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The (real) Prince is back: Long live his new sound

By Jim Abbott | Sentinel Pop Music Critic
Posted April 22, 2004


"Boy, I was fine back in the day," Prince cackles in mock geezer voice early in the solid, funky and occasionally illuminating Musicology.

At a time when Prince's best work, now almost 20 years old, is being claimed as a major influence in the new R&B resurgence, Musicology succeeds because Prince does more than conjure his own history.

Instead, he infuses these dozen tightly constructed songs with revitalized nods to the icons that shaped his sound, from P-Funk to James Brown.

At its heart, Musicology is a disciplined exercise in production, songwriting and performance. That's a relief after the expansive but ultimately disappointing foray into free-form music on last year's N.E.W.S.

The real Prince is back, and he's ready to get down.

He plays most of the instruments here, but he's no exhibitionist. The opening track sets the tone with its lean, effortless combination of restrained drums, bass and guitars. Warm, skin-tight horns wrap around the edges of the groove, while a solitary thread of organ hovers like a UFO.

A Prince imitator would settle for sticking to the groove, but Musicology also executes the impeccable slow build. The effect is a party-groove crescendo that crashes headlong into an a cappella gospel flourish, some radio static and Prince's angry exhortation "Don't you ever touch my stereo."

Musicology is alternately fun and funky ("Illusion, Coma, Pimp & Circumstance"), gloriously poppy ("A Million Days"), dance-oriented ("Life 'O' the Party") or jazzy ("What Do U Want Me 2 Do?"). Tucked within even the more conventional-sounding songs are enough sonic touches to reward repeated spins.

For instance, there's the strange-sounding percussion instrument that stands out among the polyrhythmic vamping at the end of "What Do U Want Me 2 Do?" It sounds almost like someone running a finger over a tightly sealed plastic wrapper.

When Prince revisits his sexy side on songs such as "Illusion, Coma, Pimp & Circumstance," the slashing guitars and percolating rhythms are measured with remarkable precision. Gone is the singer's penchant to shock, a casualty of his new Jehovah's Witness faith, but he's sassy nevertheless.

It's not what Prince is saying that communicates the most in Musicology. It's twists such as the right turn in "If Eye Was the Man In Ur Life" (the spelling quirk is still intact) that takes potentially ordinary R&B into hard-driving jazz.

That's the revelation of Musicology, that Prince at his best isn't capable of the ordinary.