Prince
3121

THE REVIEW

PRINCE: JUST STOP IT.

There is nothing worse than an artist who makes a shallow "trade" piece.
No, actually... there is worse: it's when a versatile and dynamic artist like Prince (not a lightweight) starts doing predictable and trivial work like this 3121. A work without the inventiveness and versatility to which we were (well) accustomed with albums like 1999, Parade, Sign 'o the Times or Lovesexy many years ago (just to name a few from the bunch).
Does this record, therefore, suck?! Noo, I don't want to go to that extreme, but the fact that this "big sellout" is nothing more than what one could expect from today's Little Prince, already indicates how everything in life, sooner or later, settles down, becomes "the norm" and thus predictable and boring (start noting this down!) Everything, huh?! Nothing excluded... geniuses, little kings, and madonnas included.
Everything becomes integrated and made "compliant" with what the audience expects and, all in all, wants (call it "marketing," friends, and remember the term well: it will be what screws us all and everything from here to 10 years - Lesto BANG Teaches!).

So, we start with the "Funky" of ?3121? as predictable as the daily ending of a TV soap for desperate housewives: falsettos, slack scratches from bloated DJs (the wind/synth counterpoint half-way saves it, being somewhat histrionic and bizarre? even these as per script in their originality).
With "Lolita," we return to the anterior neozoic with a "Prince-like" funky even more predictable than the first. Damn, not a note that surprises us, with the keyboard also played "Prince-like," offbeat backing vocals from lolitas (precisely), syncopated rhythm, all in an arrangement that I WANT TO HOPE is deliberately traced back to the "80s" sounds of which he was the king Midas! We arrive at the big sellout (called a "Hit") of "Te Amo Corazon" which I skip without even commenting. And onward with the predictability of "Black Sweet" which leaves us with no hint of inventiveness or surprise: folks, this is the "Classic Prince" that is as classic as can be: and what the hell do you want more (seems like hearing the voice of distant echoes from the marketing offices)?! And onward...
(I already see the die-hard fans of this site saying "Prince is Prince," "Woe to anyone who touches Minneapolis's little genius" and on with the cliché phrases and common places from people with blinders settled on "what they already expect and most suits them").
But I ask you/me: what the hell does an album like this add to his vast production (37 official albums, of which frankly at least half could have been avoided, including this one)?! What the hell does it represent to publish an album of "good craftsmanship and trade" like this one?
Has he forgotten what the hell he managed to produce in the mid-80s and part of the 90s?! Yes yes... don't worry, there's also a nod to the "youngsters" with the speeded-up quasi-rap of "Incense And Candles," but it certainly doesn't serve to rejuvenate it all. And after all, how could it be with arrangements like those (frankly embarrassing and monolithic) of the track "Love," blatantly heard at least for 30 years with a keyboard similar to Bontempi counterpointing a bass and drum line, which sounds as dated as a press release from Emilio Fede from last year.
And I am not completely "Satisfied" with this track either, which at least recovers the patterns of classic black songs with "classic" and standard arrangements in its forced placement as a soul evergreen. Let's say it saves itself but in extra time. Even "Fury" seems to me an improvised wagon put together however possible, that greatly recalls ("quotes the 80s... didn't you get it that it quotes?" the usual die-hard fans in their soundproof bell jar would say with the inquisitive finger) dozens of other songs by him.

Pure shit? I reiterate no... the record can be listened to like a mommy's sermon that as a verbal sermon, one always listens to with a benevolent smile of condescension to then do whatever the hell we like. It's there, it's pleasant to hear but I already know WHAT and HOW it is said... hot air, in short.
With "The Word," we are at the usual... cute (with a small final yawn).
"Beautiful, Loved & Blessed" is the usual "Prince-like" ballad, not to mention the slop of "The Dance" which only has the merit of throwing us off (the title foresaw all dance and booty shaking and instead... here you go!! Perhaps the ONLY REAL SURPRISE of this album). The album bids farewell with the pathetic imitation of James Brown in the track "Get On The Boat" where everything, absolutely everything, is quoted to the letter: horns, backing vocals, breaks, and I don't doubt that on stage, the Little Black Prince will delight us with splits and steps identical to the old Sex Machine (who knows if by then he will have grown as fat as the 70-year-old greased dancer...).

What to say...oh yes, you can dance, it moves your ass, sure, and who says otherwise, we are in the small garden of ?Dance Old Style? with few more crumbs of fantasy but don’t start talking to me about the "Minneapolis genius" or other bullshit clichés I've been hearing for 20 years.
This remains an album that brings us back a Joker&Craftsman Prince now in the grip of a caricature of himself, scraping everything there is to scrape. There's the need to cite the 80s SOOO much in fashion - as taught by Ciccone Dalgranculone? Well... forward with the citation!! Lacking inspiration for an arrangement? No problem...let's recycle from the heroic past!! Need a very classic soul track to give "tone"? Recover James Brown... and this way forward!
In short, and to make it brief, what is missing is novelty, the taste for excess, the jazz digressions of some of his pieces, the zappian originality of some arrangements, the madness of some of his releases, if we want, even extracurricular.
You may feel differently, but I miss Prince, folks, but the "real one."
Keep this "luxury sellout" put back on its back by the current Major, keep the 80s nightclub shimmying dances and his "clone-tracks" of great craftsmanship.
Instead, give me back the nonconformist and wild Prince I knew, the showman who loved to challenge himself with each album, and each track was half an enigma, EP, triple album, or Black Album as it might be.
As for this "golden retiree of funk/rock," for what it's worth, he could very well end it here. Maybe delivering a TRUE classic masterpiece made from the heart or, at worst (at best) with a mad, brilliant gesture, worthy of his past... maybe launched from the 3121st floor of a skyscraper or why not, hanged with the jack of his guitar!

Yes... PRINCE SHOULD END IT HERE.
End it like a Hero and not as a good Craftsman (close to retirement) singing his hits on cruise ships for bored and married oil millionaires.

It would be an impeccably heroic (or hanging) gesture, a true icon of rock/soul (like Jim Morrison or Hendrix, to understand), perhaps the "last" thing he really has left to do to enter the Myth. Forever.
Si u ledar.
Your, Lesto.