My Amazon Reviews: Prince "Hits and B-Sides"

Punch a Higher Floor

4 Out Of 5 Stars

Prince is a genius. Not much to dispute here. And this three disc set, many of the songs on the third disc unavailable on CD elsewhere, is the best of his many anthologies. Covering his years at Warners (a company Prince now thoroughly despises), the 56 songs at a fairly bargain price is an excellent source of Princely funk.

Beginning with his earliest one-man band material, it is awe inspiring to see just how fast Prince went from being a generic funkster with a dirty mind ("Soft and Wet," "Uptown") to the audacious gender bender of colossal music like "1999" or "When Doves Cry." The string of albums that ran from 1999to Sign 'O' the Timeswould have left Prince in the halls of giants, and there's plenty of other tracks around these albums to listen to.

A good percentage of the credit is due the The Revolution, Prince's groundbreaking multi-cultural/sexual/instrumental coconspirators, who managed to whip up his ideas into ravaging mixtures of guitar rock, funk and new wave without being completely of one genre. Songs like the Hedrixian "Purple Rain" or pstychedelic swirl of "Raspberry Beret" cross over effortlessly (Warren Zevon even took a good crack at "Raspberry") between styles. But he dismantled The Revolution over time, and while songs like "Thieves In The Temple" or "7" are brilliant, they don't have the electric verve of those earlier singles.

Be that as it may, Prince had long become a master-tunesmith by this point. Even his duff material (many of the b-sides on disc 3) has an indelible charm. This is the disc where you can find "Another Lonely Christmas" or "Erotic City" (a minor hit in its own right). The minor quibbles come on the basis of some edited single selections ("When Doves Cry" being a major violation), a non-chronological sequencing and the omission of some sizable hits (the #1 "Batdance" most notably). Still, this is the set to own, over both Ultimate Princeor The Very Best of Prince.