3121

This album has one of the clunkiest Prince tracks I've ever heard. Which is a shame as the rest of it is top quality. Musicology was the first time Prince was relevant to the mainstream since the Symbol album, and 3121 promises to attract as much appreciation if not more.

It opens with a killer dance track that recasts Hotel California as a kind of urban hipster paradise. Prince announces that the party is here and now and you better shake your ass. The less said about the second track the better. The first track to appear back in December was Te Amo Corazon with an appropriately lush video, directed by Salma Hayek. This is as good or better than the once omnipresent 7 and is possibly his best ballad in twenty years. The new single, Black Sweat, is a great minimalist dance track that combines aural aesthetic of Kiss with passion of I Would Die 4 U. Also accompanied by a killer video this one gets my head bouncing instantly.

The lyrics reflect a more mature Prince. Sure, there's still plenty of sensuality and sexuality and a healthy dose of spirituality. But there's an explicit rejection of the casual sex and sex as competitive sport mindset that was so prominent in the 80's and early 90's work. I know a lot of people have been turned off by his conversion to Jehovah's Witness. There have been plenty of complaints that his lyrics now reflect that theological viewpoint. I seem to recall a pretty heavy presence of sectarian Christian text on every album since about 1979. The fairly generic invocations of religious ideals on 3121 won't even be noticed by most people I would suspect. And I don't personally mind music with a religious message, provided the music is good.And it is good. Heavy on the R&B, falsetto, and slow jams, Prince is in fine form as a composer and performer.