Sunday, July 18, 2010

Review: Prince - 20ten (2010)


Release Date: July 10
Length: 39:18
Genre: Funk, Rock, Pop

Other than George Clinton, I've always considered Prince to be a 'king of funk', having the greatness of 1984's Purple Rain along with his long lasting career to attest to this. One of the things I've admired so much about his work is that he seems to keep his overall style (in most respects) as it did in the 80's, even as music moved forward. Somehow though, I feel his refusal to change is what allowed his music to stay really, really fresh (fine, much of his work has been pretty mediocre lately, but I am referring to his total career since 1990-...oh, shut up).

20ten acts as a follow-up to 2009's lackluster Lotusflow3r, and is Prince's twenty-seventh studio album. The album released by unconventional means, being sold with copies of European magazines as a free cover mount, after making the interesting declaration that "the internet is totally over", and refuses to provide the album over download (even though it has failed to prevent other people from uploading said album). Unsurprisingly, on the day the album was included in these publications, sales of UK's The Daily Mirror and The Daily Record increased by 334,000 and 45,000 copies respectively. My hopes for the album dwindled as I had realized that his style of release would be a great way to bring attention to an album that is otherwise poor. All I can say to that is...

I had nothing to worry about.

In regards to Prince's current talent, 20ten acts as proof that he's still got it. Combining his heavily improved instrumentals and his style of always being laid back(regardless of volume or tone), this album can be seriously argued as Prince's best outing since 1987's The Black Album

As I've said earlier, Prince fails to comply with the demands of today's popular music, and chooses to remain in the decade of his (arguably) greatest successes. Seriously, some of the guitar parts here (especially Act of God) sounds like they come straight out of a montage in a buddy cop film. The other songs have differing styles of funk. The opening, Compassion, has more of a pop flavor to it, while still maintaining funk elements to it. Meanwhile, Future Soul Song is a relaxing piece with an overlapping feel of adult contemporary, simultaneously featuring some brilliant rhythm with chimes galore. That's not to say Prince doesn't have a good bit of traditional funk rock though. Sticky Like Glue picks up where the previous song left off to have a quick couple of funk-contemporary based verses before going straight off into a dictionary definition of well-done funk music (although he does leave traces of hip hop in these parts). This is really only the first half of the album, as the second half has songs such as Sea of Everything, acting as a funky love letter to fans of his earlier work (the album even has that out-of-place, weird, really catchy song!).

I find Prince to be a bit like Michael Jackson, style wise. While Michael Jackson music starts as awesome pop which dips its toes into other genres such as funk, soul, and rock once in a while, Prince music starts as funk which has a tendency to find its way into the pop genre now and again. In this sense, 20ten sounds like a backwards Michael Jackson album (or Invincible sounds like a backwards Prince album, your pick really). However, also like Michael Jackson, Prince can be damn lazy at hiding filler songs inside of his albums. Songs like Lavaux and Beginning Endlessly sound like B-sides that were thrown into the album to give it a longer length. It's not like they're bad. They just have an underlying aftertaste of 'meh'.

If you've never listened to Prince, this might be a good place to start (Not as good as Purple Rain or the controversy era, though). If you want a new album which you will surely enjoy on at least some level, this might, however, be it. 20ten is a damn good album that uses classic funk with a tad of fusion to tiptoe the border between "good" and "great". While there is technically no way for me to recommend that you download this album, I'm not telling you not to.

Grade: B+
Notable Songs: Sticky Like Glue, Act of God, Future Soul Song, Sea of Everything, Everybody Loves Me

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