Here goes my N.E.W.S. review, taken from amazon.com
Injoy!

Most of Prince's fans were looking forward to this release. It all began in early June when a snippet of "East" was available for listen on his official website. The hypnotic bass and roaring guitar turned out to be a perfect bait for music lovers.
Average music listeners might be quite shocked to hear that Prince released an instrumental disc, where all songs last for exact 14 minutes. Those who know more about Prince's approach to music and who followed Prince over the last two decades were not shocked at all when N.E.W.S. landed in their homes, packed in an extraordinary compass-like digipack.

The compositions differ significantly; the only thing they have in common is their jazz spine. They start in a particular mood (smooth jazz, orient-flavoured jazz, r'n'b jazz, funk jazz respectively), then break down to make space for some jazz improvisation with Prince's guitar and Eric Leeds' saxophone in the foreground, and finally take another u-turn and return to the initial mood, or just build around their starting atmosphere. There is plenty of brilliant musicianship on this disc; each of the band members gets to showcase his/her incredible abilities. The most prominent players are Prince on guitar, Eric Leeds on sax, and John Blackwell on drums. The rest of the band stay in the shadow for most time but still shine in their parts. Renato Neto on piano contributes greatly to painting the cold landscapes in "North" and Rhonda Smith on bass is crucial for the funk of "South".

N.E.W.S. if full of beautiful lyrical passages put in juxtaposition with the roughness of jazz improvisation. Prince's guitar playing is different on each track. On "North" it is just melancholic, on "East" it is heavy-metal like, "West" is full of piercing and shrieking notes, while "South" gets a Hendrix-like vibe. The absence of Prince's voice, paradoxically, allows for greater emotions on this album. It is simply instruments that build the mood.

Prince subtitled his disc with a sentence "New directions in music". It is not a haphazard statement; such a blend of jazz, rock, balladry, funk, and whatnot has not been heard ever before. Many could argue this point saying Miles Davis did everything which was to be done in jazz but such a claim is untrue for there are no limitations for musical progress. There are always things to be discovered. Prince, taking various directions on one musical expedition and leaving his foot stamp on each path, delivered an original and profound piece of work.
[This message was edited Sun Feb 8 1:03:10 PST 2004 by Papaj]

It's a nice album but not one of "musical progress". Maybe for prince personnaly but certainly not in general. I enjoy it quite a bit, but it has not the groundbreaking material of a "bitches brew".
If this were done by someone we didn't know, had loads of talent, we wouldn't be so "gentle" in our rating.