The Purple One's Back, More Vibrant Than He's Been in Years With 'Musicology'

By David Segal
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, April 21, 2004; Page C01

It seems strange to call "Musicology" a comeback album, since Prince never really left and he never stopped recording. But unless you're a hard-core fan, you probably didn't know that last year he released a four-song album of jazz instrumentals ("N.E.W.S."), and a 36-track live album the year before that ("One Nite Alone . . . Live!"). And you might have missed the parable-saddled "Rainbow Children," a 2001 collection that told a convoluted religious tale with 14 songs.

You didn't know about any of this because in the early '00s, Prince ditched the mainstream pop market and sold his work almost entirely through his Web site, NPGMusicClub.com. It was his final kiss-off to the major-label system he'd been trying to escape for years, and it followed a tumultuous -- and artistically uneven -- period in the late 1990s when Prince battled and ultimately left Warner Bros. The Internet-only approach that he adopted in 2001 added to the sense that the artist formerly known as a symbol was retreating further into his own eccentricities. You had to come to Prince if you wanted his music, and his music usually wasn't worth the trip.

So "Musicology" feels like a comeback even if it isn't. Having struck a deal with Columbia Records and now touring arenas around the country, Prince wants to reclaim the front-and-center spot on the pop-soul stage that he owned for more than a decade. On the basis of "Musicology," it's his -- and he doesn't even have to ask nice.

This is a warm, snappy and sweetly nostalgic album that parties with dignity and croons with heartfelt emotion. "Musicology," as befits its academic-sounding title, is loaded with history and filled with a semester's worth of styles -- funk, jazz, neo-soul, old-school jams and a bit of hip-hop. Class is in and Prof. Prince is demonstrating how an X-rated lover boy and recent Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee can age with grace.

Lesson 1: Drop the X-rating. During the prime years of his reign, Prince pushed music to its pornographic outer limits and he was scandalizing the masses before Janet Jackson owned a training bra. Yet there was a mystique about the guy, no matter how much of himself he exposed. It was largely a matter of raw talent; his relentless output, his effortless blend of rock and psychedelic soul, his insistence on playing every instrument on many of his albums -- all of it screamed of his singular gifts. For his millions of fans, the raunch was just a bonus.

"Musicology" is hardly prim, but it's nearly family-friendly compared with the man's sauciest output. One theme is the joy of a faithful marriage. So here's Prince -- who plays nearly all the instruments on every cut -- pining for his woman an hour after she's left him ("A Million Days"), and deep in falsetto love on a couple of slow ballads (most memorably "Call My Name"). And there's chastity here, albeit reluctant chastity. The narrator of "On the Couch" winds up on the sofa when he can't talk his girlfriend into a premarital frolic. For 51/2 minutes, over some stately, Ray Charles-inspired piano, he begs her to surrender; it's unclear if he succeeds.

When some nightclub harlot comes on to him after a show on "What Do U Want Me 2 Do?" he croons a sultry tsk-tsk and announces that he's taken. He sounds tempted on "The Marrying Kind" when he assumes the persona of a single guy and warns a friend to treat his woman right. Otherwise, "She's gonna find out what I like in my eggs." You see, even when he contemplates infidelity Prince sounds domesticated these days.

But he isn't a homebody, either. "Life 'O' the Party" is a classic dance floor grind, with a Parliament Funkadelic bottom and lyrics that suggest that Prince -- who is now a Jehovah's Witness -- isn't giving up on good times. He even takes a moment to ridicule detractors, then takes a little swipe at Michael Jackson: "My voice is getting high / And I ain't never had my nose done." The title track channels James Brown, with some Godfather of Funk yelps and calls to the many heroes who will be referenced throughout the album, including Brown, Sly and the Family Stone, and Run-DMC. (Brown's longtime sax player Maceo Parker appears on several tracks.)

"Musicology" sags toward the end, when it gets political with "Dear Mr. Man" and then meanders to a conclusion with the listless "Reflection." But for anyone who worried that we'd lost Prince for good, this album isn't just entertaining. It's a relief. Once self-exiled to the hinterlands, he isn't through with fame, or us, quite yet.

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