I wasnt in the npg club at the time,but i hear that those songs are AMAZING! can sum1 please tell me about them, is it a site that i can go 2 & here samples of such songs like, all my dreamz or darkmoon,nastywildom,morph dragon etc. do the npgmc have a site where u can buy the old songs like the High Album,i heard doing that time in 2001 over 60 prince song was released 2 members of the club! DAMN i thought i had alot of his music,compared 2 what u guys have,i dont have shit! and thats hit up! PLEASE CAN SUM1 HELP ME? PLEASE DONT TEASE ME,HELP ME! AINT NOTHING LIKE BEING A HUGE DIEHARD PRINCE FAN & NOT HAVING ALL THE SONGS, 4 ME IT'S LIKE IAM MISSING A BODY PART OR SUMTHING ,I NEED MY FIX I NEED THOSE SONGS, even if their outtakes.

According to sources from Paisley Park, there was NEVER a High album. It was just a work in progress title that was scrapped.

terrystarr said:

See your favourite bootlegger. That's what I did. It was worth it.

Morph dragon that's hilarious!

I presume you mean 'Murph Drag' by the Time (basically a big wad of cash dragging on the floor!)

What are those other tracks you mentioned? darkmoon and nastywildom.

sound fake to me!!

terrystarr said:

Those songs arent for sale anymore. There was talk of releasing an album called "The Chocolate Invasion" that contained many of them, but it apparently fell through.

Fantastic album, do what it takes to get it, better than most stuff he has done.

The High album contains the following songs: High, Supercute, Underneath the Cream, My Medallion, Gamillah, Vavoom, The Daisy Chain, U Make My Sun Shine, When Will We B Paid, Golden Parachute, When I lay My Hands On You -- (not in that order, but that's how I have them on my High collection)

High--A pretty "poppy" type song, with lyrics saying "Prince gonna get you high!" -- basically a good song, which might sound more like older Prince work if it was stripped of all the sound effects and various instruments.

Supercute -- really good pop song, with a strong opening hook about a woman arriving in a 747.

Underneath the Cream -- kind of a low key type love song.

My Medallion -- my favorite track from Prince in the last few years -- the whole song is a story about this girl who steals his medallion and "calls him a bitch" Very funky -- with a great chorus, "Dont' know why, I want that girl"...kinda reminds me of a funk version of Dorthy Parker

Gamillah -- an instrumental, heavy on guitar.

Vavoom -- pop song with a top 40 type feel, one of the more memorable tunes on the album.


The Daisy Chain -- pop funk, which seems to tell more than one story, but centers around a girl who's basically become a slut -- I think, like I said, it seems to have several different stories, or more likely, starts on kind of story, then drifts into something else...song works pretty well, until some rapper comes in and interrupts the saong

U Make my Sunshine -- was made into a single, you've probably heard it. A very 70's type sounding love song, with a duet with Angie Stone

When Will We B Paid -- another one you've probably heard, but it's kind of effective. Not quite sure hw to describe it.

Golden Parachute -- mostly instrumental, with the words "Golden Parachute" peppered in thoughout the tune.

When I Lay My Hands On You -- my second favorite from this collection, pretty solid rocker which starts off quietly then builds. One of my highlights from the recent work.

Anyway, hope that gives you a basic idea about the album, it's worth getting if you can find it

Here's a couple of tracks (used?)

http://www.amazon.com/exe...14-6160018

lucas said:

Mostly instrumental???
Umm.....you sure about that?
A song that has verses and a chorus usually isn't an instrumental.

---

I knew most of those songs from NPGMC but had never heard of a High album until I stumbled across one someone was sharing on SoulSeek, complete with front and back cover art and everything. It contains all the tracks listed above and looks like the genuine article. I thought maybe he released it via NPGMC at a time when I wasn't a member. If not, someone sure went to a lot of trouble to fabricate it, possibly to sell as a bootleg.

IMHO My Medallion, When I Lay My Hands on U, When Will We B Paid, High, and U Make My Sun Shine are the best things he's done since The Gold Experience. It's criminal these never got released on any album so the general public could hear them and I don't understand what drives these decisions. While I always find sounds I love on any Prince release, his last three albums were shite compared to this material.

thebumpsquad said:

I said MOSTLY an instrumental, and since 70% of the song is just music with Prince saying Golden Parachute (with a few odd verses) I stand by my original statement...though having just listened to it again, now I just WISH it had been an instrumental...ugh, terrible lyrics....

My opinion is that HIGH was ready for release -- IF Rave was a success . . . like Prince realized the pop stuff was done.

I think some high-level decisions were made, such as "This stuff isn't selling -- let's go in a different direction". Something like that.

When I Lay My Hands On U is an amazing song, very heavy on the tremolo (and with a slight "digital" background tone). The other standout track for me was U Make My Sun Shine.

lucas said:

I like the lyrics of Golden Parachute. Very anti-record-company . . well, we knew he was like that but this song actually SAYS it (not hinting at it). The only thing I don't like is the repetitive "Golden Parachute" . .over and over and over . . .

Se7en said:

- Well, the lyrics have some nice sentences....but overall they aren´t great IMO. The stronger part of the song is instrumental (the flutes, etc). It could be an instrumental IMO

Apart from When I Lay My Hands On You, Supercute, Vavoom and My Medallion, this is one of his weakest sets of music.

lucas said:

thanx so much 4 takeing the time 2 give me the details on the high album, peaceluv

mrdespues said:

i disagree, with the argument that i can listen to these songs over and over and over and still like them a lot.

andykeen said:

I'm sorry, but I just can't let your statement go unchanllenged lest some unkowing fan be woefully misled.

I think you probably need to qualify your statement. When you say the suppossed "High" tracks are "better then most stuff he has done" do you mean in comparison to Prince's entire officially released catalog of music??? If so, you cannot possibly be serious.

Comments like yours just go to show that for some fans, any material by Prince that isn't released by Prince as an "official" album will always be considered infinitely better than anything he packages as a complete work of art.

If Prince had released "High" as album and sold it to us in stores, fans would be pissing and moaning about how weak it is. But because the songs from "High" were released in bits and pieces through download only and only available to members of the club for that particular year and are now somewhat rare, fans sing its praises as "better than most stuff he has done" just like they do with anything else that falls into the category of unreleased bootleg material.

If Prince had never officially released "N.E.W.S." and it had only become available through bootleg channels... then all of a sudden you would have fans raving about how new and bold and innovative it is. So I'm convinced that a lot of fans place more value in Prince's work if they perceive it as being "rare" as opposed to placing value in the true quality of the work. So when someone starts saying that "High" is better than MOST stuff he has done, I just have to raise the B.S. flag.

thebumpsquad said:

Okay...great it's not just me. I thought there was lyrics.

What about Van Gough - his version? I thought Underneath the Cream was actually a song he wrote with Wendy and Lisa and rerecorded it recently?

By the way, can't forget Jukebox with a heartbeat.

My Mediallan and Daisy Chain flat out right suck.

There's another missing track, Lyrics something like: "this is how we do it on the northside!"

I agree the best songs of that collection is When I lay my hands on you (very sexy), U make my sunshine(go Angie!), and When will we get Paid? (very deep)

FutureShock said:

While I do completely agree with you that High is not among the best of Prince's works you have to remember that it is an opinion and as such it can't really be wrong. There is a huge difference among fans as to what Prince's "best" album is. For example, I love Around The World In A Day and Chaos And Disorder and a lot of people don't.

You make a great point about unreleased songs. Personally, I haven't heard very many bootlegged songs. But it doesn't surprise me that people praise them so highly, particularly the ones from the 80's. There is no doubt that some of Prince's very best songs remain unreleased. Because of that some fans tend to think that everything unreleased is a "lost masterpiece". I can't say this with any certainty but I'm pretty sure that there are some unreleased songs that are awful and should stay unreleased. Ultimately, until unreleased songs see the light of day, if they ever do, we are going to think that they are great.

hilton02895 said:

The other songs you are mentioning, like Northside, were not part of the High album, being just tracks which were released on the NPGMC -- the list above of the high album, is based on the final configuration, as detailed by Uptown magazine. Now, of course it's possible they were wrong, but it is the basis for what most people consider to have been the High album.

Jukebox With A Heartbeat
My Medallion
VaVoom
SM Groove

all 4 are great songs, much better than anything on TRC

rialb said:

Agree... but we DO know what the High tracks sound like. So there's really no guessing going on with High. There's actually a point of reference. So in my opinion, to call those tracks "better than most" goes far beyond simple enthusiasm for unreleased work. Instead, such comments are just B.S.... but admittedly, that's just my opinion.

Ask Prince...he's probably one of the few who really knows. Unless you are asking about a bootleg "High" album which may not be the same as the real one.

OK, here's a few facts about the 'High' album.

1. Most, if not all the songs from it were released as downloads during the first year of NPGMC.

2. It was shelved before it was fully completed.

3. NO ONE outside of Prince's immediate circle knows what the tracklisting was before it was shelved.

4. Any tracklistings you see are FALSE.

5. Most tracklistings you see are based on a few CDRs of current/new music that Prince put
together so he could play them at clubs etc. They were NOT configurations of the 'High' album.

6. 'Gamillah' and 'The Daisy Chain' were never included on the 'High' album, as by the time it
was being assembled they were already dubbed as NPG tracks, and were slated for inclusion on
the unreleased 4th NPG album 'Peace'.

BorisFishpaw said:

Boris! How would you configure a tracklist for the 'High' album?