When NBA player Carlos Boozer rented out his house to Prince, he should have known he wasn't going to get it back in the same shape. He should consider himself lucky that the biggest changes were a newly purple exterior adorned with the Prince symbol and the name of his new album, "3121."
Rules, whether regarding record companies, musical conventions or landlords, aren't something Prince normally follows. His uncompromising personality led to some amazing music in the '80s, but it also made him believe that fighting his label, re-naming himself an unpronounceable symbol, and releasing a decade's worth of records that amounted to nothing more than self-satisfying slop were also all good ideas.
After the accessible and enjoyable "Musicology" (2004) and his ensuing comeback tour, it was clear that the Prince of recent years, who was more recognizable for his frequent name changes than his music, had given way to an exciting - if slightly more tame - version of his '80s superstar counterpart.
His next record remained a question mark: Would he retreat back to the merely self-obsessed Prince of the '90s, or would he continue to embrace the freaked-out '80s Prince his fans love?
In many ways, "3121" is a tale of its two singles. First single "Te Amo Corazon" is a disheartening release, a slow, sludgy love ballad. To say it has a weak Latin flavor would be like dashing pepper into ketchup and calling it salsa. The only reason that this was released as a single - at least the only one that makes itself readily apparent - is that Salma Hayek wanted to direct the video, and no one can say no to Salma Hayek. (See also: the 1999 Will Smith-Salma Hayek vehicle, "Wild Wild West").
Salvation for the Prince faithful comes in the form of the slinking, grungy electronic beat of "Black Sweat," the album's second single. Prince coos in his classic pervy Prince falsetto as a piercing synth line bobs throughout the song. When Prince lets the monstrous beat break down, he states in a Robo-Prince voice, "You'll be screaming like a white lady when I count to three: one, two, three."
With that countdown, millions of purple-cloaked minions must have bowed down as their decade-long wait for the return of their once and future Prince had seemingly come to an end.
Other tracks off of "3121" prove that "Black Sweat" isn't an aberration. The album opens with the title track, which is really just a glorified intro where Prince breaks out his alter-ego, the squeaky-voiced Camille. But second track "Lolita" cements the excitement that "Black Sweat" generates, riding an ebullient synth keyboard to a place in the Prince Pantheon next to the 1987 album "Sign 'O' the Times" and its equally ecstatic "Play in the Sunshine."
Other "3121" ballads fare better than "Te Amo Corazon," especially the third track, "Incense and Candles," which finds Prince breaking into Daft Punk's vocoder cabinet. Prince and his new female prot?©g?©e Tamara trade off hormone-drenched vocals over an R&B backbeat, creating a song made for middle school dances and sleazy nightclubs (meaning this in the best way possible).
Prince switches his microphone's seduction level to the Barry White setting for "Satisfied." Though it's a generic slow jam, one should look at it using the words of "American Idol"'s Randy Jackson: didn't love the song choice, but Prince did his thing on this one and worked it out.
Sure, "3121" is good, but it's unfair to compare it to the rest of Prince's career. "Purple Rain Part II" it is not. It's not the second coming of '80s Prince, as some thought it might be after hearing "Black Sweat."
Several songs feel like they lack the edge Prince would have brought to them in the past. For example, "Fury" could be improved by being more, well, furious. Throughout the song, the listener is waiting for Prince to break into one of his trademark arena rock guitar shred-fests, but our air guitars stay in the closet gathering dust.
If Prince had released this album in the '80s, it would have been a disappointment. So why does it still get four stars? Maybe it's just curving the scale because of his past work, but the highs on the album are so enjoyable that they cancel out the lows. Where other older bands attempt to recapture their youthful heights and are exposed as the wrinkled men with serious mid-life crises that they are, Prince sounds like he never left his comfort zone.
After his years in the wilderness, no one could have expected Prince to come back and still sound as professional, focused and polished as he does on "3121." Some will complain he's not doing anything new, but when you've had a career as innovative and impressive as Prince's, aren't you entitled to rest on your laurels?
