Crystal Ball

by

Prince

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This 4-CD boxed set (which, from the price, seems to differ from the cut-out offered above) has two bona fide 5* CDs (CDs 2 and 4), a 4* (CD 3) and a 3 ½* (CD 1). Compute THAT and ya get around a 4 1/2 for the entire set. It is NOT absolutely essential to a Prince collection, but it offers such completely amazing tracks that most fans will want to get it. In short, it's worth the money, but it's not without some flaws.

CD Number 2: Almost worth the entire price is the odd but brilliant James Brown tribute: The outstanding improvisational "Cloreen Bacon Skin." Over a simple bass riff, Prince and Morris Day serve up over 15 minutes of incredibly tight funk. Prince's raspy voice is JB-perfect (though it doesn't develop to a rasp like JB-it starts there), as he goes crazy with some kind of one-sided monologue to "Alfred." Screams, guttural sounds, all glorious over SPECTACULAR jazz/Jimi influenced drumming. All of it impromptu...does Prince have a feeling for this stuff or not? Genius.

"Interactive" on the same CD is pure Prince sound: An engaging hook, heavy bass, a smooth guitar solo with some Hendrix, even a wa-wa guitar. "Da Bang" (track 2) is in a new genre: Power punk alternating with a blues groove. Once again, Prince is the master synthesizer of musical styles -- this hybrid is excellent. He gets a heavy rock sound on "Calhoun Square" and returns to rap on "Look Across the Street." The singing doesn't add too much to the latter, but it has a big funk sound and a rolling bass. Similarly, instrumentation on Track 7 is wonderful... the tight horns by Eric Leeds, but sounds like ensemble playing by the Flames!

CD 4 is the softer side of Prince, and his acoustic numbers are among his best ballads. He sounds a little like Tracey Chapman on the first cut (unfortunately the liner notes are very incomplete for this CD), with a compelling guitar riff-amazing. He just shines on the rest of this acoustic set, with almost all instruments by Prince. This pared down CD is a refreshing contrast to his big productions. A must for Prince fans. CD 3 opens with "Days of Wild," an overly long rap with an Egyptian motif in the chorus. Not entirely compelling, though Prince, in the brief liner notes states "the spirit of the late-nite Love4One Another jams were best captured by this song and particularly this performance." Not my cup of funk...

"She Gave Her Angels" is a sweet Prince ballad out of his old days, and "18 and Over" is a male fantasy rap that is funny if not taken seriously. "The Ride" is straight blues. Prince is excellent on guitar, but needs to allow some silences to make the soloing more effective. I'm not asking for B.B. King restraint, just a little more attention to dynamics and pacing. Still, this is almost quibbling: Prince shows his stuff here and he's superb. "Get Loose" has some great minor chords and "P. Control" is quintessential Prince sexual obsession. Probably great fun live, but with the exception of Prince making his voice sound like a record spin, not too memorable. The BEST song on CD 3, however, is Prince's Sly Stone tribute "Make Your Mama Happy," with great funky horns, alternating vocals a la the Family Stone, big funk bass, and outstanding sax by Eric Leeds. Prince knows from whom he draws his inspiration! It's followed by the tender "Goodbye."

The title cut "Crystal Ball" (on CD 1) has some shades of Sly Stone, and funk riffs out of P-Funk, but this is wholly his own. Heavy with instrumentation; it's like 30's big band a la funk. All the elements are here: Moving bass, jazz style drums, the famous Prince falsetto, the Prince scream, the Prince spoken lyric.

Great dance music on next track. Mixes a slow soulful beat, with techno breaks and jazz-style guitar. Track 3 is some pretentious male posing that's a little disappointing: N'Sync has copied this style offering sanitized, less bassy versions of just this kind of song. The hook is too easy, the rap a little too familiar. "2morrow" and, especially, "Lovesign" are smooth and soft R and B, that goes down like brandy. Hide the Bone is just a lot of fun(ky) stuff very much in the P-Funk mode. Speaking of pretentious, "Movie Star" is just too much-and I mean that in a bad way. Perhaps meant to attack vanity, it seems to revel in it. This CD is rounded out by the self-explanatory hit "Tell me how U wanna be done." Even if this kind of exercise no longer outrages us, it's a good reminder of Prince's earlier sexually explicit work.

Bottom Line: Lots and lots of tremendous work, with some stuff I wish he hadn't included, but worth the money and your time. (One last note. . . very little in the way of liner notes, or any other little extras we've come to expect from boxed sets.)

Four discs. The first three could've easily fit onto two. So already its a rip-off. This would've been forgiveable if the music was all first rate; which it should've been. After all, any Prince fan has heard of the fabled 'Vault' where supposedly hundreds upon hundreds of finished, yet unreleased, songs lie.

But, no-- rather than jam-pack this set of 'vault' material with unreleased gems (as was originally promised), nearly one-third of the first three discs consists of lame re-mixes of previously available material.

To put it simply, the best stuff on discs 1-3 are all the songs that were recorded during the '80s. The title track is an epic classic, and songs like "Sexual Suicide", "Dream Factory", "Crucial", "Movie Star", make this set worth picking up for Prince fans.

Disc four is actually not really part of Crystal Ball, but rather a seperate album altogether: "The Truth", which is a collection of acoustic-based songs that represents some of his sharpest work of the '90s. Along with the '80s tracks on disc 1-3, this is the meat of the OVERPRICED package. There is some great singing, interesting lyrics, and (perhaps most importantly) SUBTLE production in abundance on "The Truth".