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Minneapolis Star Tribune [US] - October 11, 1992
"Prince Album Is A Royal Disappointment"
Written By - Jon Bream

For his first album under his new king-sized contract with Warner Bros. Records, Prince has put together what he describes as a "rock soap opera."

Musically this soap features regal references to a King (as in Nat Cole), a Queen (as in the British rock group led by the late Freddie Mercury) and a Duke (as in Ellington). But mostly it's Prince trying to establish himself as the king of hip-hop.

The "libretto" of this long-winded, 16-song, nearly 80-minute album, due in stores Tuesday, is about as flimsy as the plots of Prince's films "Graffiti Bridge" and "Under the Cherry Moon." The opera chronicles Prince courting a 16-year-old princess from Cairo, Egypt.

The album - the only title given is a stylized insignia merging the symbols for man and woman - is, in a word, uneventful.

The Minneapolis rock star reportedly will reveal the name of the title symbol in the 16th and final music video he'll make for this project. In the meantime, let's call the album "Love."

"Love" lacks the made-for-radio savoir faire of last year's best-selling "Diamonds and Pearls," the ambition of 1987's "Sign o' the Times" and 1984's "Purple Rain" (the latter arguably his best two albums), the focus of the double-disc soundtrack to 1990's "Graffiti Bridge" and the inventiveness of Prince's early albums. Above all, "Love" sounds like a PG-13, hip-hop-oriented sequel to "The Black Album," Prince's boldly sexual album from 1987, which was never released but was widely bootlegged.

"Love" is the prolific Prince's most derivative-sounding album. The opening "My Name Is Prince, " his current single, is teeming with the hip-hop attitude of self-importance spouted by rappers for the past 10 years. Raps - some by Prince, others by Tony M. of the New Power Generation - crop up unexpectedly in several songs. Prince used to be hip; now he's just another hip-hopper.

In the past, Prince was one of popular music's most tantalizing impressionists, assimilating musical ideas from various sources and putting his own stamp on new material. But here, he blatantly borrows from Queen on the silly, bombastic "3 Chains o' Gold"; he does a bad Billy Joel impression on "The Morning Papers," and he explores the beat-jazz pop of Rickie Lee Jones on "Love 2 the 9's" before getting carried away with a rap.

Admirably, Prince evokes Ellington at the end of "And God Created Woman" and in the varied orchestration of "Sexy MF," the controversial, insinuating, jazz-funk track that reportedly will appear in X- and PG-rated versions in two different editions of this album.

Other derivative numbers provide some of the most satisfying moments on "Love." "Damn U," a classic sophisticated jazz-pop ballad, is pure Nat King Cole. "I Wanna Melt with You," a nasty dance-groove workout, sounds as if it was done by an updated Time, the group Prince started around Morris Day.

"Love" has the potential to be a funky R&B party album with "Melt," "My Name Is Prince, " "Sexy MF" and "The Max" certain to keep people dancing. It also includes some of Prince's typically remarkable ballads, including the pretty "Sweet Baby" and "Damn U."

The album showcases the self-indulgent side of Prince, who even essays reggae for the first time on record with "Blue Light," a soulful vocal number. Prince's most indulgent selection, the closing "Sacrifice of Victor," may be the album's quintessential piece. It begins with Kirstie Alley, playing a journalist, on the telephone trying to interview Prince about his widely reported affair with a young princess of Cairo. Alley wants him to the tell the truth, but he confounds her with mysticism and then churns out a furious funk (George Clinton meets James Brown at Paisley Park) that finds Prince singing about school integration, brotherhood and the importance of education, as preached to him by his real-life surrogate mother, longtime Minneapolis activist and social worker Bernadette Anderson.

When all is said and done, Prince's new album is a king-sized disappointment.