Diamonds and Love: What Do We Know?

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Thread started 10/30/23 3:27pm

lustmealways

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Diamonds and Love: What Do We Know?

This topic is deserving of a more knowledgable and passionate analysis than I'm willing to give it here. Make no mistake, I'm gonna tell it to you and I'm gonna tell it to you straight.

I'll admit, I lambasted this idea. I was the first to begin a barage of org posts, weaving in and out of Bloody Mouth jokes, effectively shit talking Howe and Co. for even considering, NAY, entertaining, NAY, assembling such a monstrosity. Two albums, one of them much better than the other, two sides of the same coin... a similar cast of players, the same sound taken to two extremes. One embodying lame commercialism in a way that sometimes worked, the other a masterpiece orgy of ridiculous storyline, inventive sounds, the very best of melody and arrangement. To weave these two beasts together like some incestuous love child seemed paramount to total sacrilege.

What if I was wrong, what if we were wrong? The year is 2023, here we are. The Diamonds and Pearls Super Deluxe Edition has come and gone, I personally have little interest in revisiting it after a few listens. In part because the material just isn't incredible and also because so much of the set was either already circulating or had gotten in the past few months prior to release. Yes indeed, with a release so many fans are decreeing as inessential and embarassing, was there something hiding in plain sight this whole time? Some cacophonous masterpiece slowly pittering away in the background... 2021, 2022? Were we none the wiser?

Ladies and gentlemen, yes indeed, thanks to various reports and salacious gossip rags over the past few months we have a clearer vision of what this three headed dog was. Through this understanding, we've also garnered a profound sense of confusion. As is customary in the Prince community, there are 50 different people with 50 different levels of access and they all have 50 different ideas about what exactly was on this set and what exactly was in play during these tumultuous years. Where do we start? Like most things shrouded in confusion, our story begins with the French. A venerable people... enigmatic yet enviable.

SCHKOPI reporting, barring something lost in this cultural exchange of distinctly American information. I quote (in)directly (from Google Translate):

According to our always well-informed sources, the “Diamonds & Love” box set was to contain exactly 61 unreleased tracks from the Vault, spread over 6 CDs ; 35 for “Diamonds And Pearls” and 26 for “The Love Symbol Album”.

Wait one goddamn minute. 35 tracks from Diamonds and Pearls... by my count, we're sitting at 33 with the released D&P SDE. Also cited by Schkopi was this bizarre piece of information:

We also know that “I Hear Your Voice” , “Uh Huh” and an extended version of “Willing And Able” were sidelined for the “Diamonds And Pearls” period, in favor of “Darkside” , the only real inclusion decided by the team currently in charge.

Ladies and gentlemen, it doesn't take a mathematics expert nor rocket scientist to see that these numbers are more or less adding up to what constitutes the complete 3 vault discs of what we got on the D&P SDE. After years of mockery by myself and others, were we bemoaning the very people who were trying to give us more? The very same people who have made some very bad decisions, this is true, but for more material, was it worth being tolerated? Were things looking up here?

As we all know, history is written by the... Victors. What we're left with is a jilted bride standing at the altar, forced to read smug Charles F. Spicer Jr. Esq. tweets and eat shit as Daddy Pop (12 Inches Thick Version) plays in the background.

If you're asking yourself questions, you're not alone. What were these mysterious 26 Love Symbol era tracks left over? These ashes that we can see the charred remains of and yet we never had a chance to meet, familiarize ourselves with, lick inside and out, celebrate and enjoy. The list as follows is incomplete, they're titles we've all seen pop up over the past few weeks, I can only hope some brave soul can fill us in completely on what exactly was mocked up.

LOVE SYMBOL VAULT TRAX?:

- Face 2 Face (Possibly different versions on different configs of the box? I've never been one to hide my feelings...)
- I Wonder (POSSIBLY? Spoken on by Duane Tudahl as an August 1989 track. Circulating clips reveal what can only be described as a quirky synth hook overdubbed on top of this brilliant all-timer melody. Could this be a 1992 overdubbed version?)
- Dreams (Sparse Linn-driven ballad allegedly sampling When 2 R In Love)
- 1k Hugs and Kisses (9 minute runtime)
- Race (Tony M. Lead vocals. In the space I mark rapper, indeed)
- Rave Church Style (re-recorded Rave)
- The Max (Possibly several remixes workshopped for possible inclusion on this box? Speaking of this, anyone else think it's weird that as of earlier this year the estate were running that teaser of All A Share with The Max samples mixed in and yet... only D&P)
- Come (Alternate/early version... "this is the dawning of a new sexual revolution" - HOLY SHIT)
- House In Order (Prince vox...)

Also of note is the purported inclusion of the bombastic 1993 Rex aftershow. This of course all went down the drain.

Which leaves us with more burning questions. We're left with 9 tracks here, several of which I'm not even confident enough to really say they were on a hypothetical "Diamonds and Love" - if there were confirmed to be 26 tracks from Symbol total on the vault discs, what were these other 17? One could do more research and find titles that probably were among the missing 17, but we won't know for sure until we see a tracklist.

Crawling from the wreckage, we're left pondering what if. Shrouded in the air of confusion with just what exactly the plan was with Diamonds and Love. I hope that in time, hopefully very soon, more can be revealed to make it clear what exactly went down between the new estate takeover and the release of D&P SDE.

[Edited 10/30/23 8:45am]

Landonfunkmonk ey	I hope they decide to go with The Love Symbol set in the early part of next year. It could be a smaller set, like 1999 with just the two vault discs. I doubt they will though. Something BIG Is Coming.
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strongoxman1	Player
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rap	bozojones said: *I mean, for whatever faults Michael Howe had, it was always clear that he was at least trying* to put together something worthwhile for the fans, and mostly succeeded in that regard**. I never understood anyone who acted like he was as bad as Spicer and Londell, who couldn't even manage to put a fucking two-track Celebration single out without issues.
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FrankieCoco1	. [Edited 10/30/23 16:43pm] There may or may not be something coming!
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