I never liked this album, but over the past couple weeks I've been revisiting it and my opinion of it has improved.

One of the things I always disliked about the album is the synths. Their tone is pretty consistent through the album and ties it together, but I despise that tone. It's like nails on a chalkboard to me. Perhaps "tone" isn't the right word? I'm not a musician and not sure of the best terms to describe my objection, but it's the way they sound like a church organ played on a cheap Casio keyboard. Anyway, whenever I've listened to this album over the years I couldn't help but focus on the synths and that ruined the album for me.

However, upon listening to the album over the past couple weeks I was able to look past the synths and discovered most of the songs have really great rhythm guitar. There's some fine chicken scratch on display. So now I pay attention the guitar and ignore the synth and the album has dramatically improved for me.

I still recognize some of the songs are corny and cheesy. "Compassion" sounds like a game show theme song. And "Everybody Loves Me" sounds like a song for very young children. But they have catchy hooks.

TBH I think the fans were really unfair to Prince with Mplsound and 20Ten. Damned if he did, damned if he didn't. For years fans were complaining that they didn't like the directions his music was taking, clearly clamoring for a return to form, i.e. his 80s sound, and when he finally decided to revisit the Minneapolis Sound with those 2 records, all he got was a shitstorm.

So I know there will be people to say "yeah but these records weren't good", which I disagree with but what's good and what isn't is a matter opinion, but people seemed to forget 2 important things:

1/ Prince didn't work for us: as all artists, he did what he felt he had to do and each and everyone of us was free to purchase or pass;

and

2/ artists aren't (and shouldn't be) IAs that you can prompt to produce exactly what you want from them.