Prince : How I wrote the world’s first review of his album, “3121".
As we say farewell to 2016, which has essentially been the worst year I can think of in a very long time, lots of us find ourselves reminiscing. We find ourselves reminiscing about years where we didn’t have to worry about the rise of new forms of fascism and unqualified American presidents. We find ourselves reminiscing about classic movies, as new stories are told under their banners (Star Wars, Alien, and more). And if you’re a Prince fan, since his passing in April year, we find ourselves reminiscing about, well, basically every purple experience we ever had, every new album we heard for the first time, even every time we woke up in the morning to find that he’d been on a late night Twitter spree, with his jokes, hints of new songs, and tweets IN ALL CAPS.
Indeed, the day of his passing, I wrote a Facebook post detailing some of my fondest memories being a Prince fan. As Kim Camilia and I branch out from our successful YouTube channel (where we’ve been doing a lot of Prince videos, including our This Week in Prince series), what better way to kick off our new blog publication, The Violet Reality, than by expanding on some of these memories?
So without further ado, I’d like to rewind almost 11 years, to early 2006, to tell you the story of how I wrote the world’s first review of Prince’s phenomenal album, “3121” — despite not even being a professional journalist!
In 2006, despite being just 19 years old, I was already signed to my third record deal with Virgin/EMI. Having already released two albums with Swami, first on an independent British label, and then picked up by Sony/BMG, things were going incredibly well for us musically, and over the previous two years one of our closest supporters was a BBC Radio 1 DJ by the name of Bobby Friction who had a prime-time evening music show. At the time, the British-Asian music scene we were part of was going through something of a renaissance, with heavy media attention. The likes of Panjabi MC, Tigerstyle, and ourselves were reaping many of the benefits of this — being asked to headline tents at major festivals like Glastonbury, being booked internationally across almost every continent, appearing on prime-time British television shows, racking up a great deal of radio play and getting our music placed in huge video games and Hollywood movies. The music business, as it has always been, was at time tough to navigate, so it was important to make friends and connections where possible.
Somewhere along the way, Bobby and I had connected as fellow Prince obsessives, and found ourselves drunkenly performing Cat’s rap from “Alphabet St” after an aftershow party in Birmingham one evening. Even though he was the biggest supporter of our own music, we talked about Prince more than anything or anyone else.
And so it was that in early 2006, his fame and status as a Radio 1 DJ landed a coveted prize — an invite to the flashy, secretive launch listening party for Prince’s upcoming album “3121” which was still six weeks away from release. Four songs had been heard already — Te Amo Corazon, Black Sweat, Beautiful Loved & Blessed, and a live rendition of Fury, and yet the album was still very much shrouded in mystery. I was rehearsing with the band at Fortress Studios near Old St in London when the text came in from Bobby — He had a +1 to the event, and would I like to go with him? I think you can probably guess my answer — maybe you can even guess the amount of exclamation marks I used in my reply (hint — more than 10) 😃
Upon rolling up to the venue it was clear that this was a very glitzy affair. We’d already heard that Universal were working this record hard, which paid off — upon launch later on it would debut at Number 1 in the Billboard Album Chart — but as we entered the venue it became clear just how much money was being put into this project. There were purple silk throws, engraved Symbols all over the glass and the walls, champagne, and the room read like a who’s who of British music journalists. In fact, it resembled a record label party from the glory days of the 80’s and 90’s more so than the post-Napster dwindling-sales era of the mid 2000’s. Prince of course had made his return to huge sales and extreme visibility with his previous album and tour, Musicology, and Universal clearly felt emboldened by Prince’s re-ascent to the top. This relationship didn’t last long, but that’s a story for another day…..
No phones were allowed inside. No word of whether Prince himself was there (if he was, he didn’t make a public appearance). Just a funky cool hipster DJ spinning some fresh R&B and hip-hop cuts, then an introduction by one of the suits at Universal Records about how happy they were to be working with Prince, and then some dimmed lights…. “Ladies and gentleman, this is 3121”.
We weren’t given track names, some were obvious, others not so much. As each song played, we marvelled at the fresh contemporary grooves Prince was pulling out. Tracks like “Love” and the title track were drenched in sexy, electronic brilliant Prince minimalism and funk. It was clear that the room loved the album, as even hardened rock and roll journalists grinned and nodded their heads to the grooves.
I tried my best to soak in as much information about the album as possible, and with my head spinning as I attempted to process everything, I headed back to my cousin’s house in North London, immediately logged on to prince.org and typed up all my thoughts, together with my best guesses at what the track titles were. The thread exploded with replies, and it soon became clear that not only had this event been the first listening party anywhere in the world, but my forum topic was the first public review of the album that was still six weeks from being released! Prince fans across the internet logged on to the forum to read my thread and vent their anticipations at this landmark release, and I reinforced my own position as a fan that would later lead to becoming a staff member on that very same website (Shoutout to Ben and Val!).
Not simply because of this experience, but also due to my personal preferences for Prince music that looks forward, rather than back, 3121 remains my favorite Prince album of the 2000’s. I knew it the moment I left the listening party, the feeling reinforced when I purchased the album on release day, and 10 years later I still feel the same. The production, songwriting, and the marketing (at least, initially — Prince’s relationship with Universal fell apart just weeks after the album came out) all came together to launch a phenomenal era, supported by the 3121 club residency in Vegas, a new protege (Tamar), superb live performances like the SNL performance, and awesome music videos (the Salma Hayek-directed Te Amo Corazon could certainly win an award for the most beautifully shot music video that Prince ever made). From 3121 branded incense to 3121 branded unisex perfume/cologne (which had mixed reviews, but smells pleasant to me, enough so that I still occasionally wear it) the brand was strong!
What’s more — he even filmed an entire 3121 movie, partially shot in Panama, which has never been released. It was later re-edited into a movie for the 2009 album Lotusflow3r — but that version hasn’t been released either! Speaking of things that remain unreleased, the Panama shoot also yielded a song called “Streets of Panama” that was included in an early configuration of the album, and later removed. I reached out to Prince’s longterm web and graphic designer Sam Jennings for some more information about this unheard and unreleased song, and he gave me the following info:
“Streets of Panama” was a part of the 3121 album right up until a few months before the album was released. It had a latin vibe with it’s piano and percussion, and reflected Prince’s recent vacations in Panama. It was a light song, and though it was more upbeat, it had a similar vibe with “Te Amo Corazon.”
Another related project was the planned print 3121 magazine, which a press release was issued for in late 2006, but which never saw the light of day. And yet another was this absolutely stunning Te Amo Corazon photobook, a planned coffee-table book of photographs from the aforementioned video shoot. Sadly this didn’t see a public release, either, but one copy did slip out and find it’s way to eBay, where it was purchased by collector Roald Bakker.
For me, one of things that keeps me coming back to any Prince era is the vision. We find ourselves asking — what was his vision for this album, or project, or era? Did he succeed and fulfil that vision? What worked, what got left by the wayside, and overall was it a success? I’d say with a brilliant album that hit the Number 1 spot, a definitive cohesive vibe of imagery, production, a compelling title, and an era that the set the stage for a world-class Super Bowl performance and 21 amazing shows in London the next year, he definitely succeeded. It’s a shame that neither the 3121 movie or the photo book saw public release, but it just goes to show how far Prince’s vision stretched, and how important this era and album was to him.
Every Prince album was an experience in it’s own way, but 3121 had that classic mix of sex, funk, enigma and glam that Prince was truly the master of. I’d be remiss not to mention the huge contribution by Sam Jennings to the whole 3121 era, his design and packaging work was an integral part of the era, as was the photography of Afshin Shahidi. I am very proud to have played a small role in it by writing the world’s first review.
The Violet Reality is an art collective of songwriters, musicians, writers, YouTubers and more. Please follow our YouTube channel here.