favorite singer after watching the performance of "Let's go Crazy" in Purple Rain. I thought yes this is it. And then of course he followed it up with the breathtaking performance of my favorite Princs song "The Beautiful Ones" There was no turning back after that.

Around the World in a Day--the first thing I bought was Purple Rain (I knew the singles from 1999), and by the time ATWIAD was released I'd bought most of Prince earlier albums (maybe not For You, which I never had on vinyl) and the 1984 associated artist albums (and maybe the first Time album, too), and most of the singles from the camp, too--so clearly I was a pretty decent fan already. But Around the World in a Day, by shifting so sharply, actually let me know that things were going to keep moving, they were going to stay interesting, and it was probably going to be worth following. Yeah, he could have lost me at some point, but I'd made the decision to keep giving things a listen... and I was rarely disappointed.