my fave Prince album of the 90s before he went a bit mainstream and what a good review.



Right before the techno-thunderclap that introduces Graffiti Bridge, Prince, trembling, breathes: "Dear Dad – things didn't turn out quite like I wanted them 2/Sometimes I feel like I'm gonna explode." Urgent and yearning, the confession serves as a mission statement for a seventeen-song tour de force that reclaims Prince's rare stature as a pop Picasso – an experimentalist with enough mass appeal to make his experiments matter.

Titanic ambition, obsessive vision, furious virtuosity, Prince's gifts have seemed uncanny – Mephistophelean, profligate. But squandered on the off-hand dance formula of last year's Batman – a tactical slip, because, dunked in the movie's mainstream splash, His Royal Badness disappeared – those gifts have not glistened of late. Graffiti Bridge, the soundtrack to Prince's upcoming movie, revives our gasp of wonder at Prince by making more emphatic than ever the power of his tense persona, a persona strung tight on the wire of his daring coupling of funk and rock, black and white, male and female, flesh and spirit.

In its first four songs, Graffiti Bridge covers more musical waterfront than some bands do in an entire career. "Can't Stop This Feeling I Got," a fizzy, elegant rocker fueled by trebly guitar and cheesy keyboard, brings on the funk anthem "New Power Generation." Then comes the drum blitz of "Release It," a James Brownish workout as fierce as "Housequake" (from Sign o' the Times) or "Tamborine" (from Around the World in a Day), followed by the bluesy hauteur of "The Question of U." What makes this opening flourish more than a mere flexing of skill is a fresh militancy in the lyrics. Prince tough-talks like an embattled champ – "Try 2 tell me how to paint my palace/That ain't where it's at"; "The only thing that's in our way is U"; "Whose crib is this – my crib!/Whose wine U drinkin' – mine!" And with the existential media fret of "The Question of U" ("Must I become naked? No image at all?"), he mines a tormented realism and self-doubt that fight the coy narcissism of some of his earlier work.

A sharper focus and harder groove raise Graffiti Bridge above the feckless genre dabbling that often enlivened but sometimes undercut Parade, Around the World in a Day and Lovesexy. Having long proved that he can credibly emit any sound, from orchestral lush to Beatlemaniac cute, Prince forgoes his more outré style tinkering to fix on rock and funk, pumping the latter with neat guest spots by George Clinton on "We Can Funk" and by Prince's resurrected R&B protégés in the Time on "Shake!" Gospel veteran Mavis Staples shines on the strutting "Melody Cool," but most of the album is Prince solo – his guitar soaring from crunchy Steve Cropperisms to baroque Hendrix frenzy, his studio smarts peppering tracks with enough hand claps, keyboard peals and artful noise to keep the listener, in this day of texture-happy production, consistently surprised and intrigued.

All through the album, Prince reprises his trademark themes of love sexy and love divine: "Lick it like U like it," he pants on "Love Machine," and, on "Elephants and Flowers," he promises that "There will be peace 4 those who love God a lot." So sure and catchy, though, are the tunes and so cleareyed (for Prince) the words that his omnivorous mysticism is newly convincing – convincing, but still startling, sensual and freeing.

Along with the sinuous "Thieves in the Temple" and its air of dread, "Graffiti Bridge" is a standout, a "Purple Rain"-like electric hymn, a call for transcendence, a moving quest for "A bridge that leads 2 a better land than real." Built up from an album's worth of nervy, confident material characterized by a new maturity – though only as mature, happily, as we'd want Prince to be – the song's cry for salvation hardly seems escapist or fantastic. Prince – among other things, one of rock's greatest actors – comes off as desperately real.

Appearing, since Dirty Mind, able to master anything, Prince's willful, almost perverse bravery (like David Bowie's or Bob Dylan's) has meant skirting the obvious – eluding the platinum ozone of Madonna or Michael Jackson, where sheer size rules and significance falls sadly beside the point. Rather, he has mustered a subversive triumph, making records half-brilliant, half-quirky, managing the Minneapolis scene with the ghost hand of a funky Gatsby, deploying an army-harem of disciples and flashing a dazzle of guises unified in their harlequin outrageousness. By the very promiscuity of these bold strategies, he has inseminated the whole of pop. With Graffiti Bridge and its firm coalescence of his styles and concerns, Prince reasserts his originality – and does it with the ease of a conqueror. (RS 585)


PAUL EVANS

discuss.

I try so hard to appreciate this album. Alas...it's not to be.

this review gives me the giggles.

Cloudbuster said:

Handclapsfingasnapz said:

Is it the fact that he praises the title track?

r1ghteousone said:

he's praising the whole album.

Handclapsfingasnapz said:

He describes 'graffiti bridge' as a "...moving quest".

r1ghteousone said:

Thanks.

r1ghteousone said:

yeah...a bowel-moving quest.

Tick, Tick, Bang!, The Question of U, We Can Funk and Joy in Repetition are STELLAR. Elephants & Flowers is good, and The Latest Fashon is wretched.

I do like some of it, tho'.

Joy In Repetition and Thieves In The Temple are both great songs. Can't Stop This Feeling I Got, The Question Of U and We Can Funk are cool, too.

"we can funk" and "round and round" are the only two tracks on this album that i can stand. everything else on it is totally ill.

The Question Of U
Elephants & Flowers
We Can Funk
Joy In Repetition
Thieves In The Temple
Still Would Stand All Time


Those are the only songs I like on there. And every now
and than I enjoy listening to "Release It" but that's
as far as I can stretch it.

I wish he'd not included all those other artists on it
and instead put on the extended version of "Thieves"
along with "God Is Alive" , "Come Outside & Play" and
"Get Off/The Lubricated Lady".

It would still not have been fantastic but at least it
would have felt like a real Princ album.

Of all his albums, this feels the least like an "album"
to me.

Handclapsfingasnapz said:

Ok, lemme get this straight...you like 'round and round' but you don't like 'joy in repetition'?

Dansa...u weird.

r1ghteousone said:

i know.

r1ghteousone said:

i was just gonna say that too. someone report Dansa please.

Wow, that is some supreme turd-polishing.

Milty said:

At the time of release GB was seen as a great release and its true inretrospect of that time..in the first four songs he does cover a lot of genres that many take their careers to do etc. If you were there when this was released and was current dont front like you were notinto GB the album

Milty said:

rdhull said:

Hey now, I have a lot of love for the GB album, but even when I listened to it for the first time on the day it came out, I had to acknowledge that it was taking a little bit of work to get with some of the cheesier and idiosynchratic aspects of that album.

"Rather, he has mustered a subversive triumph, making records half-brilliant, half-quirky, managing the Minneapolis scene with the ghost hand of a funky Gatsby, deploying an army-harem of disciples and flashing a dazzle of guises unified in their harlequin outrageousness. By the very promiscuity of these bold strategies, he has inseminated the whole of pop."

I mean, come ON now!

Anxiety said:

Im not saying th e reviewer isn't going a bit too far in soe of his review..Im saying we did not think ill of it hwne it was released. We thought it was an awesome release except that opener lol. I know we all did who were there because I know the time frame and what we were all into then.

I've always said this: The other folks on the album hold it back.

That shit by The Time, Mavis and Tevin has gots to go! 'Love Machine' and 'We Can Funk' can stay. I made my own copy of that CD in just that fashion. It suddenly becomes much better. I've done a lot of his albums that way.

violator said:

heheee!at "'Love Machine' and 'We Can Funk' can stay"

and I made that comment as well (about th e other folks material except We Can F and Melody Cool at that time)..that I did not like the Time material as well as his own..Tevins either...BUT! We were not doggin it like we do now...like some do now I mean

.
[This message was edited Sat Jan 10 11:42:50 PST 2004 by rdhull]

It's the best thing since sliced 'Wonda-Bwead'!

*sarcasm Edit*
[This message was edited Sat Jan 10 12:02:09 PST 2004 by bananacologne]

I remember reading the reason why Rolling Stone masturbated so furiously over Grafitti Bridge was that Prince's management had promised them an exclusive interview with the wee man and part of the deal was to give the album a glorious, star-scraping write up.

bananacologne said:

Number23 said:

but still--at that time this music form him was not exactly poo pooed on..I mean come on...it was 1990 and all music was kid of crap at that moment and this was a return to form from the underwhelming Batman album (it was for that time)

4 me p's only crap album = GB ...sorry !

danielboon said:

Rave was a butt sandwich. i actually like GB..for contents sake.