SantanaMaitreya said:

herb4 said:

I still think that Prince simply cared less and less about albums as they increasingly made less and less revenue - and it shows. I'm sure he enjoyed working on them and probably, as an artist, believed in their importance in that aspect (Art)..."Albums, like Black Lives, still matter"

He wasn't wrong...It was just..."what do I DO with this?" after he created it. Time to book a few shows I guess! So that led him to lose interest.

I deal with this as an artist. My best work, a lot of which is quite good, has no commercial application and decorates my house since I don't know any rich art buyers.

But albums are still being released today! Even if they don't sell as much as they used to. Chuck Berry released a new album when he was 90 years old, so he didn't care about sales, he just did it. So the thing with Prince was that he only wanted to release albums if he knew he was going to make a lot of money. And if they didn't, he didn't. I'm sure he would have found a label that would have been willing and able to release his record, but... couldn't pay him the advance he wanted. [Edited 9/21/21 12:28pm]

Oh, for sure. Of course they're being released. A lot.

They just don't carry the same weight for artists in general and especially for someone like Prince who'd been to the mountain top with so many top 40 Billboard succeses. The name of the game has changed and doesn't really revolve around dropping bombs with the incredible hype of shit like Born in the USA, Thriller, Purple Rain, Like a Virgin or even Dark SIde of the Moon.

I don't give a fuck what Kanye West is doing with whatever weird publicity shit he's pulling but, by and large, pure album sales are not the driving vehicle for making musicians rich and haven't been for some time. Singles might be. Licensing songs for commercials are. And whatever commercial element that exists for albums are driven by the young, much like they were when Prince was crushing shit in the 80's.

There's a side element of old people who buy up albums by 60 year old artists but even those musicians will tell you they make Jack and SHit compared to touring. To me, that switch seemed to flip for Prince sometime between Rave, TRC and Musicology. He said as much.

"I sold less with album 'x' than I did 'y' but made more money on 'x'"

I don't think this is a controversial opinion to hold. He was giving away 20Ten, Planet Earth, Musicology and stirking niche deals with Target for LotusFlower, resigning with WB for a one off and shit like that. ALong with doing residencies in Vegas and the London O2 thing.

I think he liked the IDEA of Making a Statement with An Album but he was smart enough to know what buttered his bread. So he sat on W2A and went out on a tour with hits and covers and played hardly anything from the record. Not saying I blame him for it just notice it.

For all I know, he adored W2A as much as he did The Rainbow Children (which he centered and entire tour, website and box set around) but that endeavor didn't exactly move a lot of product either. Prince was always dancing on the delicate rope of making art and making money.

olb99 said:

herb4 said:

RODSERLING said:

To me his last albums were terrible ( compared to his previous work). I think he really didn't give a fuck about them : no video, no tv performance during the release, no booklet, him hiding his face on the cover art of the albums, not even producing anymore, giving the album for free, etc. But there was always objectively one or two gems here amd there, completely out of space. Instead of releasing one good album, he released two I don't give a fuck albums competitively (Lotus flower/ MPLS, AOA/Plec Elec, HNR 1 &2, or even 20Ten/ W2A, even if this time he gave one for free in some countries, or didn't even release it in some or at all), instead of just taking the best of both to make it a good album. I like to hear all these albums, I listen to them more frequently than its albums of the 80's. But objectively that's really 2Bad because he could have had a wider audience, if there was someone who would have said to him just " No, stop your artistic and commercial suicide". [Edited 9/25/21 22:35pm]

surprisingly agree with this.

i doubt AOA would have started a new run of late period work, just cos he was still releasing far more music than was necessary, and of wildly varying quality with PE, AND the two hit n run albums, but id like to think that later, he might have hit on something new, or a bit less 'trying to still be a current pop artist' or 'im just going to be a retro 70s artist', and come up with some good stuff, but im not sure really. you cant compare his career to a dylan or bowie even. cos those two artists didnt care that much about hits in the later years. youre better off comparing him to madonna. who is still trying to sound modern and current etc.

[Edited 9/27/21 8:07am]

funkbabyandthebabysitters said:

RODSERLING said:

To me his last albums were terrible ( compared to his previous work). I think he really didn't give a fuck about them : no video, no tv performance during the release, no booklet, him hiding his face on the cover art of the albums, not even producing anymore, giving the album for free, etc. But there was always objectively one or two gems here amd there, completely out of space. Instead of releasing one good album, he released two I don't give a fuck albums competitively (Lotus flower/ MPLS, AOA/Plec Elec, HNR 1 &2, or even 20Ten/ W2A, even if this time he gave one for free in some countries, or didn't even release it in some or at all), instead of just taking the best of both to make it a good album. I like to hear all these albums, I listen to them more frequently than its albums of the 80's. But objectively that's really 2Bad because he could have had a wider audience, if there was someone who would have said to him just " No, stop your artistic and commercial suicide". [Edited 9/25/21 22:35pm]

surprisingly agree with this.

i doubt AOA would have started a new run of late period work, just cos he was still releasing far more music than was necessary, and of wildly varying quality with PE, AND the two hit n run albums, but id like to think that later, he might have hit on something new, or a bit less 'trying to still be a current pop artist' or 'im just going to be a retro 70s artist', and come up with some good stuff, but im not sure really. you cant compare his career to a dylan or bowie even. cos those two artists didnt care that much about hits in the later years. youre better off comparing him to madonna. who is still trying to sound modern and current etc.

[Edited 9/27/21 8:07am]

MAybe but I remain skeptical. I'm sure he was writing good stuff and had a lot of decent material laying around. He just couldn't really make money on albums and nobody most people don't want to hear a set list of all new stuff at the concerts he was selling out.

The live shows buttered his bread. The albums were secondary and a little half assed. It showed.

funkbabyandthebabysitters said:

like i said, the diff is that - and im not even a huge fan of the blackstar album, i find it a bit affected - blackstar was bowie trying to do something different and new. prince wasnt really doing that, or even trying to. who knows, maybe in the vault, there are songs showing him taking a few risks again, but i kinda doubt it. bowie was also listening to artists a bit outside his comfort zone, while prince seemed to have retreated further and further into a cosy cocoon.

[Edited 9/27/21 12:43pm]

SantanaMaitreya said:

LoveGalore said:

Songs like Freaks on This Side, Life o the Party, and Laydown clued me in that there was a chance his later material would be really bad. AOA was the first time I was majorly disappointed in a Prince record. HnR1 confirmed that he had checked out. And HnR2 being mostly old singles despite being better than HnR1 was yet another clue he was pretty much bored of albums.

I was pleasantly surprised at how good a late career album AOA turned out to be.

LoveGalore said:

Songs like Freaks on This Side, Life o the Party, and Laydown clued me in that there was a chance his later material would be really bad. AOA was the first time I was majorly disappointed in a Prince record. HnR1 confirmed that he had checked out. And HnR2 being mostly old singles despite being better than HnR1 was yet another clue he was pretty much bored of albums.

I understand why people might have a problem with Life o the Party with its tanking bottom end, a song he tore up live by the way. Not the other two.

AOA and HnR1 both sound very contemporary. AOR sounds less derivative than HnR1 and better for it. Both are better than the disappointing 5 albums I alluded to elsewhere.

TraSoul82 said:

People have officially stopped discussing W2A in a thread dedicated to W2A. That speaks volumes.

.

On the other hand, there's not much discussion going on generally on the Org. It's pretty quiet around here.

According to my iTunes, I've played the album 10 times on my desktop computer after buying/ripping the CD. This does not count how many times I played it on Apple Music before that (probably at least 5-6 times) and again on my USB in my car after buying/ripping the CD (probably another 4-5 times).

So I've heard the album now around 20 times give or take. The album has grown on my quite a bit, going from "a bit boring, a bit dull" to being something that I genuinely do enjoy and think is really a good album.

NOW - having said that . . . I have not listened to it for many weeks. It sort of just fell off my radar. Aside from maybe 1 or 2 songs, I'm not going to seek any of this material out directly. I doubt I would be jonesing to hear 1010 (Rin Tin Tin), but in "album" mode it's great to hear.

The appeal of it being a "new" Prince album has worn off, apparently.

Flashback to 2014 when AOA came out, I could not stop listening to that album. It resonated with me for years and I do still seek out the album and certain tracks routinely to listen to.

Se7en said:

Was never able to finish it. That's how much I didn't care for what I was hearing. I could see why it was left in the vault. Maybe I'll revisit it sometime soon and try it again.

TraSoul82 said:

26ten said:

Okay so I listened to this album 2 and a half times today. It's a very very strong album, and it's a stronger than most of his other music of the 2000s. It's most similar to HnR phase 2 and there is a song that used the same styles as the 20ten songs (no surprise there). I'm not surprised so many at the org are underrated this album It's sort of the standard. If all the album had was Born To Die it'd be at least a B+ imo. His channeling of Curtis and P Funk are incredible and it's a very interesting album - sort of a utopian vision that has some dark and gritty places. I'm probably going to do an in depth review because it feels like a lot of people here are not giving this thing a chance, or maybe are sort of viewing it through a different lens than what is needed to enjoy it.

I disagree - Musicology & 3121 especially had an overall accessiblility in the production that grabbed you even if it was a bit contrived. This music isn't bad by any means and I enjoy it for what it is, but better than most of his other 2000's music...I don't think so.

TheKid94 said:

I'll never listen to the album again. I thought it was very poor.