Prince – Lotus Flow3r/MPLSOUND

His obsession with terrible cover art continues...

Let’s get right to it, then: this is Prince’s best album in over a decade. It’s as interesting and ambitious as The Rainbow Children, but lacks that record’s annoying “Darth Vader narrations.” It also has better lyrics, for the most part — sure, there’s still plenty of spiritual and political dialogue (most prominent on tracks such as “Colonized Mind”), but these elements are not as focused – or insufferable – as they have been on some of his recent work.

It’s still a flawed album, but endearingly so. It’s more Sign O’ the Times than Crystal Ball. It feels like a record that time will be kind to — something you’ll actually want to revisit, which is more than can be said for Planet Earth and much of his other output over the course of the past ten years or so.

Stand-out tracks are: “Colonized Mind,” a trippy racially-conscious ballad; “Dreamer,” which features Prince bringing Jimi Hendrix back from the dead to assault our senses; “Ol’ Skool Company,” an r&b condemnation of the rap industry (telling posers with grills to step to the side); “Feel Better, Feel Good, Feel Wonderful,” a James Brown style jam; and finally, a wonderful cover of “Crimson & Clover,” which is apparently only included with physical copies of the album. It’s as interesting and unique a cover as his rendition of “Creep” at Coachella two years ago was.

It’s not a perfect album, nor is it on the same level as Purple Rain, 1999 or any of his other masterpieces — but then again, few albums are. It’s just Prince doing what he does best.

NOTE: I’m reviewing Lotusflow3r and MPLSOUND as one complete album. They are stylistically different (Lotus following his recent Hendrix fixation and MPL a return to his old pop roots, albeit with plenty of autotune, which actually wasn’t nearly as bad as I expected it to be), but taken together, the two discs form a nice package. I’m totally omitting the Bria Valente Elixir offering, because – though it was almost single-handedly produced and arranged by Prince – it’s not a Prince record and based on what little I heard from it, I’m happy to pretend it doesn’t exist.

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