Release Notes:
Prince's rise to fame was nothing short of meteoric, from a buzzed-about
musician (with the release of his first album, 1979's For You) to arguably one
of the most acclaimed and influential artist of the 20th century. USA Today has
hailed him as "one of the most daring and brilliant artists," just one of the
many accolades bestowed on Prince by both critics and peers throughout his
career. In fact, a chorus of acclaim literally exploded with the release of the
Minnesota native's world-changing, 1984 dual phenomenon of Purple Rain (the
movie broke box office records, the Grammy-nominated album sold more than 11
million copies and spent 24 weeks at #1), making Prince one of the few
triple-threats in history to simultaneously land the #1 single, album and movie.
His plaintively brilliant single, "When Doves Cry," the first of many Top Tens,
exemplified the kind of transformational musical current that only Prince could
deliver. To top it off, he won the "Best Original Score" Academy Award for
Purple Rain. A series of seminal albums - from 1985's Around The World In A Day
to 1987's prophetic Sign o' the Times, to 1989's Batman soundtrack to 1991's
Diamonds And Pearls, indelibly cemented his reputation as a 21st century
impresario, and a fearless pursuer of the musical stratosphere.
With more than 60 million records sold, Prince launched his web-centric NPG
Music Club, a groundbreaking, completely autonomous Prince-authorized nexus,
emphasizing direct sales and value-added content for Prince fans and
subscribers, a virtual template of the kind of online, artist-driven
entrepreneurial models artists and internet gurus would be gravitating towards
the close of the decade. More groundbreaking albums followed, with Prince
himself stewarding their marketing and promotion. A varied array of label
distribution deals were interspersed throughout, with major imprints such as
EMI, Arista and Columbia, forming temporary but fruitful relationships with the
evocative artist.
Last year saw the cultural icon command the mainstream music radar with a
vengeance, releasing the critically and commercially acclaimed Musicology (the
disc snagged two Grammys), being inducted to the Rock n' Roll Hall Of Fame, and
rolling out one of the most successful, talked about tours in music history,
(Pollstar Magazine crowned him a top concert draw for the year) coinciding with
the two-decade anniversary of his masterpiece Purple Rain. Prince also won an
NAACP Image award in 2004 and was most recently inspired to write two songs to
benefit Hurricane Katrina victims, "S.S.T." and "Brand New Orleans," both of
which are available on NPGMusicClub.com.
Official Website: http://www.npgmusicclub.com/
Add 3121 to the mounting pile of evidence: Prince is the black Beck. He's a whole lot sexier, no doubt, but there's more to both musicians than image. All-out weirdness for one. Edginess for another. And a fine-tuned sense of how to combine the two to create some of the decade's most vital music for a third. Prince--looking ageless in videos for the first two singles, the controversy-courting "Black Sweat" and the sauna-steeped "Te Amo Corazon"--proves fearless as ever here, folding fat slabs of disco-funk into rock, heaping measured doses of hip-hop atop soul-tinted jazz supports, and slamming Latin rhythms against old-school R&B riffs. Nothing sounds as slinky-stylish-smart. And nobody delivers quite so deliciously, especially when what they're delivering is ultimately a madcap sonic mash. The usual hype surrounding a Prince release attended this one; over the long-term, expect a few standouts within a way worth-it set to emerge. They include the danceable "Love"; the gospel-lite falsetto feast "Satisfied"; and the summer-breezy "Beautiful, Loved & Blessed." --Tammy La Gorce
Prince
3121
[Universal; 2006]
Rating: 6.0
There was a time when Prince was the gold standard for artistic expansion. Each of his opuses forayed into some new arena, and every shift in his approach correspondingly increased the size of the venues he toured. For more than a decade he was unstoppable, picking up the freaky funk baton from George Clinton and parlaying it into genuine superstardom. Funny, though, how short the trip from top of the pops to "News of the Weird" marginalization can be-- after changing his name to an unpronounceable "love symbol" in the early 1990s, he spent the better part of a decade roaming the wilderness, kicking out poorly distributed albums that ironically might have reached a larger audience had he not split from Warner Brothers to go it alone.
From an image perspective, the New Power Generation era saw Prince transformed into a bizarre caricature of righteousness, religious and otherwise. But just as the path from peaks to lows can be quickly traversed, artists can swing back just as quickly, and 2004's Musicology gathered plaudits by the bushel, partially restoring Prince's critical reputation, as well as his commercial fortunes. In retrospect, it seems that Musicology was labeled a comeback in essence for not being an embarrassment. 3121 does a bit better than that, coming up with a handful of infectious songs-- it's his best since the symbol record, although certainly there remains a massive chasm between it and his masterpieces.
Speaking in terms of his classic era, 3121 is more "Gett Off" than "Nothing Compares 2 U". The opening title track works almost entirely on eccentricity, as a huge crowd of pitch-shifted Princes harmonize on lyrics that basically amount to directions to a party. On the other end of the record, "Get on the Boat" boasts a sharp horn arrangement (with solos from Maceo Parker, no less) and a funk undercarriage vintage enough to have come straight from a thrift-shop basement-- and the loose, live feel doesn't hurt either.
One thing that "Get on the Boat" exhibits in its piano part and timbale eruptions is a Latin influence that's more pervasive on 3121 than on any previous Prince album. "Te Amo Corazon" is a nicely nuanced ballad built on a slow, slightly rock-tinged mambo beat, and there are snatches of Cuban piano and Brazilian drums that crop up all over. Crunchy electro is the dominant strain in most of the album's best tracks, though, including the killer single "Black Sweat", the fractured keyboard riff of "Lolita", and "Love", inhabited by squishy keyboard and a monster chorus that slashes the ascending melody with buzzing synth bass. "The Word" strikes a nice electro-acoustic dichotomy, layering spacey synthesizer and a programmed beat with acoustic guitar and a strong sax hook.
If the entire album were up to these levels, we'd be onto something, but "Fury" tempers the impact of its stunning lead guitar part with a hopelessly dated keyboard patch and generic rock drumming. "Incense & Candles" is predictable bedroom r&b that relies too heavily on manipulated vocals, swerving into a little rap-like passage exactly when I began to think, "I bet there's a little rap-like passage in this song." He might have at least brought in a guest to deliver something more interesting.
So, two albums into a career revival, Prince is still only kinda sorta "back." He's never going to be as surprising as he was in his heyday, of course, and it's probably unfair to expect anything like that from him again. All told, 3121 is a pretty ordinary-sounding record, largely stuck in another, friendlier sonic decade-- namely the 80s. If nothing else, Prince is slowly regaining the plot, and of course, there remain plenty of great old records in his catalog to revisit while he finds it.
-Joe Tangari, March 21, 2006
Review by Stephen Thomas Erlewine
Musicology was a self-conscious comeback, a record designed to return Prince to the spotlight and the charts, and it worked: even if it spawned no big hits, the 2004 LP became his first album to crack the Billboard Top Ten since 1995's The Gold Experience, get a fair amount of radio play, and get a bunch of positive press, along with a well-received tour. Prince no longer seemed like an eccentric consigned to the fringes: he seemed like a savvy pro, reclaiming a reputation and respect that he'd lost. That he did it with an album that sounded uncannily like a deliberate return to classic Prince as performed by the New Power Generation was almost beside the point: it was enough that he sounded engaged, and that he made a focused, purposeful album. Its quickly delivered 2006 follow-up, 3121, proves that Musicology was no fluke. Like its predecessor, 3121 is tight and concise, offering 12 songs in 53 minutes, and it's classically structured, emphasizing shifting moods and textures between songs. It is an album, not a collection of songs, and you could even call it old-fashioned, but it feels fresher than Musicology, as if Prince had listened to enough Neptunes productions to understand how they've absorbed his music. That acknowledgement doesn't come often -- it's evident in the sly, sexy grooves of "Black Sweat" and the squealing synths of "Lolita" -- but since it's paired with an emphasis on dance tunes and a retreat from the enjoyable but endless NPG-styled vamping that characterized a good portion of Musicology, 3121 winds up sounding lively, varied, and, at its best, exciting. And at the beginning of the album, 3121 is quite exciting, as Prince revives his high-pitched alter ego Camille on the title track and dives head first into the electro-funk of "Lolita" and "Black Sweat," songs that recall such mid-period masterpieces as "Kiss" or "Sign 'O' the Times" without being rewrites. Nevertheless, the fact that the freshest sounding music here still has a direct line back to records Prince made 20 years prior is a good indication that the album, like Prince himself in the wake of hip-hop, is a little bit conservative, emphasizing funk of both the James Brown and George Clinton varieties, late-night slow jams, classic dance, and soul, instead of wrestling with modern music. While that may disappoint some listeners who yearn for the return of the trailblazing Prince of the '80s, when he reinvented himself with each record, it's hardly surprising that a 47-year-old musician is spending more time refining his palette than expanding it. What is a surprise is that Prince is in top form as both a writer and record-maker; perhaps the one-man-band nature of its recording doesn't mean the album is as gritty or raw as his reliably thrilling live performances, but 3121 crackles with excitement, filled with different sounds and styles. Best of all, this is filled with songs that hold their own as individual tunes, yet gel into a cohesive record that is thankfully devoid of an overarching concept, a problem that plagued his albums after Diamonds and Pearls. 3121 does fall short from being perfect -- there may be no bad songs, but the momentum slows ever so slightly on the second half -- yet it's something more valuable than being a one-off classic: it's proof that Prince has indeed returned as a vital, serious recording artist on his own terms. Maybe he's no longer breaking new ground, but his eccentricities are now an attribute, not a curse, which goes a long way in making his trademark blend of funk, pop, soul, and rock sound nearly as dazzling as it did at his popular and creative peak in the '80s.
|
