OK, i need everyone to rank their top Prince albums

[Chet]

so I know where to next.

My favourite so far is probably Dirty Mind, but I don't have extensive knowledge beyond like the big records.

[peacocks]

My favorite is Sign O The Times hands down. He has so many though and I haven't listened to any past Lovesexy, which is pretty damn great.

I need to think about rating "for you" through "lovesexy" though. I just bought "for you" the other day so I've only listened to it once. It would probably be towards the bottom.

[Black Amnesia of Heaven]

AIGHT OKAY FINE

1. lovesexy, which, i don't know, it all kind of concentrates in "i wish u heaven"/"positivity," there is a lifting. it's not on other prince records, which i'm fine with, it's set-off, it's special.

2. sign o' the times, which everyone loves but i don't know, can it be stated enough that this is the platonic ideal of a double album, something that is totally wild and untethered while still having perceivable narrative unity between tracks. it contains my favorite prince song, "it," the rich inner life of a steel drum.

3. parade, the most minimal prince record, the songs are barely songs, contains "mountains," contains actual mountains

4. 1999, the other platonic ideal of the double album, where it's just a few really great songs that don't technically stop.

5. dirty mind, walk uptown/take an uptown train while listening to "uptown," you gain like an extra hip.

6. the love symbol album, kirstie alley and tony m and all. new jack swing like three years too late but weirdly informed by the time

7. the b-sides disc of the hits/b-sides

8. what time is it?, yeahhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

9. purple rain, no comment

10. come, most underrated prince album, his ultimate submarine funk record

[peacocks]

4. 1999, the other platonic ideal of the double album, where it's just a few really great songs that don't technically stop.

haha I dig this explanation.

[Black Amnesia of Heaven]

i want to mention the batman soundtrack because it was my first prince record (i had it on tape! i was 5!) and i think it's kind of an apotheosis of his machinistic funk but i don't like "the arms of orion" or prince doing broadway in general, even though that is part of him, a necessary part of him.

"batdance" is still totally incredible and an impossible #1 hit in the vein of "o superman" (i'm exaggerating, it's easy to see why "batdance" was a hit (movie dialogue from hit movie! the weird new things we can do with records because of technology!))

[Nick Ink]

I don't understand the appeal at all. I've never heard a Prince track that interested me in the least. Having said that, I'll leave this thread people with something positive to say!

[peacocks]

 

[Chet]

I don't understand the appeal at all. I've never heard a Prince track that interested me in the least. Having said that, I'll leave this thread people with something positive to say!

that's because your soul is a motherboard.

[Black Amnesia of Heaven]

some part of me believes that there is a perfect prince track for nick ink

there is a prince track for everyone

[Black Amnesia of Heaven]

i believe it might be the stark video version of  "4 the tears in your eyes" which sadly had the audio removed from it on youtube

[justinh]

5. dirty mind, walk uptown/take an uptown train while listening to "uptown," you gain like an extra hip.

Just so we're clear, this song refers to Uptown, Minneapolis--not New York.  Feel free to gain an extra hip still, though. 

I like Prince, but my knowledge doesn't really go beyond 1999 and Purple Rain. 

[peacocks]

I wish we had an uptown here. I listened to that song last night and grew the extra hip with no where to take it. I sort of live north of the downtown area, could that be considered uptown?

[nonotyet]

i want to mention the batman soundtrack because it was my first prince record (i had it on tape! i was 5!)

Jesus

[Almanzo]

Little known LPTJ fact - I'm a Prince scholar! If you wanna see me do a lecture on "Under the Cherry Moon" from last year, watch this http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/8793090   

Here's my list:

1. Sign o' the Times for sure! It's got some weird clunkers on it, but in general it's his strongest, most focused, and most coherent work. "The Ballad of Dorothy Parker" is my favorite Prince song.

2. Purple Rain - just perfect, if lacking in Sign's scope. This version of the band was absolutely ridiculous. I have a 20-minute version of "computer blue" somewhere on a tape - just absurd!

3. 1999 - The first six songs straight are perfect, and then "lady cab driver," which is my secret favorite Prince song.

4. Around the world in a day - kind of the dark horse in his discography, I don't think it gets nearly the recognition that it should. Sure, he was insane to release it after Purple Rain, esp. with the campy psychedelic vibe and very little promotion, but "Paisley Park," "Pop Life," and "Raspberry Beret" are a handful of his best songs of the decade! "Tamborine" is a jam as well, "America" is misguided, "condition of the heart" and "the ladder" are underrated as hell...I'm weirdly protective of this album because it ALWAYS gets forgotten. "Pop Life" is a top-10 Prince song for me. Here's the Dump version if that helps: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4KB7OIq9pdQ

5. Dirty Mind - new wave Prince, stronger than "Controvery" which followed it. "When you were mine" is a perfect song and reminds you why he was writing songs like "Manic Monday" with such alacrity.

also underrated: "Parade" (girls and boys is a JAM, and the Revolution is in full effect for the last time...Mountains, Kiss, Another Lover are amazing), "Diamonds and Pearls" (new jack swing Prince but some seriously amazing songs and his last really diverse-while-still-being-great collection of songs), "3121" (serious comeback record with the best stuff in about 15 years at that point)...

[Almanzo]

favorite bootleg/non-album material:

ridiculously long versions of Purple Rain-era material, a 20-minute "computer blue," insane rehearsal version of "Darling Nikki" that's 14 minutes long and worth it, the insane "this is not music, this is a trip" version of Alphabet Street, original "acoustic blues" demo version of "Alphabet Street," and then of course the single-only "Erotic City" and b-side "Peach" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUmPXGk8s5Q) - which uses the orgasm sample of Kim Basinger that was also used in the live MTV "assless pants" version of "Get Off" - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8QrKaGd7bU

And then the whole "Camille" bootleg that brings together Prince's pitched-up female alter ego material in one place.

[edison]

If you wanna see me do a lecture on "Under the Cherry Moon" from last year, watch this http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/8793090   

Awesome!

[DanielBurns11]

Out of the ones I've heard.

1. Purple Rain
2. Dirty Mind
3. 1999
4. Prince

Possibly will elaborate later.

Also, I literally have Controversy and Around the World in a Day sitting there brand new an unopened waiting for me to listen. I should get on that.

[Black Amnesia of Heaven]

5. dirty mind, walk uptown/take an uptown train while listening to "uptown," you gain like an extra hip.

Just so we're clear, this song refers to Uptown, Minneapolis--not New York.  Feel free to gain an extra hip still, though. 

of course! tried to make the geography ambiguous. walk uptown anywhere to this song, it is magical.

[Chet]

i see prince's 'uptown' more as a way of life/state of mind than a fixed geographical location.

[justinh]

You probably feel the same way about "Funky Town"!

[lucky strike]

sign o' the times obviously on top
then dirty mind
and Prince

ignore all other suggestions, chet. these guys need to get out of the elevator and embrace the funk.

this feels like the right spot. prepare to have your funk minds blown, dudes:
it is in 3 parts. if you don't watch it from end to end, you are doing yourself a serious disservice. i can not emphasize enough how important it is that you watch this set.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-khlleOSx0

[Echoes]

Prince is one of the things to stir me out my lurkdom, because the concert was probably the best $150 I ever spent in my life

Album-wise, for me it is:

1) Dirty Mind - perfect.
2) SIgn 'O' The Times - Enough has been said on the topic, in theory, but this is great. Can't really fuck with "I Could Never Take The Place Of Your Man," as far as I'm concerned
3) 1999 - as far as a secret favourite Prince songs go, "Lady Cab Driver" is only topped by "International Lover"
4) Controversy - The title track is almost untouchable, and it has some of his absolute best trainwrecks on it
5) Purple Rain - It is still pretty good

And these I haven't listened to as much, in approx order if you feel like going deep
6) Around The World In A Day
7) Prince
8) Parade

[Thermofusion]

this feels like the right spot. prepare to have your funk minds blown, dudes:
it is in 3 parts. if you don't watch it from end to end, you are doing yourself a serious disservice. i can not emphasize enough how important it is that you watch this set.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-khlleOSx0

This dude knows what's up! Roger Troutman 4 ever

[Brian Doherty]

I have a lot to say about Prince, who is one of my favorite artists of all time. THAT SAID, I have a weird relationship with him, in a way---in the sense that I have SOME sympathy with those who don't like him at all---there are times when I question my adoration of him, not as a writer, but as a soundsmith....there is something about the thin shine of a lot of his records that I can see, hmm, I understand someone finding this too inhuman and unconsidered. I get this feeling the most when hearing a lot of his (inferior) work of the post Warner Bros era....the kind of thing where an artists inferior work makes you second guess whether you really love even his good work. (Post 1993ish Elvis Costello has this same effect on me....like, being confronted with tons of work where the artists essential THING delivers work you don't want to hear makes you wonder if his THING is really that great.)

That all said...mostly, I adore Prince. And mostly-mostly I adore Prince from 1983-1992, where he was on a streak of variegated genius that is pretty unmatchable. My favorite five:

LOVESEXY Slept on way too much. If you are a filthy druggy, let me say that this record is the aural equivalent of good MDMA----it is complicated and weird and just shines a bright, bright light of love and optimism that makes it one of the sui generic greatest LPs of all time to me. That even many Prince fans give it at best an "eh, pretty good" blows my mind. Perfect in every way.

PARADE. A side of Prince---baroque and self-absorbed and thick and warm that is sonically the exact opposite of that shiny thinness that mars too much of his work---feels the most "organic" and flowing of any of his work, even the short weird go-nowhere tracks are perfect in their short weird go-nowhereness and its close is one of the most perfect bits of tearjerkery sadness you can imagine. And it has KISS which sounds very out of place here but still his most perfect single, I think.

SYMBOL. I wrote about this one in LOST IN THE GROOVES, a great book about neglected records. Here's what I wrote about it there: "On its 1992 release, the pundits noticed that this record was pretty hot shit but history has not been kind and in retrospect his biographers and the general sense that he lost his way sometime in the late '80s have relegated this to his supposedly disappointing slow collapse during the '90s. Some mark Prince's alleged fall beginning with 1988's Lovesexy (such people are so misguided one can do nothing but shake one's head and make sure they are seated at the other end of the table at dinner parties), other somewhere among Batman, Grafitti Bridge, and Diamonds and Pearls. But as the'90s wore on, it is widely agreed, Prince became memorable solely for peculiarities and peccadilloes such as changing his name to the titular symbol of this record, giving Kirstie Alley the role of "nosy reporter" in the disjoined and irrelevant "plot" that theoretically unites the potpourri of musical riches to be found here, and later publicly declaring himself a "slave" to his contractual partners at Warner Bros.
That may be all people talk about, but that's because people can be dumb. One forgets or ignores the shockingly wide and wonderful range of beauty and funk that this album represents at the perils of one's own soul and ass. It is at the same time purely gorgeous and complicated but also purely pop—even in its most peculiar moments, it is never too arty to not imagine taking the world by storm. One of its loveliest and strangest tracks, "7," was one of the singles. Prince has never been funkier than "Sexy MF," never power-balladed as yearningly and prettily as on "The Morning Papers," never been gorgeously weirder than on "Love 2 the 9s"—all the way through its double LP length he and his band sing and play with endless enthusiasm on compositions of multi-leveled and multi-genred strength. True love of music and life shines through, and I strongly suspect its failure to be as lauded and successful as Purple Rain was a big part of Prince's real retreat that began right after this.

SIGN O THE TIMES. I have a hard time feeling warm about some of what I consider the "dark clubby" songs here, like HOT THING and IT, so I don't actually love the experience of hearing this straight through, but at its best it's the best. I have it on the original issue CD which kind of sounds shitty to me, in a sorto f subdued murky way, but I blame the CD. Which brings up: Why has Prince Never had any great cd reissue extra tracks action? I guess because of his relation with Warner, which really sucks.

PURPLE RAIN. Yeah, Purple Rain.

BATMAN: As has been pointed out, Batdance is perhaps the most avant-garde number one of all time and this is actually the closest I think Prince came to recreating the virtues of Purple Rain, that one man band parade of crunchy funky rock, spirtual lovely strangeness, gooey ballads, and his cold mechanical electro-funk. If "The Future" doesn't jolt you as a work of uniquelly strange beauty right off the bat, stop right there, but every song on this is strong.

I wish I could be a skilled revisionist and find consistent greatness since 1996, but I can't. I always wonder if it's just me getting older and having less heart and attention, but I think it's true. That said, individual tracks in this age of individual tracks, like "Holy River" and "My Computer" and "Sex in the Summer" and "White Mansion" from the triple CD EMANCIPATION and "Tangerine" from RAVE UN2.... and "3121" and...god, i wish there were more....are the work of one of the greatest of all time.

Seen him live I think 6 or so times and that's always a good experience as well.

Brian Doherty

[Slime]

Parade is my favorite, followed by Dirty Mind.  1999, Sign of the Times, Purple Rain, Lovesexy, Batman are all approach my fascination with the first two I mentioned, but they haven't made it yet.

I haven't gone through a good Prince fade in a while.