Black is Beautiful

[goodolmike]

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!

Oh, and I'm wearing black today.

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Comments

[brunorepublic.livejournal.com]

IIRC, The Black Album finally got a limited release not because of Prince's soon-to-be-epic dispute with Warner, but basically to stop the bootlegging of it and maybe hush all the people who were clamouring for it. As you noted, in the time between it's aborted release and legit reissue, it had taken on near-mythical status as A Great Lost Album. Just shows that one of the best ways to create a demand for something is to tell people they can't have it.

I remember it was announced it would be a limited-time release which would be deleted at the end of the year (which it was). Still, this was ample time for everyone who wanted a copy to get one. It's as if the purple one relented and said "Alright, alright, here it is, now can everyone just shut up and forget about it already?"

[50poundnote.livejournal.com]

I got a vinyl copy sometime around '90. It was taken from a dub of a dub of a cassette, so everything was sped up a full tone. When I heard the mastering on the official CD I kept thinking "this doesn't sound right."

I love The Black Album.

[brunorepublic.livejournal.com]

Are there any (intentional) differences between the bootleg and the legit issue? I've read that there are some differences between the two, but I can't find anything on what they supposedly are.

[50poundnote.livejournal.com]

I don't recall any, honestly.

[goodolmike.livejournal.com]

I remember buying the official version, hoping it would be different, but I remember it sounding the same. Only, you know, better quality...