Diamonds and POLLS - Prince and the NPG's "Diamonds and Pearls"

I only ever want to hear "Cream" and "Gett Off"; the rest ranges from forgettable to actively irritating.

"Cream" is awesome, but I think I'm gonna vote "Willing and Able", because it has such a great groove. Agree that this one of his weakest albums.

get off

t

oh man Jughead

still like the title track, preferred that housey mix of 'Gett Off' with the extra flute

Thought it was his best since '87 at the time, but of course haven't played it in forever. What I mostly recall are little instrumental bits, like the electric sitar in "Thunder" and the psychedelic touches of "Live For Love". "Gett Off" was my favourite flute-driven single since "The Hustle", but "Daddy Pop" was my favourite at the time, so I might go with that.

As often happens, this poll makes me want to revisit the album tonight, and probably will.

outside of gett off this album is pretty much garbage.

Cream. Just dropped it at a house party on Saturday. People forget about how great that shit is.

Doesn't matter which one I like the most - had to go with "Gett Off" because it was the first dance at my wedding.

this is one of the first cds i ever bought. but i only remember the singles. they are all pretty great.

gotta go with Cream.

"Money Don't Matter 2 Night" has such a nice, slinky, David Paich-worthy groove.

It's a boring choice but "Gett Off" is excellent.

Voted "Cream." "Jughead" is pitiful, a very active candidate for worst piece of music he ever released under his own name. "Strollin'" is nearly as awful. I'd have felt betrayed when this came out but there was so much else going on in music that it hardly mattered.

I think the album version "Gett Off" suffers from the fact that it's basically just the 12" mix that fades out in the middle of the tune. Usually the 12" versions and album versions of Prince songs are different enough that both work on their own, but the album version of "Gett Off" is simply a cut version of the superior 12" mix.

<3 "Money Don't Matter 2 Night"

"Cream" is the incredibly vanilla choice but come on, it's SO. FUCKING. AWES.

get off the original promo version is better than the official one.

id keep these:
diamonds and pearls
cream
strolling (even tho its inane)
walk dont walk
money dont matter
insatiable

if you can get rid of tony m on these ones, id keep them too:
"Daddy Pop" – 5:17
"Willing and Able" (Prince, Levi Seacer, Jr., Tony Mosley) – 5:00
"Live 4 Love" (Prince, Tony Mosley) – 6:59

Goin' with "Gett Off," despite its flagrant spelling error.

Prince had already released a B side called "Get Off", maybe he didn't want the two to be mixed up, hence the double T?

Could very well be, T.

http://i114.photobucket.com/albums/n276/squirrelgrease/Prince12InchCovers/GettOffBDay1.jpg

title track

D TO THE I TO THE A TO THE M

why are we continuing to perpetrate the Geir POLL title heresy

"Gett Off" is one of those 45s that sound really fun and nasty when slowed to 33 1/3.

"Money Don't Matter 2 Night".

Is it possible for Gett Off not to win?

money don't matter. such a cool groove. chill in or out. whatever. i quite liked this album when it came out.

Voted Cream bcuz I don't like the idea of Gett Off taking it.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Always had a liking for Strollin and Willing and Able. But voted for Money slightly over Cream.

Prince claims to have written Cream while looking at himself in the mirror, so it gets my vote, for being yet another batshit awesome Prince moment.

not only do i believe that story, i'm guessing it's his normal songwriting routine.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Whoa! Lookit second place!

Only one vote for a non-single.

voted for "Money" but i gotta say i've really come to appreciate the title track over the years

Damn, I knew I should have voted for "Strollin'."

I love that "Cream" is basically T-Rex.

ppl really like "money doesn't matter 2 night" that much? huh

only prince could pull of a t-rex tribute that as sexy/if not sexier than t-rex at their sexiest

"Strollin" underrated. I like the first two NPG albums, always felt like TGE has a lot of great stuff but the hip-hoppy tracks were so horribly dated sounding even 5 years after they came out. I skip those each time.

I remember the symbol album being better than this one.

Yeah, it's definitely better. D&P has more generic filler, the last 5 tunes are pretty much all skippable.

this is a lousy Prince album. the singles are good though especially the title track.

got The Gold Experience for $5 on saturday. Owned it in the 90s. It's better than the other early 90s prince stuff but tbrr it's just 'good'. There are almost none of those "whoa" moments in the arrangements that are such a part of Princedom. And the synths all sound soooo hollow and thin. It's just too conventional. It could almost be Lenny Kravitz's best record, which...

I'll stick with The Undertaker bootleg for these songs.

Money Don't Matter 2 Night skippable wtf

There are almost none of those "whoa" moments in the arrangements that are such a part of Princedom.

I think you need to relisten to the second verse of "The Most Beautiful Girl in the World"

Tbh I want to give this album more of a pass than it deserves; it was an interesting era even if music didnt always back it up....and it came out on my birthday

otm. that falsetto he goes into, the cheesy baritone spoken word, right into him riffing on that baritone line at the end.....pure gold.

also the title track is amazing as well. I just hate how dated some of the hip-hop tracks sound.

otoh, most of this album is terrible

I LIKE STROLLIN AND DADDY POP GODDAMMIT

The Gold Experience for $5 on saturday. Owned it in the 90s. It's better than the other early 90s prince stuff but tbrr it's just 'good'. There are almost none of those "whoa" moments in the arrangements that are such a part of Princedom. And the synths all sound soooo hollow and thin. It's just too conventional. It could almost be Lenny Kravitz's best record, which…

That the keys sound conventional, and the rhythms too, I'll grant. But listen to "P Control."

Gettin' busy G, kickin' the jughead

"Jughead" is worse than every single track on The Rainbow Children

probably

Rainbow Children is a really weird record, kind of his last major detour/flight of fancy before deciding he wanted to try and get back into the pop/public eye

D&P sounds better if it's the first proper Prince album you'd bought. I only owned GB so I looked forward to D&P; plus, it was nice to hear Prince on pop radio again. But nothing can redeem "Jughead" or "Live 4 Love."

D&P sounds better if it's the first proper Prince album you'd bought

o_O I mean okay, I grew up near the Twin Cities and I'm old but I can't comprehend how D&P can be the first Prince album of anyone in their mid-to-late 30s

I know that's mostly because I'm old but still

I was 16 so

I knew all his hits and bought GB the year before but dat's dat

my first was Controversy when I was 8 (thanks to an older brother, but my dad would have bought it had he heard it first)

1999 made prince omnipresent in my preteen audio universe

surprised no votes for "Insatiable," which still gets quiet storm R&B play.

"P Control" is undeniable, it's true, so is "Billy Jack Bitch," but "Dolphin" is nowhere near the level a Prince song about being reincarnated as a sensualist marine mammal should be

sorry for Gold Experience derail today

well "Dolphin" is terrible, it's okay to acknowledge that

it just seems like such a winning proposition

idk at least he sounds like he's having actual fun

I'd have to listen to it again but one of the reasons I hated "Dolphin" so much initially was because it made the absurd premise seem so dull and passe

i think "gold" was the first prince song i ever consciously heard as prince ("1999" was always peripheral, and when i first heard "when doves cry" at around age 7 i thought it was some bizarre fake michael jackson song) so i have a lot of room in my heart for the gold experience and think it's nearly as good as the love symbol album, which imo is overstuffed but one of my favorite prince albums, i'm shifting in my seat just remembering the groove of "love 2 the 9s".

diamonds and pearls does kinda suck

i haven't heard symbol album in forever. No idea what I would think of it now.

It has its own doldrums but the high points are ridiculously high. Also the ending suite is hilarious.

Funny -- I spent yesterday listening to the excellent first disc of Emancipation. Prince's 1992-96 output >>>> 88-92

i disagree semi-aggressively alfred because lovesexy is maybe my second favorite prince record (sorry) but i agree the first disc of emancipation and scattered songs through the remainder are tops

also a flaw in my narrative a few posts back is i definitely owned the batman soundtrack as a kid, but mostly for batman and not for prince

man I've wanted a Lovesexy defense for ever.

and now I'm going to work out and listen to "Blue Light."

Lovesexy is mostly great, my only negatives for it are a) the title track doesn't work; and b) the CD was mastered as a continuous track and that's super fucking annoying

Dan otm its a v solid record

Good discussion of all these records: parade -vs- lovesexy

I was dreading the whole one-track deal on Lovesexy and was pleasantly surprised that my copy has the tracks separated

then again 4 of the 5 songs I like are the first 4 so maybe wouldn't've been the biggest deal

title track is my favorite thing on there too

"Alphabet St" and "Glam Sexy" are OK -- nothing he hasn't done already. I tend to forget I like "Alphabet St," if that makes sense.

yeah i think lovesexy flows gorgeously as an album and the first five and final three songs are basically my favorite prince songs, agreed that the title track doesn't really work but i don't mind

my favorite prince album is parade which doesn't flow gorgeously and in fact works on a kind of anti-flow, which i love

yeah Parade is great all-around

weirdly I like that and Lovesexy more than his more famous albums around that era, dunno why, just click more for me

Parade is still my favorite album by him

The singles are all amazing and "Sometimes It Snows In April" is so devastating that I have problems listening to it

also Alfred did you mean "Glam Slam" or is there a mashup out there that I'm unaware of

"Alphabet St" pwns

stupid phone auto-fill

Eye No, Dance On, Alphabet St, When 2 R in Love and Glam Slam all fucking slay. The one long track thing is stupid and a hindrance; I found a cuesheet online which allowed me to split the one long WAV into separate tracks using Xact Audio.

I kind of like Batman these days. Again, it's at least genuine fun for Prince even if it isn't always for us. Graffiti Bridge sucks-- 'Joy in Repetition' needs to be heard in live recordings.

I like the Graffiti Bridge song that sounds like "My Prerogative"

the title track?

I might like 'Elephants and Flowers' i just cannot remember

suffering is a waste of time; prince is all that matters

actually, it's New Power Generation

I take back what I said about Gold Exp. I really needed to listen to it two days in a row like this. This is good stuff.

I find the Gold Experience begins and ends well.....some stuff in the middle im not keen on but mostly solid

Money Don't Matter 2 Night is A++

"Insatiable" – 6:39 0

wha

A staple of quiet storm programming, that one

a poll of those later (post-lovesexy let's say) boner jams that blew up on bet and r&b radio but had pretty much zero crossover might be worthwhile

Man the title track is so bad.

No U are

Jk I'm emotional

Looks like this will be the next big deluxe release.

I like the album a lot though it's too long. Def his best 90s album.

Daddy Pop got a bit stiffed.

Stunned I still know our Tony m rap from daddy pop off by heart

A shorter version of this works nicely as I never need to hear some of it again.

Gett off, cream, d&p, strolling, willing n able, daddy pop, walk dont walk, insatiable, money dont matter, live 4 love.

It is not his best '90s album, come on.

It's often terrible, and most of his '90s albums not Rave Un2 the Joy Fantastic are way better balanced than this farrago.

I'd put gett off, cream, d&p, insatiable as some of his best 90s work. This is like his let's dance.

Rave has eye love u but I dont trust you on it at least.

Don't care for "Gett Off" -- forced sexiness. I'll sub "Walk Don't Walk" and "Strollin'," minor entries in the canon.

He did 'weary' really well; Money Don't Matter 2 Night is weary, maybe like Sign O The Times is, or similar anyway.

my favorite single

Money dont matter is good. I'll take get offs forced sex talk over sexy mf.

He should thank rosie Gaines for money dont matter. Doubt he could have cone up with that without her.

Come > Diamonds and Pearls

otm

"Gett Off" -- forced sexiness.

I actually think "Gett Off" is one of his absolutely funniest songs.

So here we, so here we, so here we are, here we are in my paisley crib
Whatcha want to eat? Ribs ha, toy, I don't serve ribs
You better be happy that dress is still on
I heard the rip when you sat down

Vs.

Hey yo fat girl, c'mere--are ya ticklish?
Yeah, I called ya fat; look at me, I'm skinny
It never stopped me from getting busy
I'm a freak, I like the girls with the boom
I once got busy in a Burger King bathroom

Get off isnt really funny
It lacks the joy of humpty dance

Only hardcore prince fans think come is better than diamonds n pearls. Come is a cool album, but it's a mix of the good (dark, pheremone), the middle of the road (space), the terrible (race), and some cool curios (papa, loose which is like Bowie doing techno, DNb and rock a few years later) and another dumb autopilot sex song (come, though the horns are glorious)

Get off is actually kinda menacing in a sense.

'You better be happy that dress is still on
I heard the rip when you sat down'

That sounds like a threat.

That's no threat. Their butt is just too big.