2000-2001 Part 1: NPG Music Club Year 1
We now come to Prince’s “wilderness years.” When people talk about the times when Prince was innovative, prolific, and defiantly challenging to the industry and to his audience, these are not usually the times they are talking about. This is a shame, because more than any other time in his life, the years 2000-2006 were when he was truly navigating without a map. If Prince was ever truly a pioneer, this was the moment when he struck out beyond the frontier. He would make mistakes, he would create his most problematic music, and ultimately key pieces of this grand experiment would fail completely. On the other hand, he would also create some of the best music of his life, release experimental albums that would normally have no audience and learn lessons other artists would adapt to better effect. Most importantly, the experience would set him up to be a happier person in the later years of his life.
While the experiment was ongoing, however, Prince appeared to the music industry to be not a trailblazer, but a troglodyte. He had always been a bit crazy, but now the brain bubbles had finally gotten a hold of him completely. He had retreated to the new version of the Wild West and opened his own saloon where he could sing only to his own small group of fans, the last meager handful who still cared about his mad screeching. He was a Philistine. The internet, after all, was a dead end. There was no future there.
Prince’s first foray into internet distribution was a nine-minute Quicktime video that played on a continuous loop on NPGOnlineLTD on New Year’s Day 2000. It was called “One Song” and has never been released in an audio-only format. It’s too bad, because after you get past Prince’s bloviating, the song is pretty good.
Like Trying To Stop The Rain
For those who don’t remember, the late 90’s and early 2000’s nearly broke the record business (or so they would have us believe). Napster and other peer-to-peer filesharing services made music piracy so widespread and ubiquitous that basically everyone did it. If you ask someone my age if they ever pirated music in the late 90’s or early 2000’s and they deny it, they are lying.
The mainstream music industry hated (and continues to hate) filesharing for several reasons. For one thing, and let’s just get this out of the way right now, filesharing was (and is) 100% completely illegal. It’s just straight copyright infringement. Piracy. So, of course, the industry is not going to look kindly on that. The industry, usually in the form of the RIAA, took legal action against Napster, Kazaa and various other programs and services, and of course they won, but it was already too late. As a quote on NPGOnlineLTD said in late 1999: “Trying to stop filesharing is like trying to stop the rain.”
There is another side to this, however. Since the alternative craze of the early 90’s had waned, the corporate side of the industry had reasserted itself. A list of top selling albums of 1999 includes many “manufactured” pop stars such as The Backstreet Boys, Britney Spears and B*Witched. I know the term “manufactured” necessarily carries with it some nasty baggage, and I don’t want that to unduly tar the artists with that brush.
Image / Jive Records
Even though I do find the process of a record company creating a pop group on the basis of market research and focus groups to be gross and cynical, from the perspective of the person who actually gets a record deal that way, it’s hard to argue with. It’s like an actor being offered a role like James Bond or Batman: if the part comes your way, you take it. It doesn’t matter if you think you’re the best fit or not, if somebody asks you if you want to be Batman, you say yes.
Image / Jive Records
Besides, it’s a foot in the door, and many people manage to make something of the opportunity. So don’t think I’m trying to take anything away from their talent, but the truth is they were intended to be disposable. The fact that they managed to rise above that is a testament to their determination and talent, not their record label. Some examples of people who made those opportunities into long-lasting careers from this period include Christina Aguilera and Ricky Martin with their self-titled debut albums and TLC’s album Fan Mail.
Can you remember the albums? Any of them? You can probably remember “I Want it That Way” “Baby One More Time,” “C’est la Vie,” “Genie in a Bottle,” “Livin’ La Vida Loca” or “No Scrubs” though, right? As the compact disc became more and more the industry standard, it became cheaper to manufacture, while sales continued to boom. By 2000, more than 2 billion CDs were sold a year. Sampling and digital production techniques drove costs of music production down as well. Over the course of the 90’s the singles market had dried up, so the only CDs that sold anymore were full albums, not the cheaper two-track singles. This was an ideal situation for the record companies. They were charging $16-20 a pop for CDs, and all they needed was one or two good songs per album to get people to pay for them, and the rest of the CD could be crammed with filler. It could be terrible, forgettable dreck and it wouldn’t matter to sales.
Since many of their pop artists didn’t write or produce their own music, the label had a lot of control over who wrote for their artists, which meant they could parcel out the songs they suspected would be big hits among their artists. By the same token, they could also make sure the tepid material and covers were evenly distributed as well. For example, did you know that Britney Spears closed out the album that has “Baby One More Time” with a cover of Sonny & Cher’s “The Beat Goes On?” Yeah. Me neither until just now.
In this environment of record companies deliberately sticking the boot into the consumer Napster arose. It could hardly have found a better environment to grow: easy piracy combined with a lack of effort on the part of record companies to make their products valuable on the consumer’s shelf in the long term. On top of this, the music industry was not prepared to go digital in any way. For a long time, I don’t recall there being a legitimate way of getting digital music, and then the only name in the game was itunes, and that was not exactly my cup of tea.
We Engraved Zeroes And Ones Onto Clay Tablets
Image / Apple. Because nobody else wants the awful thing.
Mp3s were a standard format by the time itunes emerged, but it was a format that was used either for piracy or for digitizing one’s own CDs. Itunes seemed like the digital music revolution was finally beginning in earnest – and I didn’t like it.
Itunes embodied a lot of Apple’s design philosophy of the time, which was that Apple assumed that by using its product, you wanted to do things Apple’s way. I don’t consider myself an audiophile, but I am extremely fussy about my digital music, and this has been the case since I first encountered an mp3 file. You wouldn’t know it to read this blog, but I like a large number of prolific artists, not just Prince. I like David Bowie, Miles Davis, Frank Zappa, and many others. When you decide to put a bunch of albums into folders on a hard drive, they have to be named and filed just so or they’ll just become a mess.
Itunes 1.0 liked to “help” with this process in several ways. I did not know this when I installed it on my laptop in my college dorm. Before I go any further, just keep in mind that ripping a single CD could take in excess of a half an hour, and anything I may or may not have gotten from Napster could be unrecoverable, because things on those programs were there one minute, gone forever the next. When itunes booted up it would – without asking the user – search your computer for any music files in any format, reformat them into the proprietary itunes format (didn’t like that), rename them (NO!), re-tag the files to match their naming conventions (AAAAAGH!) and as part of this, reduce the sound quality to 128 kbs (<sounds of smashing furniture>). When I realized what it was doing, I had to unplug the laptop and yank the battery out before the process could reach “P” in the music folder. As it was, reconstructing the “Beatles” “Beck” “David Bowie” and “Frank Zappa” folders was a month-long slog. And this was in 2001. The thought of that happening now makes my skin clammy just imagining it.
The point of all this is that if someone was interested in digital music, the only user-friendly experience that existed involved copyright infringement. It’s just that simple. It took the industry at least another ten years to even get close to something I consider approaching reasonable, and true quality digital music storefronts have only really sprung up in the last few years. Nevertheless, the writing was on the wall. The internet was the future of media distribution. The infrastructure was already there, it was just a matter of someone being willing to make the mistakes that would have to be made in order to find the right way to do things, and whether an independent artist would be willing to do that or not.
Letting Go
Ever since he left Warner Bros, Prince had been playing up the idea of his freedom, but he had not, in actual fact, been doing things much differently than before. He did retain possession of his masters as he produced them, but apart from that, what is the real difference between his deal with Warner Bros. and these one-off deals he had made with Capitol for Emancipation or Arista for Rave Un2 the Joy Fantastic? The real differences seemed to be the shorter terms of the contract made the label less invested in Prince and his album, and the entire nature of the deal made them more hostile toward him. Why bother promoting this artist who has made it clear he intended to be on another label this time next year? It must have crossed his mind at some point that if this was the only kind of deal he was willing to make, he would probably be better off not making any deal at all.
Meanwhile, there was the problem Prince had been wrestling with since the early 80’s, the insufferable bugaboo that would never entirely release him: how could he ever manage to release music fast enough? Finally the internet seemed to present a real solution. It was now possible to begin recording in the morning and have the song in the ears of fans by the evening. This, combined with his already robust online presence led him to a radical conclusion: maybe he only needed an online presence from now on. He immediately started making plans, starting with a massive Un-Birthday Party at Paisley Park.
A Celebration
On May 16, 2000, Prince held a press conference stating that he would be using his birth name again from now on. His final contract with Warner Bros. had finally expired. While he had always owned his publishing rights, Warner / Chappell had been administering those rights. Now that this was no longer in effect, “Prince” was back. At the same press conference, Prince confirmed the obvious: Prince and Mayte had divorced. Little more was said about it, but the loss of their son was still motivating a large proportion of Prince’s personal decisions, as it would continue to do for several more years.
Meanwhile, plans were underway for a seven-day event at Paisley Park called “Prince: A Celebration.” It took place from June 7-13 and was in many ways pure, uncut fan service. What it was emphatically not, and Prince wanted to make this absolutely clear, was a birthday party of any kind. His evolving Jehovah’s Witness-adjacent beliefs (he was not yet a member of the church) informed him that birthday parties and any other such methods of “counting time” were counter-productive to living a healthy life and contributed to premature aging. So this was definitely a party, but not a birthday party, in spite of the admittedly coincidental timing. I’m not sure he saw the obvious implication that his aggressive insistence that it wasn’t a birthday party made it instead more of a weeklong celebration of himself generally.
Very little promotional material was produced for A Celebration 2000. This is one of the few images available online. Image / NPG Records
Passes to the event got fans tours of Paisley Park every half hour from 10am to 5pm, plus other events on the grounds all day, every day of the event. In the lobby, computers were set up for fans to vote on what albums Prince would release next. Another bank of computers let them vote on tracks to be included on Crystal Ball II. (Spoiler alert: none of these projects ever happened) Each night was capped off by a performance at Paisley Park by another featured performer, making the event a kind of music festival. Featured acts were: Taja Seville, TKO, Best Kept Secret, Fonky Bald Heads, Mint Condition, Dayz of Wild (a premier Prince cover act), and Macy Gray. These shows were immediately followed by afterparties in the space that went to the early morning hours (usually attended by Prince and the NPG in the crowd).
The finale of the event was a show by Prince & the NPG plus guests at the Northrop Auditorium at the University of Minnesota. Those guests included Maceo Parker, saxophonist Najee, Mark Brown and Bobby Z. from the Revolution, Q-Tip, Doug E. Fresh, and Angie Stone. The venue holds just under five thousand and was sold out. Tickets were sold to the general public, but “Celebration” pass holders were given preferred seating.
Experiments In Free Music
The "Celebration" went well, and Prince suggested on his website that it might become a yearly event while telling fans to keep an eye on NPGOnlineLTD for further developments. On July 14th, the first of a series of surprises appeared in the form of a free digital-only single. You’ve probably never heard of it, as the title and lyrical content date it as much as the method of delivery.
Cybersingle (single, digital only, 2000)
Image / NPG Records
This almost sounds like an outtake from Chaos and Disorder. It does have some things going for it: the guitars are excellent, both lead and rhythm, and the overall arrangement is well-executed. Sadly, for a song that seemingly begs for a raw, punk style of production, this track suffers from a slick, well-groomed Emancipation era feeling. As a test case for putting a song on the internet for free, I’m sure it did the job, but it’s not the smash hit that could have made history if the right song had been released here.
“Cybersingle,” like a few other songs released in the next year, was released under the name 0(+>. Even though he was using his birth name again, since this song was recorded before he switched back, the song was released under the squiggle moniker. In addition to the download on Prince’s own website, it was also offered on the Real music player website on October 29th. As far as I can tell it’s no longer there, although the player itself (to my surprise) still exists. The song was never performed live or released elsewhere, and vanished into obscurity almost immediately.
U Make My Sun Shine (single, 2000)
Another holiday Prince no longer observed was Christmas, which is why it should be considered nothing more than a coincidence (not unlike the timing of the Celebration) that he released a single on December 21, 2000. This was a more involved experiment than with “Cybersingle.” Not only could you download the song, there was also a B-side included, along with art for a cover and tray, instructions for burning and a license to do so as many times as someone might want to do so.
U Make My Sun Shine (with Angie Stone)
This is Prince’s only known collaboration with hip-hop pioneer Angie Stone. She was a member of The Sequence, one of the first acts signed to Sugar Hill Records, the boutique label of the Sugar Hill Gang, which released the first ever hip-hop record, “Rapper’s Delight.” As such, she was one of the first female M.C.s to ever have a record deal. On this song, however, she is here in her capacity as a versatile soul singer. “U Make My Sun Shine” is one of Prince’s better latter-day ballads. I rate it as highly as “Diamonds and Pearls,” even. The duet is well-structured and both Prince and Stone’s vocals are used to their best effect. This song is a much better showcase for Prince’s future direction than “Cybersingle” and I remember feeling like if this was an indicator of things to come, maybe Prince had finally gotten himself back on the rails.
When Will We B Paid?
This is a cover of “When Will We Be Paid” by the Staples Singers, and I am happy to report that there is no reason to treat this one like his disfigurement of “Everyday Is A Winding Road.” He takes many liberties with verse order and the tone of the song is altered radically, but it is all appropriate to the subject matter, and the lead guitar work is his most impressive in years.
It’s hard to say what Prince expected to happen when he put the music and art for a single online and gave people permission to reproduce it any way they wanted, as many times as they wanted. It seems reasonably predictable that someone would do what a small hip-hop label called WingSpan Records did: mass produce it and sell it for a profit. In addition to the Prince tracks, they added samples of two tracks from Track Squad, one of their artists. It seems reasonable to assume that Prince, who had recently stopped stopped swearing on stage, removed all coarse and overtly sexual material from his set and installed a “swear jar” in the studio at Paisley Park would have approved of the songs “Throw Dat Leg Up” or “Sweet Punanny.” I bought this CD, not realizing the circumstances under which it had been produced. I can tell you for certain these tracks live down to their titles.
When writing this, I checked discogs.com to see how many versions of this single were known to exist. Apart from an NPG Records release, which was a simple two-track CD in a cardboard sleeve, the only physical release to ever exist was the WingSpan release. In retrospect, it’s amazing more companies didn’t try the same thing. As far as I can find, no other artist ever tried to release a single this way. Prince certainly didn’t. The only other similar release I can think of is the superb Nine Inch Nails album Ghosts I-IV, an excellent instrumental album that I cannot recommend highly enough, and the Radiohead album In Rainbows.
Image / The Null Corporation
All these things, the Celebration, the computer voting machines in Paisley Park, the free internet releases – all of these seemed at the time like unconnected events. Prince seemed to be getting ready for some new project, but at the time it looked like another album release. After all, what was “U Make My Sun Shine” if not the lead single to a new album? It had been more than a year since Rave was released, so it seemed time for a new album. In fact, Prince’s next completely new album would not arrive for another eleven months. In the meantime, Prince had something completely different in mind.
Join The Club
On February 14, 2001, the NPG Music Club opened for business. The idea, for all of its grand scope, was pretty simple: it was Prince’s official online fan club. In practice what that meant was that fans paid a fee, and got access to new material on a near-constant basis. There were two pricing models: $7.77 month-to-month or a $100 “Premium” membership for a full year.
Content drops happened monthly, and contained both audio and video. Premium members got bonus content on a monthly basis, and were also promised an exclusive physical album shipped at some point during the year. Prince, like Netflix, never released much in the way of numbers of subscribers or downloads, but he does seem to have made money on the deal. It makes sense, because so much of the content was simply vault material. Fans certainly didn’t care that it was vault material – in fact, that was preferred in most cases. One new piece of content that was produced monthly was an “NPG Ahdio” show. Basically, it was a podcast before there was such a thing.
NPG Music Club Year One Tracks Part One*
*Note that any tracks that appear on the forthcoming albums The Chocolate Invasion and The Slaughterhouse will not be covered here.
Splash
A Prince and the Revolution track intended for the aborted Roadhouse Garden project originally recorded on my birthday in 1985. It has a touch of reggae to it that can be forgiven in the face of the lovely late-stage Revolution quasi-psychedelica and swirling Clare Fischer strings. This song is yet another reason to hope that someday the Estate comes to its senses and sweet talks Wendy and Lisa into finishing this project up and releasing it.
Mad
This is an outtake from the 1994 sessions that led to Exodus. Apparently, there is a version in the vault that has Sonny T. on lead vocals, but the version here is the original with Prince still on lead. Any track that was released through the club is almost by definition a deep cut, so I had forgotten how hard this one slaps. Fortunately, I am refreshing my jogging playlist, so I can put this directly into rotation to make sure this one doesn’t slip my memory again.
Funky Design
Another refugee from Exodus, “Funky Design” is another example of the stunning level of consistent quality that Prince produced (and then did not release) in the mid-90’s. That said, this is not quite as good as the previous track. This one also has a version with Sonny T’s vocals in place of Prince’s, which also remains unreleased. I’m afraid this one will just miss the jogging list.
Return of the Bump Squad (Live)
Recorded at Paisley Park October 22, 1995, several other songs were also released from this show, which was notable for its freewheeling, high-energy performance and unusual choices of material. This song was certainly not played out much, and this particular performance makes a strong argument for what a terrible mistake that was.
The Work (Pt 1) (single edit)
This is being given its own entry due to the different arrangement on the bridge, which is inferior to the album version, and the alternative guitar solo, which is far superior. Of all of Prince’s James Brown homages, this is easily my favorite. It fires on all cylinders, and the presence of John Blackwell on drums is a completely different invigorating feeling on this record and the album that followed.
Habibi
The music club was billed as Prince’s pipeline for fan service to his most dedicated fans. He didn’t always deliver on that promise, as he frequently used it as an outlet to challenge the corner of his audience most likely to tolerate any challenge he cared to give. “Habibi” is an example of pure, unadulterated fan service.
“Habibi” is a four-minute guitar solo based on the Jimi Hendrix composition “Machine Gun.” Especially at this time in his career, we didn’t get much of this sort of thing from Prince, so it is even more welcome than it would usually be, and this is yet another case of “how much more of this is laying around in the vault?”
Hit U in the Socket (Rosie Gaines)
One of the nicest things about the Club is that refugee tracks found their way to the fan community that was most ravenous for them. “Hit U in the Socket” is one of those that I remember being circulated in particularly crappy quality.
In 1991, Prince worked with Rosie Gaines in a series of sessions that were intended to lead to either an album or a series of albums. Unfortunately, for one reason or another, nothing was released at the time, and this track had no other release but this one until Gaines’ 2005 album Try Me in 2005. It feels like an Aretha Franklin homage, and it does a good job in that sense. Of course, any time Rosie shows up she’s more than welcome, and it’s worth tracking down for a listen.
Van Gogh
In 1995, Prince wrote a song with Sandra St. Victor and Tom Hammer for an Atlanta-based band called Van Gogh. The song was also called “Van Gogh.” It may not surprise the reader to know that many other bands and entities have also used this same name. I can’t find a Wikipedia article for the band. I can find an article for a Serbian rock band that seems to sound a bit like U2.
Anyway, the Prince song is for the Atlanta-based, entirely non-Serbian band, and in 2001, Prince released his original version as part of the NPG Music Club. Again, like most of the NPGMC releases, it is a very deep cut, and that is a particular shame in this instance. The song functions as not only a slinky mid-tempo R & B jam, but also one of Prince’s dreamy atmospheric pieces. It’s a rare moment in his later career that hearkens back to Around the World in a Day.
Instrumental
This song is titled “Instrumental” but in truth it’s an instrumental re-recording of “The Holy River.” I’m curious as to what prompted Prince to make this, because it’s a fantastic arrangement, and the delicate guitar work is indicative of the jazz experiments that would characterize the next year or so of his work, but did it all start here? Or was this some sort of equipment test? Either answer are easily likely.
Horny Pony
One thing that always characterized Prince’s work was his ability to embody contradiction. In his highest moments, it was the source of his finest art. In his lowest moments, it created total absurdity. This is a moment of the latter kind. Prince was in the process of joining the Jehovah’s Witness church, and had stopped swearing both onstage and off, began using less suggestive choreography and excised suggestive and explicit material from his shows…sort of. Of course, songs like “Do Me, Baby” and “Sexy MF” were jettisoned from the set, but “Gett Off” stayed in longer than you would have thought, and “Raspberry Beret” never left it. Would you believe devout, super pious Prince never stopped singing "Alphabet St.?" It's true. And then there’s this oddity. In the August 2001 NGMC drop, “Horny Pony” was included. At the beginning a small intro was tacked on in which a computerized voice says:
“This song is about dancing and by no means endorses acts of extramarital sex.”
The song is otherwise unchanged, which means that 43 seconds later Prince declares “It’s the sex dance, and it’s rockin’ from coast to coast!” In light of this, I find it hard to take the computer voice seriously. Prince’s conversion was sincere, but the strictness of it all only really lasted for about a year – perhaps a year and a half. At the end of the day, Prince wasn’t going to let anybody tell him what to do – not even himself or God or Larry Graham.
Get Wild (Miami Mix) a.k.a. (Latin Mix)
I have no idea why this is supposed to sound “Latin” or somehow Miami-related. There are numerous remixes of “Get Wild” that have been released, so it’s hard to compare any single one to another. One thing I can say for the Miami Mix is that it’s very busy. There’s close to too much happening in this arrangement. Finally, there is a feeling creeping in that Prince is leaning too much on 1995 for this year of the Club.
Rave IN2 The Joy Fantastic
Technically, there was no album released by Prince in 2000, nor was there any tour. Obviously, given the volume of material above, it’s not as if Prince was idle during this time. It is also worth remembering that many tracks have been omitted due to their being included in albums that will be released later. Meanwhile, in April 2001, members of the Club began receiving copies of Rave IN2 The Joy Fantastic.
What Is This Thing?
On its face, it looks like a bit of a rip off, and to be honest, it’s not what I would have hoped for if I had dropped a hundred bucks on a music club that promised a bunch of mp3s and “an exclusive album” and then got what appeared to be a remix album. In hindsight, and without the peculiar circumstances of the original release weighing it down, Rave IN2 only becomes more of an odd entry in the discography.
To call it a remix album would be incorrect. Even the songs labelled on the liner notes as “remixes” are more often re-recordings, with little or even none of the original tracks present. On the other hand, it is equally incorrect to call this an original album. When the album was originally being promoted on Prince’s websites, there was a 30-second flash-animated advertisement declaring the content “all different, U know.” Was it though?
Even princevault has a hard time knowing exactly how to talk about Rave IN2. They call it “a remix album released as a companion piece to…Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic.” But again, that description is barely even superficially adequate. I have a hard time knowing what to call this album, and due to the lateness of this essay, I’ve had a solid month to devote serious thought to the question. I don’t have any solid answers, but I do have some definite opinions that may help the reader wade into the material to form opinions of their own– if only to disagree with me.
First of all, I think Prince needed something to send to the Club members, and while he had plans to use the Club to release projects that would otherwise have extremely limited commercial appeal, those plans were not yet ready to be revealed. In the meantime, he needed to keep enthusiasm for the club high within his fanbase. The best way to achieve that goal was to get an album into members’ hands soon after launching the club.
Secondly, it was an attempt to address some of the mistakes made in his dealings with Arista Records. It didn’t take Prince long after the release of Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic for Prince to sour on the deal. Promotion of the album didn’t go as planned, and Prince didn’t get the hit he was hoping for. Meanwhile, Arista had fired Clive Davis as CEO due to age restrictions. Since he was the only one who cared at all about Prince’s project, there was now essentially no one at Arista with any interest in Prince.
I believe when Arista ghosted him he began to have second thoughts about the wisdom of using a bunch of popular artists as props and some genuine regrets about deliberately trying to appeal to a mass audience. What good had it done him? One thing you can say about Rave IN2 is that Prince was definitely approaching the material with a confidence he was lacking before.
Finally, I think the release of Rave UN2 was a test of the Club’s mechanisms for releasing physical products in a low-stakes environment. Every other album released as a physical object through the Club was much more interesting and important than this one, and would have angered the members more if the release had been botched a la Crystal Ball.
Tracklist
Rave In2 The Joy Fantastic
This is not a remix of “Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic,” but an almost complete re-recording. This version drops the Linn drums for a “contemporary” club sound. A few elements from the original remain: the background vocals have a similar harmonic arrangement, and the guitar hooks are sampled from the original. That said, it is intended to be a hyperactive club workout version of the original, and the song suffers for it. It’s just better with the measured stomp of the original. There are some fun hooks going on here, I just wish he had saved them for a song where they would have been better implemented.
Another strike against this song is it has the hallmark of a lesser Prince album: a tacked on-rap where Prince name-drops the tracklist. His heart wasn’t it, though. The tracks are all out of order and he barely shoehorns a third of the tracks in before he just gives up. This is the last album of the last period of creative doldrums of Prince’s life, so it’s somehow fitting that he gives up on this habit midway through a relapse.
Undisputed (The Moneyapolis Mix)
Unlike the prior track, this is not a complete remake. Rather, this version of the song treats the original like a first draft. Entire sections are added: verses, pre-choruses, an extra bridge. It does lose the spare quality of the original that is the hallmark of so much of Prince’s great work, but on the other hand, this version does not feel either sterile or overproduced. It just feels complete. Instead of calling it a remix, a more accurate title would be “Undisputed (2001).”
The Greatest Romance Ever Sold
This version should have some amendment to the title. It’s a different version of the song than any other available elsewhere. Parts of Eve and Prince’s rap performances from the remixes appear at the beginning. The rest of the track retains some of the beat from the remix, but otherwise more or less sticks to the original track, except for an extended coda.
Hot Wit U (Nasty Girl Remix)
This is very nearly a straightforward remix. The “Nasty Girl” in the remix is Prince singing an interpolation of the Vanity 6 song from the early 80’s. It works well enough if you feel the need for a remix of “Hot Wit U.” Apart from that, and the usual production touches, there is not much of Prince’s usual overindulgence. There is none of the expected extension to the track – the runtime clocks in at just under three and a half minutes. Apart from the lack of the necessity for the track’s existence, there is nothing to complain about. Alas, there’s nothing to celebrate either.
Tangerine
“Tangerine” is one of the highlights of Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic. The track presented here is almost identical with a short instrumental coda tacked on. The coda is not a bad piece of music, but I don’t like its inclusion. The great strength of he original tracks is the unresolved end of the track. The sweeping, lush chords of this version take that away and let the listener off the hook emotionally. It is, to be blunt, inferior.
So Far, So Pleased
Like so many of Prince’s promises, this one gives the lie to “All different, U know.” This is exactly the same as the version found on Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic. It reinforces my opinion of this song as bland and lacking personality that when faced with the task of doing something, anything with this song to improve or extend or somehow change this song just so he could say he changed it for this record, he shrugged his shoulders and quietly slipped the original into the tracklist here and hoped nobody would care.
Nobody did.
The Sun, The Moon And Stars
This one is different, but you could be forgiven for not noticing at first. In truth, there is no difference in the music, but there are four extra seconds of ocean sounds at the end with a more satisfying fade out. I happen to prefer the room to breathe, but I think that’s a matter of personal preference for picky people, and it probably doesn’t matter at all to most. Those four seconds were cut for time on the original, after all, and nobody noticed.
(Everyday Is A Winding Road)—NOT included
I am taking a moment here to draw attention to the fact that Prince’s ghastly, abominable cover of Cheryl Crow’s cover is not included on this album. This shows excellent judgement on Prince’s part, and is evidence of his desire to address obvious mistakes on the first version of the album. He had the opportunity to step in this pile of dookie a second time and said no. Good for him.
Man O War (Remix)
Another instance of a track that is 95% re-recorded being billed as a remix. I personally prefer this one to the original. It somehow shows off how well the song was written more than the original for me. I can’t quite articulate how, but it just works a little better in this arrangement. It’s also possible that not having that awful cover still ringing in my ears also helps.
Baby Knows
This is the same as the original track except for an instrumental coda that is mostly a short guitar solo. I prefer this version mostly because it was so hard in the last five years to get Prince to commit a solo to record.
I Love U, But I Don’t Trust U Anymore
Another track that’s identical to the original, this time because there is nothing you can do to this track that wouldn’t almost certainly ruin it. Sometimes you just have to let things be.
Beautiful Strange
In addition to “Everyday Is A Winding Road,” “Strange But True” was also cut from this album. In their place, Prince put “Beautiful Strange.” It would be hard to argue that those tracks were the weakest on Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic, and “Beautiful Strange” is a fantastic trade up. It is an excellent change of pace in such a dance-forward album to have slowly swaying guitar jam kicking off the third act of this album. At the time we didn’t know it, but this is the first song of the last act of Prince’s career. His final blend of rock and funk is in full effect, especially in the interplay between the bass and guitar. 1997-1999 made it easy to think that maybe Prince was beginning to run out of things to say. “Beautiful Strange” was a loud announcement that Prince not only still had more to contribute, but he was once again searching for a sound that he hadn’t yet found.
Silly Game
Yet another track that is identical to the original. I wonder if it’s mostly here because there was no credible reason to cut it.
Wherever U Go, Whatever U Do
Same as above, except without the extended silence that was intended to hide “Prettyman” on the original album.
Prettyman (extended)
This is another song that is identical to the original apart from an extended coda. The thing is, this extended coda is more of Maceo Parker soloing, so that automatically makes it better than the original More Maceo = more quality.
Is there an Ultimate Rave?
Even though its exact status may be hard to define, one thing is absolutely certain: Rave IN2 The Joy Fantastic does not exist well without Rave Un2 and cannot really be judged as a standalone album. In 2019 it was reissued with Rave In2 and the concert video “Rave Un2 The Year 2000” as a box set called The Ultimate Rave, which is probably where both albums live most happily. The first album is lukewarm and a bit flaccid. The second feels incomplete without the first. Having said all that, there is an argument for combining tracks from both albums to make a “best of both” album.
1 Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic
2 Undisputed (The Moneyapolis Mix)
3 The Greatest Romance Ever Sold (from Rave Un2)
4 Hot Wit U
5 Tangerine (from Rave Un2)
6 So Far, So Pleased
7 The Sun, The Moon And Stars (from Rave IN2)
8 Man O War (Remix) -but the other version would do as well
9 Baby Knows ((from Rave Un2)
10 I Love U But I Don’t Trust U Anymore
11 Beautiful Strange
12 Silly Game
(optional inclusion of “Strange But True” – I would cut it)
13 Wherever U Go, Whatever U Do
14 Prettyman (from Rave IN2)
NEXT WEEK:
2000-2001 Part 2: More downloads and Prince’s most problematic album: The Rainbow Children
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