newpower rave

prince's last two albums for the '90s took him out of the 20th century with a whimper. there are some great moments on both newpower soul (1998) and rave un2 the joy fantastic (1999), but neither are great albums.

newpower soul is more of a mix cd for a party, but unfortunately there are only three really good dance songs on it: "mad sex," "come on" and the hidden track, "wasted kisses." what was supposed to be the standout ballad, "the one" would've worked so much better as an instrumental, especially to better feature rhonda smith's fretless bassline and clare fischer's orchestral arrangement.

the album also feels like an advertisement for the new npg records prince was trying to launch at the time, shining a spotlight on two of his musical mentors, family stone and bass legend larry graham and la grande dame, chaka khan. however, it would've been a better vehicle in which to feature another vocalist he was working with at the time, marva king.

clive davis tried to make rave un2 the joy fantastic do for prince what supernatural did for carlos santana. distributed by arista--in its last days before davis started j records--rave was full of cameos from the hip-hop (chuck d., eve) and pop (gwen stefani, sheryl crow) worlds. but all the cameos in the world couldn't save rave from being boring. the exception is the so-called collaboration he did with sheryl crow, "baby knows." crow plays harmonica and sings background vocals on it. "baby knows" also has another awesome prince lyric: "...and her perfume, it smell like the weekend."

the best songs on rave are the ones on which prince did everything himself: "tangerine," "the greatest romance ever sold," "eye love u but eye don't trust u anymore," "man o' war" and "wherever you go, whatever u do." but that's disappointing, considering this was supposed to be an album of new material meant to relaunch prince's popularity. at the close of the 20th century, he actually ended up receiving more attention for "1999," a song he wrote in 1982.