the keepers are RUTJF, tangerine, so far so pleased, baby knows (throwaway and more of a b-side, but enjoyable), i love u but..., wherever u go, whatever u do. beautiful strange should have been on the proper release.

not an amazing album, but it has more good to very good material than a lot of albums from around this period. prob would have been better with more tracks edited out but thats just my preference, i wasnt too into his rnb songs from this album.

[Edited 11/4/24 14:33pm]

theblueangel said:

Wait, is it true that Sam Jennings said that he and Mani had to convince Prince to put The Greatest Romance on the album? If that's the case, then they're primarily responsible for this being a financial failure. The Adam & Eve remix could've gone on there, because the last couple minutes are perfection, but the "base" song is just SO corny, and schmaltzy, and to this day the lyrics are either incomprehensible or unbelievably cruel (it seems in retrospect that he's saying that his love affair with Mayte was just bullshit to sell records?) - absolutely zero casual fans responded to this song. All my friends clowned on me endlessly, as I had been convinced that this album was gonna kick ass. It killed the whole project immediately, no to mention that the video came out months later (videos were absolutely crucial at the time), and then it was just a boring, color by numbers video. The bizarre choice of the album cover and that hideous outfit and hairstyle certainly didn't help things. Imagine the first single being Strange but True, or Beautiful Strange (had it been on there), or So Far So Pleased or literally almost any other song except Hot Wit U (another really embarrassing song at the time- now it's like ok fine, I can fuck with it but wouldn't play it where anyone else could hear).

I believe it was his engineer(?) who convinced him to include Strange True (which he then excluded from Rave In2). Had not heard the story about TGRES, which I was initially a bit lukewarm on as a lead single, but grew to love very quickly.

Greatest Romance is amazing. Pure pop silk.

I'm surprised no one mentioned "I love u but I don't trust u anymore", which is an incredibly emotional and truly beautiful song, which shines even more in the 2009 Montreux version.