There's really not a comparison. They're night and day.

https://albumism.com/features/prince-graffiti-bridge-turns-30-anniversary-retrospective?

funkbabyandthebabysitters said:

Symbol vs d+p is the closer comparison Gb is kinda like a vault album (though he rerecorded the songs) as its 80s stuff mostly Rather than the start of the 90s i see it like the end of the 80s Thieves is great but it didnt point to the npg era

Agreed.

GB was mostly a one-man band production and sounded like a cumulation of the '80s styles.

D&P and it's follow-up, the Symbol Album, represented the shift in style for the '90s which incorporated a live-in-studio band for the basis of many tracks.

At the time, I thought GB was stronger than D&P. But now I think I prefer D&P, warts and all.

Graffiti Bridge has some of his greatest songs (Question of U, Joy in Repetition, We can Funk, Thieves in the Temple), but all the songs from other artists - Obviously, because it´s a soundtrack - make it a collage and are distracting to me.

.

Diamonds is a real album, with a new band.

funkbabyandthebabysitters said:

Symbol vs d+p is the closer comparison Gb is kinda like a vault album (though he rerecorded the songs) as its 80s stuff mostly Rather than the start of the 90s i see it like the end of the 80s Thieves is great but it didnt point to the npg era

This take only gets play because we now know it was old Vault material.

Back in the day this album was similarly derided as 90s new whack swing, especially "New Power Generation" which now gets the opposite critical appraisal because everyone now likes "Bold Generation".

GB is still better, people just get wrapped up in overarching album philosophy with their nerd notes on initial recording dates and alternate configurations and b(l)and arrangements blah blah blah. The only case to be made for D&P being superior to any 90s album is based on semantics, solely on-paper and never in actual practice.

[Edited 11/17/23 5:09am]

There must be a Prince version of Release It, right?

WhisperingDandelions said:

funkbabyandthebabysitters said:

Symbol vs d+p is the closer comparison Gb is kinda like a vault album (though he rerecorded the songs) as its 80s stuff mostly Rather than the start of the 90s i see it like the end of the 80s Thieves is great but it didnt point to the npg era

This take only gets play because we now know it was old Vault material.

Back in the day this album was similarly derided as 90s new whack swing, especially "New Power Generation" which now gets the opposite critical appraisal because everyone now likes "Bold Generation".

GB is still better, people just get wrapped up in overarching album philosophy with their nerd notes on initial recording dates and alternate configurations and b(l)and arrangements blah blah blah. The only case to be made for D&P being superior to any 90s album is based on semantics, solely on-paper and never in actual practice.

[Edited 11/17/23 5:09am]

do i need to care what the take was when it was released?

thats the beauty of the passage of time - you get to reappraise old music and see it for what it is, not what the culture, critical consensus, or commercial response is.

i cant imagine princes songs on this album being lumped in with new jack swing. the time songs like love machine or tevin's round and round or mavis' melody cool, maybe. looking at wikipedia though, the album seems to have gotten good reviews at the time, its the film that took the album down with it.

if you get rid of the non prince songs, its a very good album. and not one that sounds like bobby brown or janet jackson or commercial rnb of the time.

all those other songs kind of get in the way.

And once you look at only princes songs, its obv this is not like the 'look i have a band' output which was most of his 90s output, its a one man band album again, and mostly pop/rock, like most of what waa on his mid to late 80s albums.

[Edited 11/18/23 22:25pm]

funkbabyandthebabysitters said:

WhisperingDandelions said:

This take only gets play because we now know it was old Vault material.

do i need to care what the take was when it was released?

thats the beauty of the passage of time - you get to reappraise old music and see it for what it is, not what the culture, critical consensus, or commercial response is.

wtf are you talking about.

You're not "reappraising" anything based on what's on record, you're reappraising it based on hyper-nerd backstage background tea about what was from The Vault or an 80s outtake or not. That's the entire point--that style of appraisal is merely another manifestation of random "culture, critical consensus, or commercial response" ancillary B.S. that has nothing to do with what's actually on the record.

And in referring to the "OG take" I'm not referring to what magazines in 1990 said, I'm referring to what the org consensus was literally the day before 1999 SDE was either leaked or released and the day before everyone flip-flopped their takes on "New Power Generation" and retconned it into a fan-beloved Parliament-Funkadelic homage.

funkbabyandthebabysitters said:

i cant imagine princes songs on this album being lumped in with new jack swing. the time songs like love machine or tevin's round and round or mavis' melody cool, maybe.

.... but those are Prince songs.

And they're uh, Prince songs that are specifically on a Prince album.

funkbabyandthebabysitters said:

if you get rid of the non prince songs, its a very good album. and not one that sounds like bobby brown or janet jackson or commercial rnb of the time.

all those other songs kind of get in the way.

And once you look at only princes songs,

uh... again. Those are Prince songs.

But if you want to pretend the Prince songs you arbitrarily don't consider a part of the album aren't a part of the album (which they are, for the record, they are Prince songs, they are part of the album, and they are part of all summations of the album),

"New Power Generation" is still 100% a New Jack Swing song with New Jack Swing production.

And I'm not deriding it for being New Jack Swing. I'm like the last person on the org who prefers the GB versions to the meandering 1999 SDE demo. I always loved "New Power Generation"--specificially because it's so blatantly New Jack Swing.

[Edited 12/3/23 16:16pm]

i know you are desp not to be seen as a rnb phobe, but NPG isnt really a NJS song. if you just mean rnb from this time, then kinda, its closer to jam and lewis' stuff with janet jackson around this time, but even then, its not really a regular rnb song from the early 90s/late 80s. its more of a pop/funk track. the album was also not seen as prince trying to keep up with the times. that only happend with D&P in 1991. thats just a fact. do some reading up. if you find a GB review that states that the album is playing catch up with bobby brown or teddy riley, then please post it here. happy to be corrected.

i dont care about hyper nerd nostalgia or knowledge. i dont actually care about bold generation either. thats a ok outtake, not much more. i also dont know why someone railing against hyper nerdism then goes on to reference an apparent 'consensus' which is made up of some posts on this site, a FAN SITE (ie prince hyper nerds), from nearly a decade after GB was actually released.

fyi, the singles for melody cool, round n round, shake etc were attributed to artists who were not prince.

eg -

https://www.discogs.com/master/110126-Mavis-Staples-Melody-Cool

https://www.discogs.com/release/292694-The-Time-Shake

https://www.discogs.com/release/932139-Tevin-Campbell-Round-And-Round

yes he wrote them but they performed them, for a reason - they were more 'regular' sounding songs, not 'prince' songs. thats the point. he didnt record and release them himself. eg - most people do not think of manic monday as a prince song, its a bangles song.

[Edited 12/4/23 4:08am]

Grafitti Bridge (by a landslide)

I don't even think GB is that good, However it did have Joy In Repetition & The Question of U.

D&P was a commerical cash-grab.

GB by a mile. Joy in rep alone elevates it to greatness. Beyond the horribleness of the title track most of GB holds up to this day. Gett Off & Willing and Able are great songs...but as a whole D&P is a pretty weak album imo.

Sonically, Graffiti Bridge is literally a bridge between the soundscape/production of Batman (synth heavy/sparse/sample laden futuruso funk) and the sonics of Diamonds and Pearls (earthy, traditionalist, horny, thowback, big bottomed, lush).

--

Seriously, listen to these three albums in a row. You'll hear an evolution/progression of sound/style/instrumentation for sure.

[Edited 12/4/23 17:57pm]

RODSERLING said:

Round and Round was Prince at his best, everybody knows that. Compared to that, Cream, Gett Off, Money, D&P...are just songs that anybody on the org could do, instead of creating trolling threads like that. [Edited 12/4/23 17:29pm]

Round and Round was certainly catchy as hell with an irresistable hook, but it was a too commerical for my tastes.

DotsofU said:

the title track for GB gets a raw deal.

prince should have done more showtuney, broadway type of numbers!

plus the guitar in there, its like a stepping stone to what he was going for on strays of the world or 3 chains of gold a few years later.

Round and Round was Prince at his best, everybody knows that. Compared to that, Cream, Gett Off, Money, D&P...are just songs that anybody on the org could do, instead of creating trolling threads like that.

round n round was tevin campbell at his best.

when it comes to songs prince wrote for other artists, that one is often overlooked.

[Edited 12/5/23 7:41am]

For the record, I hated New Power Generation, and still do. I don’t like Bold Generation either! 😃

same

Tho it works better in 82 as he was still young/bratty and could get away with a battle of the generations song, but even then, bold generation as a title isnt that catchy somehow.

[Edited 12/5/23 18:33pm]

comparing the best songs on GB vs DP, id say they are about equal (though if you have edits of daddy pop and live 4 love without the rap verses, then they go up a notch).

release it, question of u, we can funk, joy in repetition, elephants and flowers, round n round, thieves in the temple, shake, graffiti bridge

VS

thunder, daddy pop, d&p, cream, strollin, willin and able, gett off, walk dont walk, insatiable, live 4 love.