Publication: The Daily Telegraph [UK]
Date: March 14, 1998
Section:
Page Number(s):
Length:
Title: "Formerly Reviews Pop CD of the Week"
Reviewed By: Neil McCormick

Squiggle Crystal Ball (NPG/Pinnacle) OK, LET me get this straight: I shall be referring to him as Prince throughout this review, as that is his name. Prince Rogers Nelson, to be precise, although given that his parents saddled him with a moniker that makes him sound more like an alsatian than a funky superstar, perhaps it is no surprise he has changed it so often. He has traded as a symbol (of his own invention); as The Artist Formerly Known As Prince; as Victor, inexplicably; and, during a lengthy dispute with his record company, Warner Brothers, he took to calling himself SLAVE, insisting he was exploited and abused (presumably as only a multi-millionaire pop star can be). The problem stemmed from Warner's refusal to release all the music he recorded. Prince has always been prolific, both as a multi-instrumentalist beavering away in his home studio and as a band leader concocting semi-improvised jams in regular sessions with various ensembles. He has released 22 albums since his debut in 1978, many of them double and even triple sets, yet his stockpile of tapes has reached legendary proportions. Warner's were concerned about flooding the market. Prince just wanted his music out. Since parting from Warners in 1996, Prince has been free to follow his own idiosyncratic path. Something of a proselytiser for the information super highway, he announced he would open the doors to his vaults over the Internet. The four-CD Crystal Ball set was made available to fans only through his Love4oneanother website, with the caveat that it would go on general release if he received more than 100,000 orders. Well, either he got to the magic figure or his wife started complaining about the piles of unsold CDs cluttering up the mansion, because here it is: 30 tracks spanning 14 years (from 1983 to 1997), everything you never wanted to know about what Prince gets up to in his spare time. Which turns out to be endlessly noodling aroundwith half a musical idea in his head and yelping over interminable jams in which the musicians sound like they're intent on having a good time even if no one else is. Some of Crystal Ball is excellent. Get Loose is a prototype big beat instrumental, 18 & Over a slinky pop chant undone by vacuous lyrical content ("18 and over, I want to bone ya", if you must know) and Days of Wild is a punchy epic featuring typically profound musings about human relationships ("A woman every day should be thanked / Not disrespected, not raped or spanked"). And there is more besides but it is interspersed with such chaff as Cloreen Bacon Skin, which is just Prince jamming on bass and talking in a silly voice (a feature of many of these tracks) and Strays of the World, a melodramatic Broadway show pastiche. Frankly, it all gets a little tiresome. Far more easily digestible is The Truth, a bonus CD featuring Prince in acoustic mode on 12 new songs. Working out inventive acoustic arrangements and forced to rely only on the quality of his singing and playing, this is the best thing he has done in years. Perhaps it is because he is once again rising to a challenge rather than retreading familiar waters. A legend in his own studio time, Prince appears to have trouble comprehending that everything he does is not endlessly interesting to others. While many of these tracks may have sounded fresh in the Eighties, the squeaky keyboards, syncopated riffs and Prince's obsession with the contents of his own navel all sound more than a little dated now. It is too much, too late.