New Power Soul (1998)
1. New Power Soul
2. Mad Sex
3. When U're in My Arms Again
4. When You Love Somebody
5. Shoo-Bed-Ooh
6. Push It Up
7. Freaks on the Side
8. Come On
9. The One
10.(I Like) Funky Music
11.Wasted Kisses
The dry spell for Prince begins. It actually began with Crystal Ball, but that was essentially a (very large) collection of leftovers. Now, you could put an asterisk by this one as well as it, in the literal sense, is not a Prince album. This one is credited to the “New Power Generation”, but the differences between the two are rather fuzzy. And that is him on the album cover complete with his “love symbol” tattoo.
The problem with this record is that it’s flat out boring. He’s exploring a lot of genre’s, but you have to listen closely. In other words, if you don’t listen closely (which is easy), you forget that this album has a lot of variety. The reason one doesn’t want to listen closely is because one really doesn’t want to listen at all. There’s almost nothing memorable here. Many of the tracks are flat out awful. What, exactly, is he using for the backing vocals on Freaks on the Side and I Like Funky Music? It sounds like a huge crowd at a pep rally or something. Who thought that such cacophony would sound good on a record?
It’s a bit sad when one of the best things here is actually a “hidden” track. That would be Wasted Kisses.Come On and Until U’re in My Arms Again are passable. But that’s about it. I’m not sure exactly what was going on, but it seemed mightily disappointing when the guy who simply couldn’t stop releasing great music at a phenomenal speed a decade ago would, all of the sudden, make a lot of mediocre muck. Although I mentioned a couple of OK songs, the whole album is basically forgettable. Might be helpful if one has insomnia.
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