I wonder what it must be like, sometimes, to be – y’know – Prince. What must it be like to suffer from his unique artistic affliction, a thirty-year case of musical effusiveness (some might call it dysentery) that has made him one of the most celebrated and simultaneously ridiculed artists of our time. He hasn’t had a bona-fide radio hit since Clinton’s first term in office, and yet he remains far more prolific than most artists half his age. One of the things I’ve always admired about Prince was the apparent effortlessness of his creation – the fact that the guy could snore the grooviest groove on the planet and then have a good laugh about it later, while guesting on Oprah.
But then, maybe that kind of effortlessness shouldn’t be admired, but merely accepted as a simple fact of who Prince is. In spite of the apparent ease with which music comes to him, the man is clearly ambitious, and his ambitions have clearly manifested themselves in masterpieces like 1999 and Sign O’ The Times, as well as remarkable, however niche-y, recent releases like his four-track, hour-length jazz experiment NEWS and his Jehovah’s Witness credo The Rainbow Children; but there’s a been a clear sense of diminishing returns on these more daring adventures. They’ve been more likely to alienate old fans without actually reaching out new ones. (And I say that as someone who thinks NEWS is one of the highlights of his later career).
It’s true that Prince has often been his own worst enemy in this respect. Feuds with record companies who are as effusive with their money as Prince is with his guitar can only be interesting for so long; and his mid-90s market deluge, when he was wont to drop three-and-four-disc sets amidst a slew of random, a propos of nothing-in-particular barrel-scrapings, and a handful of “proper” albums that were barely recognizable as such, served only to confuse his fans, shamelessly rape their wallets, and mightily underscore the very unevenness of his work. He could still snore the grooviest groove on the planet, but had a hard time turning it into a song, and an ever harder time making that song a hit. Put simply, ever since Prince started disconnecting from the mainstream record industry, he’s also been disconnecting from his audience – at least on record. (Anyone who’s seen him live will know that on stage, it’s quite a different story).
- - - - -
Two years ago,Prince went to great lengths to remedy that situation with his most eye-on-airplay-crafted album in ages, Musicology, which he went so far as to give away to concert goers, guaranteeing not only that his long-time fans would actually hear some of his new music, and that the new album would, quite artificially, find a happy home in the upper reaches of the album sales chart for as long as he was on tour. The mere fact that nearly two years have elapsed between Musicology and his latest studio album 3121 is itself further testament that Prince may be dropping his supply-side mentality, baldly courting the more timid factions of his fan base – those folks who dropped out right around the time Graffiti Bridge dropped.
But if Musicology was a swell, invigorated album marred only by a sense of self-conscious respectability (possibly projected upon the project by an audience newly re-awed by the Artist’s recent Hall of Fame induction); 3121 is everything we might have expected from Prince, circa 1990. It’s the comedown after a long career high. It’s the drunken afterparty and the morning-after hangover all rolled into one. Its apparent lack of ambition may be refreshing; but there’s a flatness to it too. And even if songs like the washed-out, decidedly unfurious ”Fury” and the minimal electro-funk work-out ”Love” have convincing, singable, radio-friendly hooks, they also feel really, really familiar. They’re easy to enjoy, to be sure, but hard – really hard - to get excited about. It’s as if their being sung with the same stale (however rarified) air that’s been circulating and re-circulating through Paisley Park ever since Prince went down, down, down to Alphabet Street.
And that, just like fluorescent lighting, is the death of the sex party. And a sex party is what 3121 seems to want to be (this according to the supremely ugly title track which nevertheless manages to mingle and mangle lyrical hooks from both “The Safety Dance” and “Hotel California”) – albeit, a sex party without the delicious flagrancy and kink of yesteryear. Just like Steven Spielberg taking the guns out of E.T. for dubious, vaguely values-oriented reasons, Prince’s seductions are less delirious, and more pointedly enlightened, and sadly more generic than ever before – and the music backing them up often veers into the realm of genre exercise. ”Satisfied” boasts a terrifically sexy falsetto vocal, but it’s hard to get past the song’s facile Stax/Volt impersonations. ”Te Amo Corazon” is pure Holiday Inn piano bar serenade; and while ”Lolita” is adorable, catchy and upbeat, it also revels in its emphatic not-at-all-naughtiness.
As one of the lead singles of the album, ”Black Sweat”, despite the simple, contagious giddiness of its video, seemed a little underwhelming; but in context, it stands out as one of the album’s highlights and grows more and more irresistible with each successive listen – a cheap-sounding bit of minimalist James Brown-style funk (a distinct subgenre in Prince’s catalog exemplified by songs like “Kiss”, “Sexy M.F.” and “The Work Pt. 1”), that climaxes when Prince promises to make us all scream like white ladies on the count of three. One. Two…
Oh, but he doesn’t really follow through. Sure the album has its moments of semi-coital bliss. The closing ”Get On the Boat” may be a rousing bit of last-chance evangelism, but ”The Word” verily turns proselytization into an act of sexual foreplay with an insistently syncopated verse and a lush chantalong chorus – get up, get up, let’s do something. But the best is ”The Dance”, which makes me positively lightheaded every time I hear it - a sensual, soft-and-wet tease of a song with elegant ballroom piano flourishes, a gorgeous refrain posing an all-or-nothing ultimatum as it cruises luxuriously over shifting waves of orchestral strings, and rising to a full-on, screaming orgasmic rush at the end. It’s the album’s one truly ambitious moment, and it’s the record’s sole reminder of Prince’s celebrated genius.
Like just about everything he’s done since the late 80s, the very worst you could say about 3121 is that it’s wholly competent and wildly uneven. And it’s no more likely to storm the hit parade than previous records, if only because – well - there are other artists (Andre 3000 and Erykah Badu, to name two) who are doing this kind of stuff, only with the benefit of youth and inspiration, and unburdened by years of punch-line-mongering. It’s a fine, dutifully presented collection of songs that should prove satisfactory (no more, no less) to most Prince fans. But it’s another suggestion (as if we needed one) that Prince’s best work is behind him. Way behind him.
- - - - -
BECAUSE YOU NEED TO KNOW:
"3121" by Prince
NPG / Universal Records
Released 3/21/06
Produced by Prince
53 min.
SONGS: 3121 – Lolita – Te Amo Corazon – Black Sweat - Incense and Candles – Love – Satisfied – Fury – The Word – Beautiful, Loved, and Blessed – The Dance – Get on the Boat
Epinions.com periodically updates pricing and product information from third-party sources, so some information may be slightly out-of-date. You should confirm all information before relying on it.
![3121 [Digipak] by Prince](http://di1.shopping.com/images1/pi/3b/de/d7/2005229586-177x150-0-0.jpg)
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.