My Amazon Reviews: Janet Jackson "Icon: Number Ones"

An Abridged version of Janet's Number Ones double disc
4 Out Of 5 Stars
 
The Icon series has done a fair job of dropping quickie best of collections into the ever decreasing CD market place, keeping artists in the shops desptie any new material to offer. Janet Jackson's "Number Ones" is no exception, culling a tightly wound eleven hits in quick succession, ignoring albums prior to the blockbuster "Control" and including one lesser heard recent song, "Nothing," from Tyler Perry's "Why Did I get Married Too?" movie. But the concentration is on those big moments when Janet took "Control" over her music and images, along with producers of the moment, ex-Prince associates Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis.

They take up 10 of the twelve songs here, and it's easy to recognize why. The Minneapolis Sound, which combined equal parts industrial slam/pulverizing beat/Janet's commanding studio presence to work dance floor monsters, worked perfectly on those breakthrough hits like "Control," "What Have You Done For Me Lately" or "Miss You Much." Songs that were effectively without melody, but drove home completely on Janet's forceful personality and the Jam/Lewis conquering beats. It didn't take Janet long to diversify even more, as she began to pitch more socially active songs onto the charts, like her AIDS anthem "Together Again" and the lovely ballad "That's The Way Love Goes." She was also giving props to idols like Joni Mitchell (sampling "Big Yellow taxi" on "Got Till It's Gone" or more curiously, America's "Ventura Highway" on "Someone to call My Lover"; sadly these two tracks are not included).

But Jackson, like her brother Michael, decided at a certain stage to trust her own instincts and become her own artist. Even in this admittedly slight collection, she proves that her vision was the right one to peruse. More interested fans should probably bump up to the two disc "Number Ones," but for me, this Icon set fills my space just fine.

   

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.