New Power Soul (NPG) - Prince (CD 1998)

Every time I listen to Prince's 1998 record NEW POWER SOUL, that's 1 hour and 3 minutes of my life I'll never get back.

That probably sounds bad, doesn't it? It's meant to. I've been listening to Prince since 1987 and in 1990 I went back and bought all the records I'd missed up to that point, so if I know any music in the world, it's Prince, and whatever it is on this record, it ain't Prince. Oh, it TRIES to be Prince, with twisted around lyrics ("Every while in a great once / There comes to town a show / That lives up to all you're funkspectations / No matter how high or low" from the title track) and beats and ballads, but this isn't the Prince I've pledged my allegiance to. It's almost like he decided to put together all the lesser tracks from other albums and release them as one; on any other album these songs would have been at the bottom of the lot, but they wouldn't have stood out as bad. But you put them together all on one album and you know something's missing, something PRINCE.

Of the 11 tracks (plus there's the hidden "wasted kisses"), 6 sound like they could have all come from the same beat program, while the slower "jams" ("Until U're in My Arms Again" and "Shoo-Bed-Ooh") are also eerily similar. What is he sampling himself now? And look at these titles. Is it just me, or is "Until U're in My Arms Again" very much like EMANCIPATION's "Right Back Here in My Arms"? Who titles a song "Shoo-Bed-Ooh" other than Babyface? "Push It UP!" Yeah, that gets me all fired up. Wake me up when the party's 'bout to be started, aiight?

And please, for the sake of everyone who ever thinks of buying another Prince album, it's okay to put a mini-rap in the middle of a good song here and there, but not almost every song on the album. NEW POWER SOUL has raps in the middle of 4 or 5 (that come to mind right now without listening to it all again), and that's about half the record.

Of the songs that sound alike, 3 even have the same party theme. "Push It Up!", "Freaks on This Side" and "(I Like) Funky Music" could all be different versions of one big Prince party anthem, with their similar beat, the background chanting "(Push it up, push it up", or "Freaks on this side, the freaks on this side", or "I like funky music, I like funky music" chanted by a big crowd of people meant, I assume, to make ME feel like getting up and dancing, but that's just not the affect. What I get is Prince trying to inject some energy into a record that was in fact dead before it was born. The liner notes say "conceived and born at Paisley Park bathed and circumcised by (symbol) & Hans-Martin Buff graduation ceremony performed by Brian Gardner @ Bernie Grundman", but he ain't foolin' me--this album was a stillbirth).

All this negative talk may seem like there's nothing good bout NEW POWER SOUL, but that's not all true.

"Shoo-Bed-Ooh" has a few cool lyrics, ("The answer to the question of life is a grey-haired b!tch at least / Suckin' on the ebony dancer in between these dirty sheets / Spittin' out the aftertaste of a boy who might not call again / If this is the game you stood in line for, how you gonna win?"), and "Push it Up!" has a cool groove with Prince in a deeper voice ("Negativity like gravity, gotcha fallin' fast from reality"), and there is the one good song, "Come On".

This song's got such a laid back, easy groove in the bass, you can't help but sway when it's on. There's no mid-song rap, no background chants, just a slow and easy vibe, a cool-a$$ bottleneck slide part in the middle, and a few great lines ("20 days in London / And you ain't gimme no love / Could it be another brotherman / That you're thinkin' of / Or could it be your girlfriend / Who never ever been straight / When I ask you are you hungry / You say you already ate / You can play me if you wanna / But you better let me know / I don't need to play the good licks if there ain't gonna be no show / I'm better off sleepin' with my guitar / If you ain't gonna sing / Strapped to the body / Makin' love to the strings")

And then there's the hidden track, #49, "wasted kisses", a quiet, subdued groove with Prince almost sighing the lyrics ("Why do I waste my kisses on you, baby?"), this is the simple seduction song this record's been missing because God knows the one true ballad, "The One" is NOT the song to win over the ladies, with lines like " If you're lookin' for a man that'll make big money and keep it all to himself, I ain't the one / If you're lookin' for a man that'll have 10 women and confuse it all with his wealth, I ain't that one / But if you're lookin' for a man who can share his denaro and buy you half the town" . . . "Look no further, your man's around / He's standing right here". Whatever.

No, it's not all bad, there are the bright spots here and there, a groove in this song, a lyric in this one, a good funk in another, or what have you, but in relation to all the records that have come before, NEW POWER SOUL falls flat. Hell, there's not even a spiritual song on here, what's up with that? No sexy pillow-talk ballad. No bass-driven funk. And no Prince guitar solos. Non-fans will listen to this and remember why they're not Prince fans in the first place, but those of us who are big time fans, we just wonder what happened to him, why he released this record which was obviously NOT finished, and why he chose THIS record to do all the promotion on. I saw him on the Today show AND Jay Leno promoting NEW POWER SOUL. Why couldn't he have done that with LOVESEXY or AROUND THE WORLD IN A DAY? No, he picks this one. It's just sad, that's all.