Hot Summer is liquid shit. First it rips off the Cream riff which is already a rip. Those cutesy vocals? Hot Summer, yea. Shooby Dooby, kill me. He has grooves on the shelf? Bullshit. He was proud of this but hid Wally. Amazing.

lust said:

dualboot said:

it is actuallly quite accurate as assesment of this release. I regret having to say this.

Accurate? Cool. I’ll wait for the 23 track version of the album then. “A gruelling 23-track odyssey of farcical self-indulgence” Pretty clear that he didn’t actually listen to the album. If he’s right, it’s a lucky guess.

Sinead O'Connor wrote this Irish Times review.

jdcxc said:

lust said:

dualboot said: Accurate? Cool. I’ll wait for the 23 track version of the album then. “A gruelling 23-track odyssey of farcical self-indulgence” Pretty clear that he didn’t actually listen to the album. If he’s right, it’s a lucky guess.

Sinead O'Connor wrote this Irish Times review.

Touche.

I'm not a sycophant that's offended by someone not liking a Prince album but I am offended by people who likely don't suffer from imposter syndrome despite actually being imposters. There's no journalistic integrity to that "review"

How do you write a review about how bad the album is and not even mention Hot Summer, for example?

lust said:

dualboot said:

it is actuallly quite accurate as assesment of this release. I regret having to say this.

Accurate? Cool. I’ll wait for the 23 track version of the album then. “A gruelling 23-track odyssey of farcical self-indulgence” Pretty clear that he didn’t actually listen to the album. If he’s right, it’s a lucky guess.

you do realise its obviously a typo right?

the difference between typing 12 or 23 is moving your hand just 1cm to the right

the only thing id criticise the article for is proofreading, apart from thats its spoton

lust said:

How do you write a review about how bad the album is and not even mention Hot Summer, for example?

there are worse tracks than Hot Summer on this album, WAY worse

[Edited 7/27/21 19:42pm]

fragglerock said:

fragglerock said:

lust said:

fragglerock said:

there are worse tracks than Hot Summer on this album, WAY worse

“Spot on” you say. So you agree with this? “despite his releasing precious little of any notable quality outside his 1980s heyday” No judgment if you do. I’m not a “no true fan wouldn’t love everything he’s done” kinda guy. Just curious as a big claim that there’s been precious little of any notable quality for the last 30 years.

I agree with his thoughts on the album, not his thoughts on Princes career

every other glowing review is just a joke, this is the only one that is anywhere close to reality

These reviews are ludicrous. Sony is paying for this campaign so these writers must be getting perks.. We know better than anyone what Prince albums are great. W2A is okay. 2.5 out of 5 but may rise to 3 with more listens. There's one exception to fan opinions being the real truth. The way Planet Earth is hated on it just doesn't make sense. That album craps all over W2A.

homesquid said:

These reviews are ludicrous. Sony is paying for this campaign so these writers must be getting perks.. We know better than anyone what Prince albums are great. W2A is okay. 2.5 out of 5 but may rise to 3 with more listens.

The reviews I have seen are just all so over the top its a joke. I can only guess theyre getting something out of it, or theyre just scared to death of being called racist if they say they dont like a song titled 'son of a slave master' so they just praise it to high heaven so they cant be accused of that

Neal Karlen has opinions: https://www.newsweek.com/...us-1613504

BartVanHemelen said:

Neal Karlen has opinions: https://www.newsweek.com/...us-1613504

Everybody Loves Neal

fragglerock said:

master said:

rafael said:

He played wta, check the record and hot summer live.

.

Perhaps once or a handful of times or as part of a coda of another song or an interpolation. But not every concert as part of a tour.

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PR tour -> plays PR tracks

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Parade Tour -> Parade tracks

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SOTT tour -> SOTT tracks

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Lovesexy tour -> Lovesexy tracks

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Etc.

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But that pattern stopped, and it is especially not applicable to many of the post-WBR tours, where Prince didn't bother to perform anything current, instead relying on decades old hits.

Irish Times is not impressed


Prince: Welcome 2 America – A one-star rating for an album that should have stayed locked away (irishtimes.com)

although, reviewer also thinks the album is 23 tracks long so who knows what he was actually listening to

BartVanHemelen said:

jaawwnn said:

Could be just a typo, "23" is right beside "12" on a keyboard.

I figure it's a real review, there's no lack of music journos who have no time for anything post 1988, or 1993, and would pretty much give that same review to every prince album since 2004.

Hmmm. Album growing on me. Maybe it is pretty damn good. I like that the album sounds like an album not a compilation of vault tracks. It's got a vibe. Check The Record is dope. The only tracks I can't feel at all is Hot Summer and I normally love his Cream/Peach/Vavoom type of song.

I wasn't going to buy it but I just clicked buy on Amazon. It's effin worth 10 bucks. LMBAO.

jaawwnn said:

EmmaMcG said:

jaawwnn said:

Could be just a typo, "23" is right beside "12" on a keyboard.

I figure it's a real review, there's no lack of music journos who have no time for anything post 1988, or 1993, and would pretty much give that same review to every prince album since 2004.

Would you consider a 12 track album to be a "grueling odyssey" though? That sounds like something one might say about a massive double or triple album, not a 12 song album.

Yeah, that wording is odd alright.

Not really looking forward to this, hopefully I'm wrong. The live concert also leaves me a bit underwhlemed. I thought the W2A tour wasn't great in any way, and the couple I saw were like Prince on auto-pilot.

claudemorton said:

jaawwnn said:

claudemorton said:

After several days listening Prince's Welcome 2 America, what do I think.

.
Even reading the reviews on the net, some that say it is his best record of the last twenty years, others that say that he had done well not to release it, which is shit, I realize that my opinion on this work is absolutely personal and not shareable.
In the sense that I've stopped wondering if a Prince record is objectively good or bad, I've been listening to it for too long and I've heard too many things he did. My judgment of what he does is all stomach. I don't care if it's good or bad, but if the storytelling this record will bring to my life will be good or bad.

.
And - from this point of view the judgment is easy - the album is excellent. An artist dead five years ago, whose music archive has already been looted by releasing one hundred and more unreleased songs from his luckiest period, the eighties, arrives in 2021 with a new album still closed in the cellophane of history, where he criticizes the web, the iPhone, religion, politics.
In terms of storytelling for me this is already a lot: in 1986 I chose to follow a musician whose music will survive me, not the music already released eh, the one that is still closed in the archives. I'll kick the bucket while new unreleased Prince albums will be still out.

.
Already now, when the Estate announce the release of a new Prince album, I count the days before the release because I am always afraid that maybe I'll die before.

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And - ok - the record. It is really a record, listening to it you have the idea of ​​an alternate reality in which Prince in 2010 instead of releasing 20ten releases this Welcome 2 America. There are all the ingredients of an album, the title track, the probable radio singles, the more experimental pieces, the echoes of the black music of the seventies, the cautious openings to hip pop and contemporary music.

.
The title track in the form of a sermon with choirs playing around Prince who - basically - speaks as if he were on the pulpit of some church, the Running Game proto-rap, on a basis that is not rap, left in the hands of the singers until at a certain point he arrives to resume the threads of the discourse, the amarcord of Born2Die, mixed in such a way as to seem - in fact - an old black music single hit on vinyl, the jam session of 1000 Light Years from Here, where choirs, guitar and drums create and destroy this idea of ​​an underwater future world, the sugary and silly pop of Hot Summer, the conventional / standard cover of Stand Up and B Strong, the funk / rock of Check the Records, the religious vision of Same Page Different Book , where a single god is accessed by too many different religious books, the ballad "tongue in the ear" of When She Comes, with its headphone verses imitating coitus, the piece by Rin Tin Tin, a "funky pop" among the best that wrote in the period, the "let's make some rock noises" of Yes, left for the most part in the hands of the singers and then the final track.

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The final track is neither easy nor difficult, it is called One Day We All B Free, again the music refers to the black music of the seventies, IMHO, it is a piece with a dark lyrics but musically "positive" that from time to time occasionally he pauses to introduce the theme of the refrain. One day, one day we will all be free. The theme of the chorus does not fit into the rest of the song, it is as if the piece pauses for a moment to introduce this discordant theme that only at the end is integrated into a gospel that closes the piece.

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But just in the last few seconds it changes. The last verse says, "Someday, someday we'll all be." And it ends. The word "free" does not arrive, the song ends and a dark, slightly dissonant pedal is inserted. We still don't know if we * really * will eventually be free.

.

wow

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And therefore: a record in which I skip nothing, made up of things that are more successful and others slightly less, but all well blended together, well arranged, with attention to detail.

.
In my personal storytelling he did it: I'm sitting here, in 2021, writing a review of a new Prince album, never heard before. That very personal electrical energy that circumscribed his body is still here, in the things that are left of him.

there are a few weird shifts in tempo in ONE DAY WE WILL ALL B FREE. am I the only one hearing it?

i'm not sure if I love it or hate it. it's different, that's for sure