Publication: New York Daily News [US]
Date: January 13, 1997
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Title: "Reclaiming The Crown"
Reviewed By: Jim Farber

Happy with music again, the former Prince reins his grooves into a tight explosive show.

The Artist everyone should still call Prince dubbed his Saturday Roseland concert an "emancipation celebration". But it liberated him in more ways than he may have intended.

On the surface, the show served as the local pit stop on Prince's first tour since springing from his contract with Warner Bros.--which, as the world knows, he felt reduced him to a slave. Yet this performance did far more than simply present a happier man than we've seen in his last few shows, or heard on his compromised, final Warners releases.

It freed Prince of all the indulgence, loopiness and pretention that infected his most recent New York shows or, at times, kept from the city entirely. Saturday maked on the third time this decade the funkateer has officially played New YOrk, following a July '94 show at the Palladium and a March '93 event at Radio City. (Before that, you have to go back to the "Lovesexy" tour of '88 at The Garden.)

At each of those shows, Prince violated his most inspired musical passages with rambling solos and unfocused grooves. But this 110-minute preformance proved seamless, rhythmically ideal. The star didn't shower the crowd with hits--just a truncated version of "Purple Rain" here, a lick of "Raspberry Beret" or "Scandalous" there. But the older songs that turned up felt untrampled, while the newer ones, mainly from the surprisingly strong new triple CD "Emancipation" LP, more than held their own.

As with most Prince shows, the star aimed to tear down the wall between pop song and jam, letting melodies veer off into ever-evolving grooves. It's a tricky thing to bring off, but Prince and his band never lost the beat. A number like the opening "Jam Of The Year" peeled away from its main Curtis Mayfield-style lilts to run through a maze of riffs--tighter, then looser, then constricted again. The new "Face Down" slammed through a twist of burning riffs, so comfortable in their discipline they felt freshly tossed-off.

The star employed a new, smaller New Power Generation band. Banished were the rappers, horns and secondary voices (like Rosie Gaines). But this tighter five-piece used the spareness to its muscular advantage. And there were always tapes to fill in things like the horn parts in "Sexy MF."

Such party-time funk pieces dominated the show, a point emphasized by Prince's amazingly fleet dancing, rife with splits and humping. But the star also found time to hit more sober emotions. A version of 1987's "The Cross" showed far more depth than usual, while 1981's "Do Me Baby" showcased his most heavenly falsetto--and made a great case for filthy sex as its own sacred act.

Of course, at a show this grounded in the groove, material mattered less than its motion. And with Prince's sense of momentum firmly in place, and enough piece of mind to let his natural charisma flow, the star wiped away his recent fruitcake image to re-emerge as one of pop's creative titans.