1994 Part 3 And 1995 Part 1: The Exodus Has Begun
The Beautiful Experience
A lot of what Prince did in the mid-90’s amounts to trolling Warner Bros., but with the benefit of hindsight, you can also see that some of that was a smokescreen for other goals. Which brings us to 1994 and Prince’s request to release a single independently.
Warner Bros. always had a reputation of being a very artist-friendly label. WB was, if anything, regarded as too conciliatory to its artists. This is why Prince’s behavior in the 90’s was so eye-rolling among music industry executives. His contract represented an enormous investment both in money and in the label’s reputation, so while they couldn’t just let him go, there was also a drive to at least try to keep him quiet while he fulfilled his contract. And in the terms of the industry at the time, WB had always been very generous and accommodating of Prince’s needs, however outlandish and borderline megalomaniacal. For example, despite his exclusive contract, for some reason WB caved (again) and let him release a single without them. I hope they didn’t think that the single would crash and burn leaving him discouraged, since there is no evidence whatsoever such a thing would have any effect on him.
In any case, “The Most Beautiful Girl In The World” was released on Valentine’s Day 1994 through Prince’s own NPG Records, distributed by Bellmark Records. Their biggest hit before this deal was “Whoomp! (There It Is)”. “TMBGITW” was Prince’s last Top 10 hit. It sold three million copies, although that was not without some controversy. There were rumors that Prince’s team bought up at least a million of those copies to insure the success of the single. There is little evidence of this, though, because there seems to be no trail back to those copies. How were they disposed of? Where were they shipped to? At the very least at some point after Prince’s passing, the Estate’s online store would have had a batch of singles and “The Beautiful Experience” EP’s to sell off. Similar sell-offs of overstock have happened in the past. You can take it from me, I keep an eye on the store, and I have never seen that happen with these items.
Forbidden B-Sides
By the mid-90’s the golden age of Prince’s non-album b-sides was over. The few that would appear here and there from here on are excellent, but by the time the singles market returns, the songs that would have been b-sides will become digital singles of their own.
In the case of “TMBGITW,” there was supposed to be a b-side called “New World” which would end up on Emancipation in a few years, but WB put the kibosh on it. They said they would allow a “single” to be released, and they meant it. They would allow “The Most Beautiful Girl in the World” to be remixed, but that was all. Prince took advantage of the very loose definition of the word “remix” to basically re-record the song several times in many different styles and used one of those, which he renamed “Beautiful” as the b-side. This led to the release of an EP called The Beautiful Experience that features several of those recordings.
The Beautiful Experience Tracklist
Beautiful
On the single, an edit of this track was the b-side, but here it leads off the EP. It amounts to a club mix of “TMBGITW,” but in fact it is mostly a re-recording. Also of note here is that the instrumentation is largely repurposed elements of “New World,” the originally intended b-side for this single. That said, “New World” is most definitely the superior track, but they both retain positions on my jogging playlist.
Staxowax
Of all the remixes on the EP, this one probably has the most going for it in my opinion, even if it is the cheeziest. In a way the remix is a nod to Salt-N-Pepa. They name checked him in the song “Shoop” with the lyric “like Prince said, you’re a sexy mother-“, and this song has several musical references to “Shoop” in its instrumentation and production. In other versions of this remix on the EP, Mayte’s voice is looped saying “like he said, you’re a sexy mother.” At aftershows and Glam Slam gigs he would often express his appreciation for Salt-N-Pepa, TLC and other R&B vocal groups of the time.
Mustang
This, like most of the tracks on the EP, could probably most accurately be called “The Most Beautiful Girl in the World (Mustang Mix),” but this is one of the more clear efforts Prince made to completely remake the song just to get more new recordings out into the market. In this case, he ditched the soaring falsetto for a baritone / low tenor lead vocal, so there is no question he recorded it specially for this track. I bought this when I was either 16 or 17, and I remember not knowing why someone would put so much effort into a single song. I was much more of a romantic as a teenager, and assumed he must really REALLY be in love with Mayte. To be fair, he absolutely was, but no. He was just determined to troll his label by releasing as much music as he could by any means he could find – even if he just had to record six versions of the same damn song and send it all out on a CD at one time. Which really takes the edge off the fact that these are actually very good remixes, but who cares? The fact is that forty minutes of “The Most Beautiful Girl in the World” is too many minutes.
Flutestramental
Eric Leeds solos over the “Staxowax” backing tracks. Again – good stuff, but the truth is Prince’s only real option was to recycle the same song forever and as a continuous listening experience it’s not great. I guess my point is, I do recommend tracking down and listening to all these versions. But to write these essays, I have to cram the music into my brain in huge chunks. Don’t do that. Mid-90’s singles and EP’s are not things you should binge. It’s like watching the same episode of “Stranger Things” six times, edited and color corrected slightly differently each time. Even if it’s done well every time and it’s your favorite episode, it’s still an excruciating prospect. So do listen, but don’t do it like I do.
Sexy Staxophone And Guitar
This is another instrumental version, but I think this is Prince experimenting with a technique he would use a lot in the late 90’s. I’m not certain the solos are produced this way, but I’m pretty sure. I think he sampled a saxophone (probably Eric Leeds), then played a keyboard solo using that sax as the sample. Then he went back and doubled that solo using a guitar. In a jazzy context it sounds a little off-kilter, but this early experiment sounds more promising than some of the results the technique eventually ended up yielding.
Mustang Instrumental
This has an almost Motown feel to it for some reason. I sometimes listen to this one when plotting a writing project. It kind of functions in the same way as a Brian Eno ambient piece for me. That makes it sound horrible, but I promise I don’t mean it that way.
The Most Beautiful Girl in the World (1994)
The distinction as (1994) is added by me, because the version here is different from the version released on The Gold Experience later on. The arrangement, the mix, even some of the lyrics are slightly different. I’m not sure one is truly better than the other, but this is genuinely not the same as the album version. I wish this EP was available on Tidal or somewhere. This song was the subject of a lawsuit (which I will cover in the entry on The Gold Experience) which meant that the song effectively vanished for years. Once that was settled a couple of years ago and TGE went back on the market, I really expected to see this EP reissued (at least as a Record Store Day thing?) or at least put on Tidal. But nothing. Prince’s first indie release remains lost in obscurity. Let’s hope at some point we’ll see this one again.
The (Other) Beautiful Experience
My policy for this project has always been to skip over most video and film content. There are two basic reasons. First, the content is usually very sub-par. Second, and most importantly, there is already an impossible amount of material to write about. I don’t want to add anything to the pile if I don’t have to. There are some exceptions though, and the time covered in this entry represents an odd cluster of those exceptions, so bear with me. There will also be links to the videos, since they are so widely available in places like YouTube and unavailable anywhere else. You've been warned. Buckle up.
At some point, Prince realized that his exclusive contract kept him from releasing music as audio-only productions, he could release video productions as much as he wanted. In many ways, these productions were serving the purpose that WB assumed they would serve when they didn’t place limits on them in the contract: they were intended to promote new music projects. The difference in this case is that Prince was promoting music that was not yet (and in some cases never would be) released. This first video, a TV project called The Beautiful Experience TV Film.
The most important thing to know is that, in the words of Maude Lebowski, “The plot is ludicrous.” Like so many of Prince’s video projects that pretend to have plots, the story is just a thin excuse to move to the next segment. Here it is in a nutshell: Gorgeous young woman Jan (played by Nona Gaye) is alone in her extremely Paisley Park apartment desperately wishing for a boyfriend, because men won’t talk to her. No, really. They won’t. So she sees an ad in a magazine for 1-800 NEW FUNK. She calls the number, hoping to get a boyfriend that way. Told you the plot was ludicrous. A short conversation with the (female) operator causes Jan’s computer to become supernaturally possessed and she begins seeing Prince videos on her computer – some of which have Jan in them?!?!?!
Also her keyboard has a key clearly labelled “COME.” Jan presses this button when prompted as if this is a normal key to have on one’s keyboard.
In general, the production values are the straight-to-video sort of stuff you get used to from Prince’s video content, so if you choose to click on the video above, be warned, but the music is good. Quite a bit of the music in the TV special comes from a show filmed in the early hours of February 13, 1994 at Paisley Park.
One of the reasons I feel compelled to write about this (and the other two videos in this very long entry) is that so much of the music released on Come, The Gold Experience, Chaos and Disorder, and Crystal Ball had already been heard by hard core fans long before the albums hit shelves because Prince was releasing the music through other channels (such as this TV special) as often as possible. A side effect of all this is that it really gave the lie to Prince’s PR line that Prince and 0(+> had some kind of real delineation between "their" artistic outputs.
The Beautiful Experience TV Film features fifteen total songs, one of which was “All Blues” a cover of a Miles Davis composition, and another was “The Jam” a cover of a Graham Central Station song. Of the remaining thirteen songs, six were released on Come five months later, three ended up on TGE, the rest were included on Crystal Ball in 1998. All of the songs are billed to 0(+>, not Prince. So when he later spoke of the material on Come as “old” compared to the stuff on TGE that was just not true. The material was all contemporaneous and intended at one point or another for the same album. What ended up happening to them is part of the natural life cycle for Prince’s songs. They get recorded as part of one project and then they get divided up. Some end up on the original album they were written for, some get saved for later, some get vaulted and forgotten. The difference here is that they were included in this video project at a point when they were still in the “amorphous blob of songs stage” and had not received much editing. Still, all this “Prince vs. 0(+>” stuff wasn’t really a thing. It was just Prince’s way of thumbing his nose at Warner Bros. and identifying the music he was actually interested in promoting. For whatever reason, Come and its R & B flavor was not that interesting to him, and the heavier funk and rock sounds of The Gold Experience were where he saw his future at the moment.
March 6, 1995 (Part 1)
Ah, to be a fan of Prince who lived in London in the first weeks of March 1995. Hopefully I would have also had a lot of money, because a hell of a lot of expensive Prince-related stuff was going on. First off, “The Ultimate Live Experience” tour was kicking off at Wembley Stadium with shows on the 3rd, 4th, 5th, 7th and 8th, then there was an aftershow starting at 3:30 a.m. at the Astoria on the 9th. Plus, there were three major releases, all of which dropped on the 6th of March.
First off was The Sacrifice of Victor Home Video. The idea that this even exists as an official release is still a little mind-boggling. This video is edited highlights of a professionally filmed aftershow from a venue called Bagley’s Warehouse filmed on September 8, 1993. Considering that at this point in his career aftershows were rarely spoken of publicly and existed mainly as a kind of open secret among fans, the prospect of Prince intentionally releasing footage of one of these shows is almost unthinkable.
A Brief Note On Aftershow Performances
The back of box text on The Sacrifice of Victor Home Video read: “Available 4 The 1st Time! Exclusive footage taken from one of Prince And N.P.G.’s infamous aftershow parties!” The word “infamous” is not used properly here, but you can get the context they’re trying to create, and it's not an exaggeration. Even casual fans heard whispers of Prince’s aftershows, and how they were where the training wheels really came off.
Part of this was due to the bootleg scene. Prince is, as I have talked about before, one of the most bootlegged artists of all time, and his frequent aftershows greatly contributed to that. Their informality and impromptu nature made them easier for bootleggers to smuggle gear in, and the small venues made it easier to capture reasonably good recordings. One of the most ubiquitous Prince bootlegs is usually titled “Small Club” and it’s from an aftershow that took place in a club called The Trojan Horse in the Netherlands in August 1988.
Fans ate up bootlegs of aftershows. They were far more sought after than regular concerts because they had less repetitive setlists (that was the point, after all – half the time he was working out material he would record later), surprise guests, extended jam sessions, you name it. And if you want to hear Prince play guitar for minutes at a stretch on something other than “Purple Rain,” an aftershow was your best bet. Plus, aftershows were only for die hard fans – you wouldn’t even know the show was happening if you weren’t in the right circles – so setlists were often full of unusual covers and deep cuts you would almost never hear elsewhere.
Everything about aftershows were niche – the time, the location, the music played, the audiences. Only in a case like this, where Prince had a desire to put music into the market quickly in order to irk WB would this kind of release even occur to him. Twice more in his career material from aftershows will be released, but they will be far more massaged and manicured. This is more raw, very close to what you would see at the show itself. My main complaint is the editing that has taken place. According to princevault, the actual setlist that occurred on the night was more extensive and interesting, but even so, this kind of fanservice from Prince usually came with a much higher degree of tampering from the artist, so I suppose we should take what we were served and be content. But still, if the Estate ever decides to revisit this, I hope a “complete” version is released as well.
March 6, 1995 (Part 2)
The story of The Undertaker Home Video is pretty wild, even by Prince’s standards. It goes back to 1993, and Prince’s early days of conflict with WB. As that was happening, he also began to have an interest in broadening his stylistic palette again. Since he had disbanded The Revolution, he had lost some of his ability to mix and match genres in the ways that he had previously. He had a definite funk and R & B focused band at this point, and in the early 90’s that had been fine, but he felt the need to be able to be a little more rock n’ roll, more bluesy, more aggressive. The NPG was more than capable of this, but to achieve this in the eyes of the public, Prince decided to establish himself as a bit of a guitar hero.
This was not a decision that came out of nowhere. By the mid-90’s the music landscape had changed permanently. The simple fact was that Kurt Cobain had happened, and now everyone had to react to that somehow. Eric Clapton surrendered entirely and picked up acoustic guitars for a few years, Bon Jovi went from a small group of David Lee Roth impersonators to the living embodiments of "Adult Contemporary" in a matter of months (see below), and Prince decided that he should definitely be playing a guitar that growled again for the foreseeable future, and he wanted the guitar-loving public to know about it. To help get the word out, he enlisted the help of “Guitar World” magazine.
For those of you who were not guitar nerds in the 90’s, “Guitar World” really did what it claimed on the tin. It was a tastemaker for people who played guitars – especially electric guitars. If you wanted to be mentioned alongside names like Randy Rhodes, Joe Satriani and Stevie Ray Vaughan, the best way was to get “Guitar World” to do it first. Apparently it wasn’t too hard to talk them into doing a cover story on Prince once he sweetened the deal for them. Usually, when you were interviewed in “Guitar World” a few of your hit songs would be transcribed and printed as guitar tabulature in the center of the magazine as the guitar nerd equivalent of a centerfold. Prince was not keen at all on that notion, but he had something else for them that he thought would be just as good. Prince wanted to release an album that would be mounted on the cover of “Guitar World” magazine and be available nowhere else – and at no additional charge to the reader. “Guitar World” forgot all about tabulature, especially when they saw the content of the album.
Especially since his passing, Prince is often spoken of as an artist who insisted on doing things his own way, for his own reasons – damn the torpedoes and the desires of the audience. That reputation is certainly well-earned, but it is often forgotten that his instincts for fan service were often dead on target. Just as The Sacrifice of Victor Home Video was carefully calibrated to appeal to his most dedicated fans, The Undertaker was intended to appeal to guitar obsessed people who would normally never touch a Prince album at any price and make them acknowledge him as a guitar god.
I say the following things as a guitar-centric person myself: we are traditionalists. When it comes to the instruments and accessories, we are conservatives. I myself play a Stratocaster, and the electric guitar I had before that was a Les Paul. These are the two basic variations of electric guitars. They are the ones played by Clapton and Page respectively, although the setup of my Strat allows for Prince tones as well. Guitar people respect basic setups with minimal interference from “studio magic." The less editing the better, and the fewer fixing of “mistakes” the better. For example: guitar people love that Page’s mistakes were left in Led Zeppelin records just because they sounded good. We also love classic forms, like the blues. Give me a 12 bar blues that goes on for 20 minutes and I will probably listen and enjoy myself the whole time, provided it’s played well, which brings me to the next point. We love virtuosity. Stevie Wonder is loved by guitar people even though he didn’t play guitar (or even guitar music) just because he’s so damn good at what he does. Apart from virtuosity, none of the above are things Prince is known for, so consider the following about The Undertaker:
It was recorded on June 14, 1993 after a regular rehearsal day at Paisley Park. Most of the NPG had gone home, so it features only Sonny T. on bass and Michael B. on drums, leaving Prince on vocals and guitar fronting the classic rock power trio. It was recorded all in a single, continuous take. The track breaks were added later and represent the
only edits made to the recording. This album was made as bait for guitar junkies, and it was excellent bait indeed. I have no doubt it would have worked exactly as Prince had intended had Warner Bros. not swooped in at the last minute and put an end to the whole thing.
Yup. The Warner Bros. Police Squad Special No-Fun Task Force showed up and made sure the album never saw the light of day. Despite Prince’s best hopes, apparently “exclusive contract” means you can’t even give music away for free. I’m not sure why they waited so long, but the CDs had already been manufactured, so the Task Force collected them all and dunked them in special Fun-Preventing plastic, rendering them unplayable. I said that in a funny way, but seriously. The CDs were dipped in plastic for real. All except the few copies that were pocketed and bootlegged, of course.
Tracklist
The Ride
The album starts off with an original blues. Prince would record this song many times over the years, usually in a live setting. This one is probably my least favorite version, simply because it is merely “live in the studio” and there is no audience present to egg him on. Nevertheless, it’s still Prince’s answer to Jimi Hendrix’s “Red House” and it still screams in all the right places, and I can’t help but love it every time I hear it.
Poorgoo
Every time I’ve seen this song’s title before I’ve seen it spelled “Poor Goo” but princevault tells me it’s “Poorgoo” so I guess that means I have a some tags to change on my music files. This one isn’t so much a “song” as a riff that with a few spoken lyrics. Of note here is that the riff is structured around the “Hendrix” chord shape, which is a 7th chord with a sharpened ninth tone. Again, anyone who plays guitar will hear that and know it. I don’t even have a particularly good ear, and I knew that sound. I did check the video to be sure. I still don’t know the key, but the shape of his left hand was unmistakable.
Honky Tonk Women
This album would have been several “firsts” for Prince, had the No-Fun Squad not intruded. This track, for example, would have been Prince’s first cover. It’s only the first verse and, a chorus and a pretty wild solo, and Prince is fast and loose with the lyrics, but it’s still there. And again, all guitar junkies know this song and how to play at least one simplified version of it.
Bambi (1993)
Another potential “first” would have been the first re-recording of this previously released track. This wouldn’t have been the one I would’ve picked but whatever. This version has, like “Honky Tonk Women” just a verse, chorus and a guitar solo to it, but it does have a drive and aggression to it the original version lacked, provided at least in part by Michael B.’s drums. He was a great drummer when he started with the NPG and he only improved.
Zannalee (Prelude)
This is a case of Prince giving the audience a taste of things to come. He leads Sonny and Michael into the intro and main riff of a swinging blues rock number from the 1996 album Chaos and Disorder and just as quickly drops the song, leaving the listener hanging.
The Undertaker
Like “The Ride” this is a song that appears in several other places. The song was written for Mavis Staples to sing, and the definitive studio version is from her 1993 album The Voice. The version on that album is, with all respect to Prince, better. There is also a version on The Sacrifice of Victor Home Video that features Prince and the NPG backing up Staples on lead vocals that is the best of the three. All that said, the song is excellent, but it’s clearly meant for another singer.
Dolphin (1993)
Another song that will turn up elsewhere, this time on The Gold Experience in 1995, this stripped down version is not quite as good as the 1995 version, but as a sign of things to come, I can’t complain.
What To Do When Warner Dips Your CDs In Plastic Goop
When you can’t give the music away, the only thing to do is charge money for it in Europe on VHS and in Japan on Laserdisc. So that’s what Prince did, since he had the recording of the album professionally filmed. Why did he have the recording professionally filmed? Did he sense trouble in the air? In any case, he did tuck away the idea of giving an album away free by sticking it to the front of a periodical. That one might still work on another day…
March 6, 1995 (Part 3)
Finally, we have the music release on this day, which was a standalone single called “Purple Medley.” I’m not sure why this exists, to tell you the truth. Not the music, necessarily, that makes sense. Sort of.
Prince was going on “The Ultimate Live Experience” tour in Europe, and the promoters of that tour (and the owners of the venues and so forth) wanted him to play his old hits on that tour. His old hits, after all, would sell tickets. He did not want to play those songs, and refused. But in order to placate them, he did create something to make sure that music had a presence at the concerts. That presence was “Purple Medley.”
Tracklist
Purple Medley
“Purple Medley” is essentially a Prince megamix. If you don’t know what a megamix is, oh how I envy you, you lucky duck. A mega mix is a bunch of clips of remixes all thrown together into usually about ten minutes of club mix schizophrenia. It’s basically a clip show of an artists’ greatest hits, and almost all artists who qualify for a greatest hits album have one these days. In the 90’s they were still relatively rare. The best thing “Purple Medley” has going for it is the relatively large amount of effort that went into it. As opposed to using the original tracks, almost all of the clips are re-recorded versions. So Prince (and in some cases Prince and Kirk Johnson) went into the studio and actually created anywhere between five and thirty seconds of an imaginary remix of a song to be used in this eleven minute monstrosity.
There was also a video made for it, and that was played before gigs on “The Ultimate Live Experience Tour.” The funny thing is, the tour was intentionally kept short, and the venues small, and only played in places where Prince was incredibly popular. Nobody was there to hear Prince play his hits anyway. They knew what he was going to be playing: new music. That’s what they wanted him to play. The promoters had it all wrong. The tour’s scope was kept tiny in order to let Prince do what he wanted to do: Play his new material to people desperate to hear him play it. “Purple Medley” was really Kirk Johnson’s audition for the NPG and to be co-producer on an upcoming project. The only real question I have is why this ever merited a commercial release in the first place.
Purple Medley (Radio Edit)
Short version of the above track.
Kirk J’s B-Sides Remix
This track is different from “Purple Medley” in a few key ways. First of all, there was little to no direct input from Prince on this track. Secondly, the process was different. The songs included on the track (Pop Life, When Doves Cry, Shockadelica, Head, and The Continental) were all completely remixed, then edited down and made into a megamix. Which is a shame, because the remix of “Shockadelica” sounds like a banger. This, probably more than “Purple Medley” is what got Kirk Johnson the producer’s job. He earned it, too, there is some quality work done on these tracks, I’d love to hear the full versions. The only one released in full to date is ”The Continental.”
Polyvinyl Acetate New Power Soul
Exodus is the second album released under the name New Power Generation. In this case, it’s probably most accurate to say it’s a Prince and the NPG, but it’s more Prince forward than the last one to be sure, which is ironic considering it was very important for contractual reasons that Prince not officially be on the album anywhere.
For all my talk all through the last nearly five thousand words about how Prince was steering his sound towards a more rock-and-guitar oriented direction, let me start out by saying that Exodus is one of my favorite Prince albums because it leans so heavily on mid-70’s P-Funk aesthetics and sound. There is very little of the roaring guitar that will pervade a lot of his music for the next few years here. Even the album cover, with its hand-scrawled drawings superimposed over grainy photographs evoke Funkadelic records like The Electric Spanking of War Babies. It is a fantastic album. But for many years it was difficult to get a hold of. Now it’s streaming on Tidal, so definitely check it out there if you can.
The reason for its rarity was that it was only released in Europe, partly to not get under WB’s skin too much. Let’s be honest, it was ultimately a Prince album, and it wasn’t difficult to tell. Prince’s voice wasn’t too far forward in the mix for the most part (except on “Return of the Bump Squad”), but even so he was there and very audible. He was not credited…at least not quite. He was definitely supposed to be “in disguise” as someone called Tora Tora. But on the album cover Tora Tora was a short dude in high heels wearing a nearly sheer red mask. He had a cane with a 0(+> symbol on it and had a 0(+> necklace. Now, when your name IS 0(+>, that means you’re technically wearing one name tag and carrying another. So “in disguise” definitely belongs in quotation marks here, don’t you think?
Tracklist
NOTE: There are a ton of segues on this album. Some of them are even back to back, so I’m not going to comment on most of them.
Intro
An interesting segue in which someone (obviously played by Prince) calls Paisley Park, asking about NPG records talent search, and is told they need to be “free of contractual obligations” for the time “when you download your music onto your fans’ computers.” Forget for a moment the confusion of "download" for "upload." Consider that these skits were recorded in late May of 1994. We were all still on super slow dial up internet – those of us who even had the internet. The MP3 format was finalized in 1992. By 1995, AOL had only 3 million active users. Napster wasn’t created until 1999. Prince was already thinking about direct artist-to-consumer contact over the internet in mid-1994.
Get Wild
This definitely a song Prince wrote to be a defining lead single for the album, and he also knew it would sound good with Sonny T.’s Stevie Wonder-style holler. This one has been a staple of my jogging playlist for years. The elastic bass and horn arrangement work as well as anything to keep me running.
New Power Soul
This one feels more like a J.B.’s track than almost anything else in the Prince canon. It’s has that nice, rolling funk feeling to it that’s hard to find outside of the J.B.’s or Booker T. and the M.G.’s. Also kind of makes me wish Prince did more instrumentals.
Count the Days
This is a great example of Prince using the band, the singer, and the obligatory “Side A ballad slot” all to greatest effect. All these elements really come together well here, and it all seems to hit a peak with a lyric that couldn’t have any impact anywhere else: “Like Frankie Beverly without Maze…”
The Good Life
Prince loved to trot out these “rose colored glasses” songs ever now and then. If a hook was too good, the lyrics always seemed to lean in that direction. I’m not sure the lyrics ever struck me the way he would have liked, but I never skip the song either, and I do like the remixes on the single. Maybe that’s on me though: too much of a softie to let myself be as cynical as I know I should be.
Cherry, Cherry
CW: suicide
This one is tough for me. First off, if you don’t have content issues it is a good song. I know there’s a whole subgenre of soul songs that masquerade as kind of Smokey Robinson lost love ballads and then she died in a car crash or killed herself, but man. I mean, if that’s your thing, go for it, and this one is effective as far as that goes, but I have stuff in my life that prevents me from enjoying the reversal in this song the way the artist would prefer.
Return of the Bump Squad
I love this song. Perhaps the great lost banger of Prince’s discography, even if it does have a “these young’uns don’t do it the way they did it back in my day” edge to it. I don't even care. Still good.
Big Fun
The title is a reference to a Miles Davis album, but I’m not sure it has much to do with it beyond that. It’s very Prince-forward for this album. Also very dreamy, almost trippy. More atmospheric than you normally get with Prince.
Hallucination Rain
This is a continuation of the dreamy vibe from the prior song, this one is almost entirely instrumental. The main body of the song is a series of dueling solos between a man named David Bauder on electric violin (his only appearance on a Prince record) and Prince on guitar. It is a uniquely psychedelic track.
The Exodus Has Begun
The P-Funk vibe is back in full effect for a ten minute funk odyssey. This is Prince’s answer to George’s Mothership Connection. I particularly like the lyric "Guaranteed to stick to the roof of your Oldsmobile." There is a lot going on here, much of it directed at Warner Bros., but also at the record industry in general. He is spending a lot of his time lately trying to separate himself from his past. It would be boring and repetitive if he didn’t sound so good while doing it….
NEXT WEEK: The best dang Prince album there ever was! THE GOLD EXPERIENCE
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