Prince — ‘1999 Super Deluxe’ — Vault Tracks Review
On June 23rd 2017 the world was introduced to the first set of unreleased recordings since Prince transcended, as the Prince Estate issued a long awaited remaster of his breakthrough 1984 album ‘Purple Rain’. Along with a 2015 remaster done at Paisley Park was a disc of remixes and edits, a live DVD and a disc of 11 previously unreleased tracks from the infamous vault. And now two years later, the Estate have seriously outdone themselves with the release of ‘1999 Super Deluxe’; this upcoming box set includes the original ‘1999’ album remastered, a disc of various edits and b-sides of the era, a live DVD of one show and a live disc from another…. but what really makes this package stand out is the inclusion of TWO discs, loaded with 24 tracks from the vault.
The box set had been rumoured for a while, with various updates coming from The Violet Reality itself; and with any Prince reissue, die hard fans knew that meant unreleased material. So when the news broke that made it official, I flocked to the press release and was astonished to see not one but two discs of vault tracks. And I’ve been an avid Prince bootleg collector myself since I was 13 (so that’s 6 years now), and know a lot of the tracks quite well. But what blew me away most was the inclusion of songs I had never heard of before- I counted and there were about 11 songs over the two discs that are entirely new to me. Now the box set is finally out, I can go on a purple trip filled with nostalgia and discovery as I dive into both these discs. And bring you along with me.
Disc One
‘Feel U Up’
This song is best known as being the b-side to the ‘Partyman’ single that was released in 1989, from the parent album ‘Batman’. It was originally slated to be released on a 1986 album called ‘Camille’, where Prince would play a more feminine character and his vocals would be sped up, before it was abandoned and merged with Prince’s second double album ‘Sign O The Times’ in 1987. Unfortunately the song was shelved and didn’t see an official release until ’89, but the first known recording of it dates back to late 1981, which is what this version is. Again, this has never been officially released until now.
The song itself runs on a lot longer than the later b-side version, with this being damn near 8 minutes long; it sounds like a more minimalistic composition, full of synths and a lot slower in comparison. It also features an alternate take of Prince’s unedited vocals before the song was given the “Camille treatment”, but some portions feature a warbled effect on the vocals which sound a little like an early Camille incarnation at one point. I noticed a lot of additional lyrics, musical motifs and bass pops that the re-recorded ’89 version is missing.
‘Irresistible Bitch’
One of the many interesting things about the unreleased tracks is the fact that ‘Feel U Up’ perfectly segues into the next song, ‘Irresistible Bitch’, which was first released as the b-side to the ‘Let’s Pretend We’re Married’ single in November 1983. This version is a more initial recording which was tracked a few days after ‘Feel U Up’, then mixed together by Prince in the studio. When combined with the first track, the first two songs stretch to 11 minutes in duration.
While there is a bit of guitar, this version of ‘Irresistible Bitch’ is a lot more synth lead and nowhere near as funky as its ’83 counterpart. The vocals are a lot more raw too, with Prince basically shouting the lyrics in a Jamie Starr style (which I think I prefer), with the backing vocals from Wendy and Lisa being absent too. The song ends on a bass and guitar breakdown before a synth buzzes and fades out.
‘Money Don’t Grow On Trees’
Around the time of the Controversy Tour, Prince was starting to work on projects with other bands like The Time. Another one of these bands that predates both Apollonia 6 and Vanity 6 is The Hookers, which is speculated to be an early incarnation that can be seen in clips from the unreleased ‘The Second Coming’ film that was due to document said Controversy Tour. The website PrinceVault lists a full tracklist for an album recorded by The Hookers (Jamie Shoop, Loreen Moonsie and Susan Moonsie), of which three songs survived onto the first and only Vanity 6 album. ‘Money Doesn’t Grow On Trees’ is one of two The Hookers songs presented in this collection.
It was recorded in early 1982 at Prince’s home studio on Kiowa Trail. The ‘1999 Super Deluxe’ version doesn’t feature any female vocals, but has Prince singing and playing everything on the song. The song is groovy with its bass and funky with its guitar, and basically talks about a character being told by their mother to “go and get a job” because “money doesn’t grow on trees”. In the take, Prince does sing “I’m a hard working boy” which was presumably later changed to “hard working girl” for The Hookers version. But the inclusion of the male pronoun could suggest that the song was considered by Prince for his own project before he formed The Hookers.
‘Vagina’
This is the second song credited on PrinceVault as being included on shelved The Hookers debut album. A few months prior to the box set being released, The Violet Reality posted lyrics of the song to celebrate reaching a follower milestone. What the post revealed was that the song started off talking about a “half-boy, half-girl” character called Vagina, which immediately made me think of the Camille persona that Prince adapted in 1987; this song is one of many cases where we see an idea crop up that would stay in the vault, and then appear several years later in a refined or reimagined way. It’s also worth noting that Prince wanted Denise Matthews to be called Vagina before they settled on the name Vanity.
The song is very guitar driven, and starts off with a repeated riff and Prince taking on the duties of a drummer with his voice. He sings in his falsetto voice and talks about Vagina being in a gay bar, kissing girls and being slightly untrustworthy. When it got to the chorus, I was expecting drums and bass to come in, but the song is totally minimalistic. There’s clapping and double tracked vocals and guitars, but beyond that, there isn’t really anything else except a tale of a half-boy, half-girl who has “the best of both worlds”, as Prince puts it.
‘Rearrange’
This song is another long one, coming in at 6 minutes in duration. It was recorded on 8th December 1981 at the Kiowa Trail Home Studio, and PrinceVault lists it as an oddity in the fact it’s hard to distinguish if it was a song intended for The Time or Prince himself. The site also draws comparison between this song and ‘Lady Cab Driver’ from the ‘1999’ album, saying that ‘Rearrange’ “seems almost like a template” for ‘Lady Cab Driver’. It also states that a remix was done on the song in 1988 for unknown purposes.
As soon as the drum beat and guitar starts playing, you really can hear a massive musical similarity between it and ‘Lady Cab Driver’. The song has it’s own set of lyrics however, which I was surprised at as I expected the song to be entirely instrumental, like an early instrumental demo of ‘Lady Cab Driver’ before lyrics were written. ‘Rearrange’ features an amazing guitar solo behind Prince’s singing, where he’s talking about how “people today won’t change” and “music won’t make me dance”, so he calls for it all to be rearranged… interesting title as you could argue that the song was rearranged to form ‘Lady Cab Driver’.
‘Bold Generation’
Remember what I said earlier about Prince having a vision that would be shelved, worked on and surface again years later? This song is a perfect example of that because Prince was working on a ‘Purple Rain’ sequel called ‘Graffiti Bridge’ which officially introduced his new band, called The New Power Generation (or NPG for short). Some Prince fans argue that the NPG was conceived as an entity in 1988 during the Lovesexy Tour, but this track has a lot of musical similarities between the 1990 song ‘New Power Generation’. Hearing Prince sing lyrics I know from 1990 honestly sent shivers down my spine… this song is the magic and genius of Prince perfectly on display.
Through research on PrinceVault I discovered that the song was recorded in January 1982 while Prince and Morris Day (lead singer of Prince’s The Time side project, and competition in both ‘Purple Rain’ and its sequel) were recording songs for the second The Time album. The song featured Day on drums and Prince on everything else, as per usual, but never made the album. Prince would then work on the song in late 1989 for ‘Graffiti Bridge’ and morph ‘Bold Generation’ into the song ‘New Power Generation’, which was placed on the accompanying movie soundtrack/album and split into two parts. Day’s drumming was unfortunately buried in the mix on the ‘New Power Generation’ recording.
‘Colleen’
This is the first instrumental song on the album so far, which was again recorded during the sessions for the second The Time album. It was recorded at Sunset Sound in California and was named after the studios engineer, as the song was never finished or had lyrics added to it. Prince asked engineer Peggy McCreary for her middle name, which is Colleen, and he told her to name it that.
Overall the song is another arrangement that comes across as minimalist with drums, bass and guitar that switch between sections. Cymbals and claps crash in every now and again while the guitar switches between soft and heavy playing. The song is quite repetitive but offers an insight into the genesis of a Prince song. It would have been interesting to see him add lyrics and more sections to the song for sure. It sets your imagination off and fuels the wonder of “what if?”
‘International Lover Take 1’
We all know ‘International Lover’ to be the 6 minute epic ballad that closes out side 4 of ‘1999’, and the album itself. But here we’re presented with an initial, early take of the song with Morris Day again on drums as the pair record a bare bone sketch of the song in the studio; we can hear Prince’s vocals as clear as day as he plays the piano and flirts with Peggy McCreary with Morris backing him on drums. It was intended to be sung by Day at one point before Prince reclaimed it for himself, much in the same vein as he would later do with ‘Kiss’ in the mid 80s.
This take is a lot longer than the album version, and was recorded between ‘Bold Generation’ and ‘Colleen’ as Sunset Sound in January 1982. It’s speculated to have been worked on after this take was cut, transforming it from a lengthy studio sketch to the polished ballad we all know and love. It was also issued as one of three promo singles for the box set, this one being released in early October 2019.
‘Turn It Up’
Recorded on a break during the Controversy Tour in January 1982, Prince initially intended this to be a track on the ‘1999’ album but soon replaced it with the more rockabilly sounding ‘Delirious’ after feeling they were both in the same style. Where this differs from ‘Delirious’ however, is that it’s drowned in synths and programmed drum beats and oozes sexuality and lust. It’s probably on the same level as ‘Lust U Always’ and ‘Extraloveable’ and is such a classic early 80s Prince track.
In my opinion, I much prefer ‘Turn It Up’ as a song. After I discovered it for the first time in 2017, I would constantly play it and have always gone back to it when I’m feeling especially funky and want to hear this side of Prince. I have probably played it more than ‘Delirious’ in all honesty, and I am so glad that it’s out for the public to hear. I bet it’s going to blow peoples minds.
‘You’re All I Want’
This song has a lot of history behind it, that shoots off in a lot of different directions. It was recorded on engineer Peggy McCreary’s birthday for a start, the same day that Prince and Morris Day cut ‘Bold Generation’. The song is also another rockabilly track similar to ‘Delirious’ and features Prince’s falsetto singing; the bassline of ‘You’re All I Want’ would later be used in the song ‘Delirious’ and the guitar riff was also reused for the b-side ‘Horny Toad’. After engineering the recording session, McCreary gave Prince a cassette tape of the days work to which he threw back at her as a birthday gift. Not only that, but he was dressed in leather and jeans (which any Prince fan knows is unusual for him), and he gifted her the jacket too. She called it “one of the greatest gifts he could have ever given me”.
Beyond this initial recording session, Prince ended up dating a girl called Kim Upsher and got her to record lead vocals on the song to replace his; PrinceVault indicates this as an example of a song with early intent going toward The Hookers route. The song was then given to saxophone player Eric Leeds in 1989, along with other early 80s tracks, when working on their instrumental jazz project Madhouse. The Eric Leeds version from ’91 was never released, but was renamed ‘U’re All I Want’ and was one of 17 songs fans could vote on for ‘Crystal Ball II’; which version it was though, is unknown.
‘Something In The Water (Does Not Compute)’
Everyone is familiar with this song thanks to it’s inclusion on the ‘1999’ album and Prince resurrecting it in his final years with 3RDEYEGIRL; their version is a rearranged, slower version that became a staple of their setlist and saw Prince play many astounding guitar solos on his custom Vox guitar to bring the song to it’s finishing climax. But the song has its routes way back in April 1982, when Prince cut an initial version at his home studio before recording what would become the album version days later.
In all my time on the purple side of social media, I have seen this alternate/early version of ‘Something In The Water’ hailed as the better of the two versions. I initially heard it on the ’30 Years Of Unreleased Funk’ bootleg back in 2013 and soon discovered this version was different, because this version is a lot more piano based, had soft synth chords backing the vocals and an electronic riff being played throughout. This version seems a lot more honest, emotional and raw in comparison to the ‘1999’ album version.
‘If It’ll Make U Happy’
I have another bootleg to thank for this one, because as soon as I heard it on the ‘Blast From The Past 3.0’ bootleg I was hooked on this song. Sadly though, that version was just over a minute long and every time I heard it, it had me reeling for more. Before the bootleg underworld was struck with legal action, I was always waiting on N.E.W.S of the next releases in anticipation a full version would leak. But finally the wait is over for me, and many other die hard Prince fans. The full length version is finally hear, and it sounds better than ever.
It was recorded on April 6th 1982, but was never found listed on any ‘1999’ album configurations. Much like ‘U’re All I Want’, it was another of the songs that fans could choose from to be included on ‘Crystal Ball II’. It’s another song that comes across minimalistic with its guitar, drums and vocals pushed to the forefront of the mix. It sounds like it has backing vocals, perhaps from the 1982 incarnation of The Revolution? But I can’t find any credits except for the usual “Prince played everything”. Within the lyrics Prince can be heard talking about how he would do anything for this girl that “he really loves”, and offers his reassurance to this girl. But it just makes me so happy to hear the song go past its guitar solo, which is where the bootleg version fades out. For die hard Prince fans, this is a real pinch your skin moment.
‘How Come U Don’t Call Me Anymore (Take 2)’
Closing off the first disc of unreleased songs is an extended version of ‘How Come U Don’t Call Me Anymore’, the song covered by Alicia Keys, and that Prince would give emotional and raw performances of himself on the Purple Rain and One Nite Alone… Live! Tours. It was initially issued as the b-side to the ‘1999’ single, which ran for just shy of 4 minutes. On this disc though, it runs just over 6 minutes.
It opens with Prince instructing “whenever U’re ready…” before he hits on the keys and his heels start stomping on the floor beneath his piano, keeping a steady beat as his falsetto wonders why his lover doesn’t call him anymore. He is confused, saying “what we had was good” before opening up to the fact she broke his heart. You can hear occasional finger snaps as the vocals and playing takes off to a higher, more emotional and dramatic level, but the same rhythm is kept. Here is Prince, stripped back and raw, begging for his lover and showing us just what those fingers can do.
Disc 2
‘Possessed (1982 Version)’
Disc 2 immediately kicks off with one of the longest songs on the album, which new fans may find familiar. Reason being because one alternative version of the song was included on the vault disc of ‘Purple Rain Deluxe’ from 2017, that version being the studio version from 1984, which is the third recording of the song and was a solo recording by Prince. The version included on ‘1999 Super Deluxe’ is the initial tracking from 1982, which again was done by Prince alone (apart from vocals by Jill Jones).
This version is a lot longer than the 1984 recording, and sounds a lot different too as the panned percussion and claps are omitted from the songs opening. Instead we get a programmed drum beat, followed by a guitar riff before Prince’s vocals and the synths enter. While this version holds the first draft of lyrics, it also feels like more of initial tracking with how under produced and bare bones it sounds- minimalism is something I have started to really pick up and recognise in these demos, but it works so well. As you hear in ‘How Come U Don’t Call Me Anymore’, Prince can easily command a stage with just a piano & a microphone. Unlike that however, Prince is talking about how he is possessed from how in love he is, and is weary because he is unsure of what this feeling is going to lead him to do. In many ways, the lyrics in this song feel like a precursor to the more daring lyrics on ‘Lust U Always’ and ‘Extraloveable’. This is also the version I know best and prefer, and I’m glad it has finally been released for the general public to feast their ears upon.
‘Delirious (Full Length)’
It’s another song that we all know well as it sits as the third track on ‘1999’ and was released as the albums fourth single, backed with the aforementioned b-side ‘Horny Toad’. This rockabilly track is best known for its high energy on the live Purple Rain Tour VHS and the ‘Indigo Nights’ live CD, but here it runs at an extended length that adds another 2 minutes to it’s run time.
It’s a previously unreleased version, and dubbed a “full length” version on the albums artwork. Those familiar with its parent album knows that in it’s released state form as a double album, ‘1999’ runs for 11 tracks and 71 minutes in total, so I can easily see why the song was edited down for the final album release. But for completest sake, and a glimpse into Prince’s vault too, it’s nice to hear this extended version of the song. Now we can make a version of ‘1999’ that’s even longer, with it replacing the original album version.
‘Purple Music’
It stands as the longest studio track on the album at 11 minutes long, and reinforces the fact that Prince can make an extended jam that holds your attention and never gets boring. Its lyrics carry an anti-drug message in its lyrics, with Prince declaring that he doesn’t need reefer or cocaine because “purple music does the same 2 my brain, eye’m high… so high”. This song predates ‘Purple Rain’ with the use of the famous Prince associated colour in a title, as this was recorded in May 1982. Listening to this version of the song puzzled me, as there’s a few synth overdubs I don’t recognise from the previous bootleg version I would constantly play for a purple fix. There has also been comparisons drawn between the lead synth line of the song, and that of the one featured in ‘All The Critics Love U In New York’ from ‘1999’ (which was recorded in January 1982).
What I find amusing about that is the fact that the first known time the song was performed live was in 2010 when it was performed in conjunction with ‘All The Critics Love U’, which was 28 years after it’s initial recording. While on his final tour, Prince took to performing the song again under a new name of ‘Welcome 2 The Freedom Galaxy. This caused speculation that he had worked on the song again, as well as the fact it goes hand in hand with the 2016 single ‘Free Urself’, which was often the song Prince performed prior to ‘Purple Music’.
‘Yah, You Know’
This song comes from later in 1982, being recorded on June 5th at Prince’s home studio as another solo recording done by himself. 4 years later, some overdubs would be done; Wendy and Lisa added vocals while Eric Leeds and Atlanta Bliss added horns over the initial recording. The overdubbed version from ’86 was thought to have been considered for the final album in collaboration with The Revolution, ‘Dream Factory’, but this has not been confirmed.
The song is known amongst bootleggers as the song leaked on the ‘Blast From The Past 4.0’ bootleg a few years ago, but the version on ‘1999 Super Deluxe’ is the initial solo recording from ’82; it doesn’t have Wendy and Lisa’s overdubs, and is a few minutes shorter than the bootleg version. But when I first heard it, I thought that it really didn’t sound like any Prince song I had ever heard before. But it still manages to blend the lines between humour and talk of the apocalypse, keeping in line with the theme of ‘1999’, with the following line:
“Eye would get a job but the world is gunna end soon. U got any lewds?”
‘Moonbeam Levels’
Just like ‘Purple Music’ and ‘Something In The Water’, this song is one of the most well known and widely bootlegged outtakes from the entirety of Prince’s career. After his transcendence it was released as the first ever unreleased Prince track from the vault, and was subsequently included on the 2017 compilation ‘4Ever’ (and it also caused some controversy concerning the source of the track). The version featured on this set runs just a few seconds longer than the ‘4Ever’ compilation, and has received good praise from die hard fans. Its been described as “the definitive mix of the song”, and being a step up in audio quality from that on ‘4Ever’.
The song dates back to July 1982 and was apparently considered for inclusion on many albums like ‘1999’ and ‘Around The World In A Day’, though there is no written evidence as of yet. There is evidence that it was considered for the 1989 configuration of ‘Rave Unto The Joy Fantastic’ before the project evolved into the ‘Graffiti Bridge’ soundtrack. Fans on prince.org say that the fact he “pulled it from so many albums shows his love for the song”, while another thinks that Prince holding it in the vault shows its one of the songs he said “the world isn’t ready for”. It’s such an emotional song that’s on such a high level, and is widely considered one of his greatest songs amongst fans. Now its finally available in better quality, and has a home in context of the era it was recorded in.
‘No Call U’
This is another rockabilly style song in the vein of ‘Jack U Off’ and ‘Turn It Up’ that was recorded in summer 1982. It was initially a solo Prince recording before he later got Vanity (of side project Vanity 6) to record vocals for it, but it was never placed on a Vanity 6 album; Jill Jones then recorded vocal overdubs for her version of the song in summer 1985, but that wasn’t ever released either.
The lyrics tells us that Prince is being driven crazy as he’s “lonely and in need of a kiss”, but he’s not going to let his ego win this time. Instead he’s playing hard to get, waiting for his girl to call him back to prove that their “love is true”. As the song progresses, Prince battles with himself as the chorus repeats the idea of her calling him back, while a spoken section hears him begging for her to “write a letter or something” before he settles on a final decision.
‘Can’t Stop This Feeling I Got’
Here we are again, linking back to 1990 and ‘Graffiti Bridge’, as this song was released on the ‘Graffiti Bridge’ album/soundtrack as the opening song. Initial tracking for the song was done in early 1982 at his home studio, before being re-recorded twice more and landing on a release at last in 1990. The version here runs almost half as short as the later album version.
This cut sounds a lot different to its predecessor and is more like a stripped back and organic band recording with drums, guitar and minimal synths, despite Prince playing everything on the song. He was always good at recording every instrument and making it seem like it was a full band recording. The song is lyrically light, with the title of the track being repeated a lot with a few extra lyrics being thrown in here and there. It feels like Prince thought to himself that he had an idea and quickly tracked it before he lost the trail, but is still a welcome addition to show us the initial and bare stages of another track that would later resurface.
‘Do Yourself A Favour’
Researching this track shocked me, as it turns out the song was first recorded under the name ‘If You See Me’ in 1975, and has since been released as part of the Pepe Willie albums like ’94 East’ that feature Prince. He then recorded the song “entirely from memory” at his home studio after not hearing it for years, and renamed the track to ‘Do Yourself A Favour’. In 1986, Jesse Johnson released his own version of the song on his debut album ‘Shockadelica’.
I just kept getting blown away by this song, because I realised that it was another 9 minute long song. But as soon as the melody came in, you could instantly hear the similarities in the keys between the ’94 East’ material and Prince’s own re-recording. When I first saw the songs title, I got the initial impression that the song was kind of narcissistic or deeply routed in hurt, and I feel this is the case because the lyrics advise a girl to “do yourself a favour and walk on by” if she ever sees Prince in the streets. The lyrics detail that she failed to understand him, and now he feels a lot better after their split and wants nothing to do with her. The song also features a cameo from Jamie Starr during an instrumental section of the track, to which he’s flaunting a 50 dollar bill in the girls face and bragging about he now has money without her.
‘Don’t Let Him Fool Ya’
The song was heard on a podcast back in 2014, and caused quite a stir on prince.org with a few fans calling it a “poppier version of The Time song ‘The Walk’”, and another called it a hybrid between ‘The Walk’ and Prince’s own song ‘Partyup’ from ‘Dirty Mind’. Before being officially released here, ‘Don’t Let Him Fool Ya’ found a place on the bootleg ‘Blast From The Past 2.0’. PrinceVault lists the song as a solo Prince recording, done at his Kiowa Trail home studio in summer 1982, and is not known to have ever been included on early ‘1999’ track listings. A tape reel dating back to June 1985 was discovered with this track and two other then-unreleased songs on it, meaning Prince could have added additional work three years after initially tracking it.
The song itself is laden in funky chicken grease guitar and synth stabs, set against a steady groove as Prince sings in falsetto. In the lyrics he’s giving advice to a woman about how she shouldn’t let a man fool her, no matter how fancy his clothes or how big his Cadillac is. The song is definitely on the funky and groovy side, and will have you moving without you realising. It also contains some humour, with Prince claiming that “the FBI is looking for his ass”. Ever since first hearing it for the first time last week, I can’t stop playing it. I think it’s a perfect representation of one of those songs Prince would hide away that has the power to command you to move and dance to the beat.
‘Teacher, Teacher’
I know this song best after researching unreleased Prince projects extensively, and seeing that this song was placed on the ‘Dream Factory’ album configuration. In 1986 it was overdubbed with vocals from Wendy and Lisa after being initially recorded in summer 1982 as a solo Prince track. Prince later sent the track and other ‘Dream Factory’ era songs to alternative rock group Three O’ Clock, but they only decided to release a version of The Revolution song ‘Neon Telephone’.
Reading through the lyrics of the song seem quite dark with lines like “I don’t wanna get an A/There’s gotta be another way” and a lot of talk about the teacher crying and feeling lonely. I may be wrong, but the lyrics come across as being a song about a one sided teacher-student relationship. Which is really dark and out there, but this is the same guy who wrote ‘Sister’… so really, this is prime Prince. Talking about taboo sexual relationships and playing his guitar like it’s nobodies business.
‘Medley/Tour Demo’
The final track of disc 2 sets you up for the following live CD and DVD, as it’s what I guess to be a recording from the 1999 tour rehearsals. It’s a 7 minute medley of ‘Lady Cab Driver/I Wanna Be Your Liver/Little Red Corvette’ that was recorded in January 1983, making it the latest recording on the vault material discs. It also features the complete touring band of Lisa Coleman, Brownmark, Dez Dickerson, Bobby Z and Dr Fink joining Prince to run through the songs.
This is such a nice way to end off the double discs of unreleased material, because its a fun sneak peak into the rehearsals, and is in exceptional quality. It also throws it back to the beginning with the inclusion of ‘I Wanna Be Your Lover’, with Prince’s vocals sounding just as fresh as they did in 1979. It’s also worthy to note that there’s a little section of ‘Head’ included but not credited before the pace drops to the slower and dreamier rendition of ‘Little Red Corvette’.
Final Thoughts
Before I say anything, I just want to say that there’s two albums worth of bonus material here, alongside an album that is already over an hour long. It’s incredible to hear such a large amount of Prince music, with over half of it being never released before. I don’t think there’s anyone that could put out such a large output of music in one hit, with every song being so individual and unique.
This is the Prince album we’ve been waiting for. From the artwork to the sound, it’s nothing but beautiful. And kind of eerie with songs like ‘Can’t Stop This Feeling’ and ‘Teacher, Teacher’ which would go on to be prevalent in later projects. I’m not going to deny, when I heard ‘Bold Generation’ for the first time, I was almost in tears because of the connection between this era and what would be released 8 years later. It’s mad to see Prince foreshadowing things I have been inspired by and attached to, like Camille and ‘Graffiti Bridge’, before ‘Purple Rain’ was even thought of.
You have everything that any kind of fan can want here. The original album, a plethora of outtakes, a live album to listen to and a live DVD to watch and become entranced by. Within the outtakes are songs that are diverse in genre, going from rockabilly to minimalistic new wave. There’s funk and raw emotion. There’s even taboo subjects (that should have been further explored with the inclusion of ‘Extraloveable’ and ‘Lust U Always’). These two CDs alone justify the price of £60 and show Prince in so many lights. All of them creative and all of them amazing.
Make sure you pick up a copy of 1999 Super Deluxe and subscribe to The Violet Reality on YouTube.
