There was a time when Prince was the gold standard for artistic expansion. Each of his opuses forayed into some new arena, and every shift in his approach correspondingly increased the size of the venues he toured. For more than a decade he was unstoppable, picking up the freaky funk baton from George Clinton and parlaying it into genuine superstardom. Funny, though, how short the trip from top of the pops to "News of the Weird" marginalization can be-- after changing his name to an unpronounceable "love symbol" in the early 1990s, he spent the better part of a decade roaming the wilderness, kicking out poorly distributed albums that ironically might have reached a larger audience had he not split from Warner Brothers to go it alone.
From an image perspective, the New Power Generation era saw Prince transformed into a bizarre caricature of righteousness, religious and otherwise. But just as the path from peaks to lows can be quickly traversed, artists can swing back just as quickly, and 2004's Musicology gathered plaudits by the bushel, partially restoring Prince's critical reputation, as well as his commercial fortunes. In retrospect, it seems that Musicology was labeled a comeback in essence for not being an embarrassment. 3121 does a bit better than that, coming up with a handful of infectious songs-- it's his best since the symbol record, although certainly there remains a massive chasm between it and his masterpieces.
Speaking in terms of his classic era, 3121 is more "Gett Off" than "Nothing Compares 2 U". The opening title track works almost entirely on eccentricity, as a huge crowd of pitch-shifted Princes harmonize on lyrics that basically amount to directions to a party. On the other end of the record, "Get on the Boat" boasts a sharp horn arrangement (with solos from Maceo Parker, no less) and a funk undercarriage vintage enough to have come straight from a thrift-shop basement-- and the loose, live feel doesn't hurt either.
One thing that "Get on the Boat" exhibits in its piano part and timbale eruptions is a Latin influence that's more pervasive on 3121 than on any previous Prince album. "Te Amo Corazon" is a nicely nuanced ballad built on a slow, slightly rock-tinged mambo beat, and there are snatches of Cuban piano and Brazilian drums that crop up all over. Crunchy electro is the dominant strain in most of the album's best tracks, though, including the killer single "Black Sweat", the fractured keyboard riff of "Lolita", and "Love", inhabited by squishy keyboard and a monster chorus that slashes the ascending melody with buzzing synth bass. "The Word" strikes a nice electro-acoustic dichotomy, layering spacey synthesizer and a programmed beat with acoustic guitar and a strong sax hook.
If the entire album were up to these levels, we'd be onto something, but "Fury" tempers the impact of its stunning lead guitar part with a hopelessly dated keyboard patch and generic rock drumming. "Incense & Candles" is predictable bedroom r&b; that relies too heavily on manipulated vocals, swerving into a little rap-like passage exactly when I began to think, "I bet there's a little rap-like passage in this song." He might have at least brought in a guest to deliver something more interesting.
So, two albums into a career revival, Prince is still only kinda sorta "back." He's never going to be as surprising as he was in his heyday, of course, and it's probably unfair to expect anything like that from him again. All told, 3121 is a pretty ordinary-sounding record, largely stuck in another, friendlier sonic decade-- namely the 80s. If nothing else, Prince is slowly regaining the plot, and of course, there remain plenty of great old records in his catalog to revisit while he finds it.
