Stream of Consciousness & Music Reviews

    Dirty Mind sees Prince leaning more into a pop-punk adjacent sound while upping the explicitness of his lyrics and subject matter, as indicated by the album's name. I think that the more sexually charged themes work well for Prince and suit his style (given that he's generally known for this nowadays) but I think the more synthpop-y sound that eschews the funk/groove of his prior two albums wasn't the best move. In my opinion the more simplistic feel and thinner timbre isn't as interesting as the more complexly layered tracks from what he had already made by this point, and subsequently the songs on this album that do lean more into that style with more funky elements are far and away the best parts of the album. I don't think that I would consider anything here "bad" in terms of style or sound and most of it is still pretty good, but I think that, for me, this is probably his weakest showing so far (which checks out when you see that he said that a lo...

      Prince's second album follows in the footsteps of his first and is almost as good as it. The self titled Prince continues Prince's mixing of pop, funk, and various other genres for his unique sound that's still great. The overall sound and feel remains largely the same, but maybe a little less acoustic and a little more 'electric' than For You was, although it's not a very noticeable shift. His singing and performances are still top notch, and his near solo production of the entire album is still exceptionally impressive given how great its quality is. An odd thing here is that the more up tempo songs that were my favorite part of For You aren't as good here as they were there (they're still great, just overall not as much as they were previously) and the slower more sentimental songs are much better here and engaged me a lot more. I think that For You had a better mix of  songs and was structured better, but this is another strong showing from Pri...

      Kicking off 2022's holiday album rush is Prince's debut album, For You. I've heard that he was a perfectionist when making the album, and it shows. Every facet of the music seems fine tuned to be as excellent as possible. Prince's style of funk/soul mixed with an absolutely decadent wave of synth make the tracks have an incredibly funky driving force to them and gives them Prince's impeccable unique sound. All of the elements mix very well and everything plays off of everything else in a way that effortlessly elevates every piece. And this is due in part to the notable audio mixing, which is just superb on every song. Every element is brought in, raised, lowered, emphasized, etc. in a way that helps every part contribute to the overall piece. I also want to give a spotlight to Prince's stunning falsetto, which manages to hit that high and energetic feel of strong Tenor to give the vocals a bombastic energy, while remaining smooth and gentle enough to keep ...