SUPRMAN said:

Haha, true. One thing about music, its amazing how opinionated it can be. In the PM;M forum, parade is often regarded as his best album. But over here, they're not really impressed. You know I always wanted to start a thread in this forum about P's work from 85-88 just to see the drastically different opinions.

SoulAlive said:

I disagree, but that's really another thread.

Mazarati's debut is my favorite Prince-associated album by a fucking mile.

My band even did a jam based on the groove from 'She's Just That Kinda Lady'. We didn't sample it though, we replayed the synth riff with heavy guitars and made it a funk/metal hybrid.

Every track on the Mazarati album is killer. This album had some serious Prince involvement to which he didn't take credit for. On the sleeve he's only credited for 100 MPH but apparently he wrote "Strawberry Lover", and "I Guess It's All Over" as well. I wouldn't be surprised if he had a hand in some of the other tracks on there too.

If you can track down the B-Side to the 'Stroke' single, entitled 'Champagne Saturday', that's worth a listen as well. A very funky instrumental cut.
[Edited 11/18/08 1:23am]

SoulAlive said:

Maybe that was Prince's intention. Both albums are completely different and should not be compared. I do agree that the Mazarati album was very funky.
[Edited 11/18/08 9:04am]

strawberry lover is my shit!!!

You ain't lying. I never met even one person that thought "Parade" was a great album until I joined the org. As a matter of fact, I know countless hardcore Prince fans that were into him since the beginning of his career, that dropped Prince altogether after buying that album.

"Sign O The Times" is another album that a lot of people over in the "Prince: Music and More" section think is such a masterpiece also and they will argue you down and call you a liar if you tell them that the general public wasn't feeling it. Well, when I went to see the "Sign O The Times" movie in the theater, there were about 8 people there.

Hell, you must have missed my arguements over in the other section over that album. A few years ago, I even made a thread in this section called "Parade vs. Street Songs" just to see if there were any people living in reality.

That's because a lot of us over in this section are funk lovers and were into Prince since his early days. Over in the other section, if you notice the threads that appear from time to time asking when they first got into Prince, most of them say either with "Little Red Corvette" or "Purple Rain". It doesn't take a genius to figure out that they weren't originally funk fans and that Prince was their introduction to funk. And if you ever pay attention to who their other favorite funk artists are, it is usually someone that Prince has mentioned as his influences in interviews. When it comes to funk over there, it's like the sun rises and sets on Prince's ass.
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[Edited 11/18/08 14:57pm]

vainandy said:

I so want to read that thread you made. I'm sure its hilarious

Which one? The thread I made years ago called "Parade vs. Street Songs"? One of the first replies I got was "Street Songs pisses all over Parade". I guarantee you, if I had started that same thread over in the "Prince: Music and More" section, the replies would have been totally different.

vainandy said:

Oooo. I thought you made that thrad in PM&M
you should do that just for the hell of it

vainandy said:

sorry 2 burst ur bubble but my introduction 2 funk wasn't prince and it was more parliament, the brothers johnson and the ohio players. and since my parents controlled what i listend 2 as a child and that meant the jackson 5 over prince. so when in 1984 when i started making my OWN choices, yes I got introduced fully in2 prince but had sprinkles b4 that. so yippie kay yay u were a prince fan since 1978-9 it doesn't mean that others don't know about his funky side. and if u didn't like parade then that's ur choice and the same goes 4 sign o the times and anything else he has ever done. i don't like everything either but at least i conduct myself as a orger who doesn't condesend others because they don't like what u like.

peace

See....what did I tell y'all? I knew it was coming.

I got this album somewhere. Didn't dig it much as Iam not a massive fan of the minni sound, but I'll give it another try.

Militant said:

No he did not. I'm sorry. I know this for a FACT. I guess Its All Over is all Brown Mark. Most of Strawberry Lover is, too. Prince actually didn't want to have much to do with the group. It was Mark's baby.

vainandy said:

PLEASE SAY THAT AGAIN!!!! I think it was me and four of my friends. The general public had let go of Prince big time by then. Orgers have re-written history to try to make people believe that "Sign" was well received by music fans when it wasn't. It was well-received by CRITICS but the general public wasn't checkin' for Prince at that point.

BlaqueKnight said:

Hmmm.

Per Nilsen claims that Prince wrote ALL the lyrics to both "I Guess It's All Over" (which was originally titled 'We Did Things Our Way') and "Strawberry Lover" (which was originally titled 'Fear The Shadow').

The music to I Guess It's All Over does sound more like Mark. But Strawberry Lover sounds more like P to me.

If Prince didn't want much to do with the group, how come he offered them 100MPH, Jerk Out and Kiss? Not to mention taking them to Wyoming for the UTCM premiere party.

That's more than he was willing to contribute to some other artists that he signed.
[Edited 11/19/08 2:35am]
[Edited 11/19/08 2:37am]

BlaqueKnight said:

By general public, if you mean 'Purple Rain' like success, well of course not. Very few artists of merit maintain that type of success for very long. But the idea of the "general public" letting Prince go might be a bit of a stretch. 'SOTT' did reach #6 on the Billboard album chart and yielded three top-10 singles ('SOTT','U Got The Look', and 'I Could Never Take The Place Of Your Man).

Again, I don't know your specific definition of "checkin'" for Prince. But by commercial success standards, he didn't do too bad at all with 'SOTT'.

violator said:

I think what BK means is...the R&B/funk fans who liked his earlier records weren't too keen with 'SOTT'.By the late 80s,Prince's audience was drastically shrinking.Funk fans had moved on.I personally like 'SOTT' but alot of people around me were saying things like "Prince ain't funky anymore" or "I loved '1999'...why doesn't he do something that great again?".Prince wasn't blind,he knew what these people were saying.That's why he came up with 'The Black Album'.

Militant said:

It's my favorite Prince-associated/Paisley Park Records album too.All 8 tracks are superb."Stroke" is one of the funkiest jams that ever came out of the Prince camp."She's Just That Kinda Lady" should have been a single,imo."Player's Ball" and "100 MPH" are also superb.Even the two slow tracks are excellent...."Lonely Girl On Bourbon Street" and the bass-heavy slow jam "I Guess It's All Over".Man,I wore this album out in the spring/summer of '86!! It was like my soundtrack of that era.Prince,Sheila E. and The Family were doing more experimental music around that time,but sometimes,it's good to get back to basics.The Mazarati album gave me the Minneapolis funk jams that I was starving for in 1986.

Exactly.

[quote]

violator said:

Of course not and no one was expecting him to match the success of "Purple Rain" again because success like that usually only happens once in a lifetime.

Prince drove a lot of his fans away beginning with "Around The World In A Day" when he changed his style. Then, with the lead single "Kiss" for the next album, he purposely tried to fool people into thinking that he had gone back to his usual self only to disappoint them with an album that sounded nothing like it's lead single. When I went to see the movie "Under The Cherry Moon" in the theater, there was a nice crowd there. None of the sold out crowds like "Purple Rain" but that was understandable. But there were those that still were hoping that Prince had returned to his usual self especially since they heard that new single but hadn't heard the album yet. You know, not everyone buys the album on the first day of release like we do. By the time the "Sign O The Times" movie came out, people had been burned twice already after "Purple Rain" and weren't going to be burned a third time. I tried to beg friends to go see it with me and they wouldn't. I even offered to pay a friend of mine's way in.




And you do realize that there were a lot of fans still holding on to the hope that he would go broke making the artsy/fartsy stuff and go back to being his old badass self. We were still buying each album with our fingers crossed only to be disappointed with it when we got it home. What we didn't know at the time, is that Europeans were eating his new stuff up. That's why his ass was always touring over there back then. He had done pissed us off here at home.

Prince also had tricks up his sleeve to fool the general public. A lot of people blamed Lisa and Wendy for influencing his style change. Before the release of "Sign O The Times", it was announced that Prince had fired The Revolution and was making his new album all by himself just like the old days. I, for one, was happy as hell to hear it and screamed "Hot damn, Prince is back!". Hell no, he wasn't. Just another trick. I know several people just like me also that just kept on buying each album and hoping he had come back to his senses. By the time the 1990s got here and the style of music in general had turned to shit hop, I didn't have a problem with Prince's style change because it was much better than anything else on the radio.

In a way, Prince was still blind when he made "The Black Album". A lot of Prince's earlier R&B/funk fans were saying he wasn't funky anymore because they wanted that Minneapolis Sound back that Prince was famous for. They weren't happy with the old fashioned type instruments that Prince was blending with his new music. Then Prince's answer is to record a funk album full of horns. That's not what people wanted from Prince at the time. Prince still didn't get it. If he had released the album, people still would have pissed on it. It might have been well received if it had been 1973 but it was 1988 and people weren't wanting that old fashioned sound.

Prince always wanted to explore other styles of music other than funk/R&b from the very beginning of his career. Sure he made funk and r&b music, but he had other plans for his career.

here is what i find so very amusing, there r 2 people on this thread that like 2 speak 4 the WHOLE funk/r & b community about prince's "funk decline" like it's gospel. i do not know where in the world they may live in, but i can only speak 4 what it was like here in new york during that time and the r & b stations were STILL pumping prince's music from sign o the times like crazy. now i'm not saying that prince didn't take notice that he was getting some flack from r & b stations thus creating the black album, but if u do ur history on the black album, some of the songs stemed from 1986 and not 1987

The R&B stations in my area were still playing Prince big time also. That's what they do. They play new music. Radio back then wasn't like it is now. Back then, radio didn't just play hits, they made hits. Of course they weren't going to drop an established artist like Prince that had a major label like Warner Brothers backing and promoting him. Just because the songs got a lot of airplay doesn't mean they were well received by the public. Yeah, lots of folks liked the songs, I did too. But people were still complaining that they weren't as good as Prince's old stuff and they were getting sick of it.

vainandy said:

hell yeah radio isn't like it once was sad actually but payola still lives!!

vainandy said:

Maybe that was Prince's intention. He never wanted to be labeled as solely a funk/r&b type of artist from the very beginning of his career. Sure he made funk jams back in the day, but he had other plans to expand and experiment with other styles of music. Too bad for funk (synth) fans but good for those who enjoy the artsy/fartsy stuff .

I've often wondered if Prince actually liked his early signature sound himself. I wonder if he was using the synths in his early years because he couldn't afford the horns and things that sounded like the music that he grew up on in the 1970s. The reason I wonder is because as soon as he made big money with "Purple Rain", he immediately changed his style. And once he changed, he never went back except every now and then in particular songs. I can understand Prince wanting a change but once he got into those horns, he never got rid of them and that's been over 20 years. Even throughout the 1990s when he experimented with house and rap, he still had the same sound on a lot of the tracks that he had in the late 1980s. Even today.

It's like, I could just step in and try to defend the importance of the "Parade" album like I usually would. But I'm just tired of it at this point since it just won't resonate amongst these funk Nazi's. God, they're even worse than the Heavy Metal headbangers, I'll tell ya.

But yes, "Mazarati" did create an awesome ballad to close out their debut album. And that album is one of the best releases from Paisley Park, I would say. They're probably regretting the day they put on lipstick and eyeliner, but they made some pretty funky music in the process.

And don't forget about the country music lovers. They are mad as hell because pop/rock has entered their music also.