goodolmike | Sep. 3rd, 2010

I'm a big Prince fan, but I used to be a huge Prince fan. Through high school, I collected his entire catalog. That's a lot of albums. Plus, a bunch of very cool singles. Remember CD singles, omg...

Over time, of course, the quality of his work has diminished. The new album, 20ten, is meh to the max.

Very randomly this morning, I grabbed a Prince cd from my special Prince rack and listened to it in the car.

The Black Album

Quick history. The Black Album came out at the very end of the 90's. It was meant to be the follow up to his groundbreaking, post-Wendy-and-Lisa, Sign O the Times. But as legend has it, shortly before it was released, Prince had a spritual vision and shut down the release of the album. He instead released Lovesexy, which is all about "God is Love, Love is God, Girls and Boys Love God Above" but does retain one song from The Black Album, When 2 R in Love.

So, I was listening to it this morning, and remembering how funky and fun prince is capable of getting. Nothing grand or overly emotional like Purple Rain. Instead, there a song about wanting to have sex with Cindy Crawford (Hey, it was the 90's. Plus, this was back when Uncle Princey still had a sex drive.), a song called le Grind and a weird skit song called Bob George, featuring the lines "Prince? Ain't that a bitch? That skinny motherfucker with the high voice?" and "B-O-B, spell the shit backwards, what'd it say. Same motherfuckin' shit." (Note: Today's Prince doesn't even use curse words anymore.)

The Black Album immediately became the most popular and legendary Prince bootleg, eventually rivaled by Crystal Ball. Both albums, over time, were officially released (sort of) by Warner Brothers during the big Prince/WB publishing rights ordeal.

YOU should check it out some time.

I also listened to this, recently posted by Mr brunorepublic. Love it!