In 1993, Prince was fully grown into his new band, The New Power Generation. Due to Warner, The Hits & B-Sides is a testament to the superstar who made one of the biggest selling ablums of 1984-1985, a superstar who made a masterpiece in 1987, and a superstar who reinvented himself in the 90's and beyond. Warner compiled the 2 Hits discs and made a new disc. A disc of B-sides and then some.
If you have this wonderful collection, tell me and other Prince fans what you think of it.

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[This message was edited Sat Nov 22 10:37:07 PST 2003 by Number23]

silverchild said:

It's not a wonderful collection, it's full of crappy edits and glaring omissions, and the order the tracks are in is shit.It's not even a box set for that matter.

Marrk said:

That's him told.

silverchild said:

it was wonderful for about a new york minute, before i got hold of bootleggage containin the full-length versions of most of the stuff on there.

When I first saw it, I thought no Prince fan would ever buy this were it not for the B-sides and that was only for the presence of CD-quality versions of that material.

When I first saw it as a 12-year-old boy-child, I said: "I can't believe anybody would buy that crap. He's just a pish Michael Jackson. Look at the state of him on the cover."
Fortunately, I was young and nieve, therefore still capable of changing my complete mindset.
But now, the walls have been built and the cement has hardened. You can't convince me of anything I don;t already think is true, and even if you did I wouldn't tell you.

Number23 said:

yes...what the point here?

Handclapsfingasnapz said:

a moderator admitting to owning boots.

Milty said:

It would have undoubedly resulted in my removal from this site.

Milty said:

what, just cuz i'm a mod i ain't supposed to say i own 'em?

Milty said:

Yeah, AND she's got killer fuck me pumps too!!

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thebumpsquad said:

shhh!! i told you not to say anything about the fuck-me pumps!!!

I think "The Hits/B-Sides" was one of my first Prince albums and as I bought more of his CDs adn realized how many thing were missing from the collection, I got kind of pissed. I listen to "The B-Sides" disc more than the other two combined. I think it is a good intro for any fan.

Peach, Pope, and Pink Cashmere, + Power Fantastic <<-- worth buying for those

when i got this i was surprised to learn that,"how come you dont call me anymore" wasnt made strictly for the girl6 sdtrk. it was an old as hell song! that was a trip.

This was my way into Prince.

I was about 15.

I'd got some HMV gift vouchers for my birthday (or maybe Christmas) from an Aunty.

I got the bus to Newcastle, and I didn't really know what to get. At the front of the shop, they had a display of these Prince greatest hits CDs.
Obviously I knew who Prince was - Cream, Gett Off, Sexy MF etc. I also knew Thieves In The Temple 'cos my sister used to play it. So I liked a few songs, hadn't heard the rest, and I got The Hits 2 (which had Kiss, Cream, Gett Off and Purple Rain - songs I knew and liked).

I got home, and put it on...

I was COMPLETELY blown away. Controversy. I Wanna Be Your Lover. Head. and then - oh wow -

6 Delirious
7 Little Red Corvette
8 I Would Die 4 U
9 Raspberry Beret

INCREDIBLE!

I was so astounded. I went back to HMV the very next day and bought Hits 1 (with actual money!!)

From then on I was hooked. I loved "discovering" all those wonderful albums, and basically my life has never been the same again.

So I LOVE those albums.

I still don't have the 3-CD pack (I'm too stingy!) but I love the B-sides album. It's a great collection of (for latecomers like me) hard to find songs, and excellent ones like 17 Days, SAIMHair HCUDCM etc.

So I WON'T hear another word said against these CDs!!!

It did have lots of ommissions, there were many songs not on there (Parade singles, Batman singles), but look at Madonna or MJ - they've only 1 CD best of's - I think they did well to give Prince a 2CD best of with a 3rd disc of b-sides.

Plus, when it came out, I'd only been a fan since late '91, and I only the albums upto that point, no singles - so it was a BLAST getting all those b-sides in one glut, and the b-sides are some of his best work.

I think it really spurred me onto to get all the singles and stuff, and it wasn't long after that I started buying bootlegs.

Props to the Hits/B-Sides where due

Romance1600 said:

Madonna has had separate compilations though:

You Can Dance
The Immaculate Collection
Something To Remember
GHV2

So if you played them all together, that'd be four discs. Then again, a lot of the same songs appear on these collections.

Thinking about it, Prince has had four discs of hits if you count that lame "The Very Best Of Prince" compilation.

I'm starting to ramble. Why am I stuck in on a Saturday night? Where is everybody? Aaaargh!

The track order plus obvious songs that were left off of the set is pretty bad. . .so, would someone be willing to list any hit compilations they have made? 4, 5, 6 disc sets? Anyone? Boris?

I like it.

It has its pros and cons

Pros:
1. It's 3-cd set, unlike the usual 1-cd "mtv
hits" compilation
2. It has his b-sides (some of his best work ever, IMHO)
3. It's a great "starter" for a newcommer

Cons:
1. It's missing some of his "hits"
2. The tracklist makes absolutely no sense
3. Some of the songs are edited to hell

But, of course the averrage buyer(by now) of this would have no idea about the cons, so all in all it's good

Well, it's a hell of a lot better than "The Very Best of Prince". Just for having almost all of the b-sides in the set, and excellent liner notes- I have to give it props. It was an excellent introduction for me to Prince.

Marrk said:

Indeed. Its saving grace is the inclusion of B-sides.

Oh just shut up. It was a nice enough collection. There
were 6 unreleased tunes on there, which in itself is a
bit of an exclusive in the whole "best off" compartment.

Furthermore it contained that b-side disc with 18 flips
most of the newer fans didn't have yet.

Plus it was cool to finally have them in cd quality and
all together instead of splattered over all those 45s.

I had a lot of fun with that set, enjoyed reading those
linernotes and listening to the new tracks.

Remember, this was 1993, when the whole world was not yet
waiting at your googled-up fingertips and when you didn't
have the possibility to burn whatever sequence of tracks
you wanted onto a disc.

So it was cool.

This day and age, fcuz, it would be a whole different cup
of tea. But I still think that I would buy a boxset that
contained 6 new tracks.

I totally agree with IstenSzek.
The Hits/The B-Sides was a pretty good package. It was missing
a few hits that should have been on there, and I wasn't entirely
convinced by some of the sequencing, but overall it was a good
set.

I can never understand people bitching on about greatest
hits sets, they are what they are. Personally I think it's the
right decision to use the single edits of most of the songs on
hits packages for 3 reasons.

1: that's the version that was the 'hit'. It's the version that
people remember from radio/video (the one that the general
public are familiar with).

2: the fans already have the full length version on the album.
What they probably haven't got (especially with the earlier
tracks) is the single edit on CD. So in this way the fans are
getting something they might not have had before.

3: if each track is shorter, you can fit more tracks on!

The only problem I had (as I say, they changed my life!) was... no Batdance!

WHY!

At the time, his biggest UK song (in terms of the charts) wasn't on there. Crazy.

It was a Hits, not a Best Of, so why no Batdance?

Yes, the non-inclusion of Batdance and Partyman were the
only real gripes I had with the Hits CDs. I assume that the
reason for them not being included were all the samples
from the movie that they contained, and they would have
had to come to an agreement (paid more money) to include
them on a new album, as I expect the original arrangement
only covered the Batman soundtrack album and it's
accompanying singles.

BorisFishpaw said:

yeah but warners own rights for all batman related stuff anyway dont they? didnt 200 balloons get on there? doesnt that have samples too? but yeah i hadnt thought about the samples thing!

softandwet said:

200 Balloons doesn't include any samples from the movie.

It's also interesting to note that on the promo Prince best of
"The Crown Jewels" from 1992, they cut the "Gentlemen,
let's broaden our minds" sample from the beginning of
'Partyman', and used a single edit of the 'Batmix' version of
'Batdance' which barely contained any samples from the
movie.