Prince 14: Love Symbol

Those who hadn’t been paying attention might not have noticed that Prince had kept up the same rate of output for the better part of a decade at this point, and that doesn’t include all the songs he gave other people and left off his albums. Diamonds And Pearls still had legs when news came of his next album, this one officially titled with an unpronounceable rune. This artsy combination of the traditional symbols for male and female wasn’t such a surprise for the guy, but it made it very difficult to talk about the album. Anyplace the label couldn’t use the graphic itself (which had been supplied to all press outlets), the album was referred to as Symbol. Over the years, this changed to Love Symbol, as that’s how Prince had copyrighted the image. When he changed his name to the same squiggle as a protest the following year, the symbol had become larger than the album itself.

And what about that album? Well, it’s very much a continuation of the modern R&B of which the New Power Generation was capable. The first two songs were the first two singles; “My Name Is Prince” is an unconvincing gangsta rap and “Sexy MF” seems to exist only to put a hook to that particular twelve-letter word. “Love 2 The 9’s” begins more like the early soul of his first albums, until the rap break. “The Morning Papers” is finally a decent ballad, complete with guitar solo. “The Max” is mostly a listenable hybrid, though good ol’ Tony M. gets to punctuate each chorus with a rap. “Blue Light” mixes funk with reggae fairly well, but “Eye Wanna Melt With U” (that first word being an eye symbol, of course) is mostly tossed off. You’re better off skipping ahead to the ultra-smooth “Sweet Baby”.

We were hoping “The Continental” would somehow evoke Christopher Walken’s recurring character on Saturday Night Live, but instead it’s a loud track with a rap by Carmen Electra, a protégée he’d already dumped for Mayte Garcia. “Damn U” is another sultry ballad, then like clockwork we’re back to the high-energy funk of “Arrogance”, a relatively brief track that leads right to the dueling raps in “The Flow”. Catchy with a mildly Eastern motif, “7” brings back the finger cymbals we thought he misplaced after Around The World In A Day. “And God Created Woman” is such an obvious candidate for a Prince title we’re surprised it took him this long; the song itself is nothing much. “3 Chains O’Gold” has all the hallmarks of a grand epic, and apparently it was designed that way; more about that below. The guitar work is great, but the ending is just a little too Hollywood. The actual finale of the album is given over to “The Sacrifice Of Victor” another rap hybrid in falsetto that drops various hints about his childhood in the lyrics. (He since stated for the record that “Victor” is not the translation of the squiggle that served as the album title, so there.)

One odd feature of the album is the two dialogue segues, featuring actress Kirstie Alley (then starring on the final season of Cheers) as a befuddled reporter trying to get answers out of our hero. Nowadays they just seem silly, but apparently these bits were supposed to play a larger part of the album, which at one point encompassed a “funk opera” (our words) of sorts entailing those mythical chains of gold. (We haven’t heard any of the bootlegs of the working versions, nor have we seen the full-length 3 Chains O’Gold film, and we don’t plan to.)

Yet the biggest obstacle to Love Symbol is its length, amounting to a CD packed to the gills. There’s just too much music here. Prince had always had more material than he knew what to do with, and now that vinyl wasn’t anyone’s priority, he could load up an album to capacity. That doesn’t always translate to quality—after all, Sign "☮" The Times had been reduced from three records—and this album is hardly in the same league. It sold okay, of course, thanks to the singles.

Prince & The New Power Generation o|+> (1992)—2