Prince - The Rainbow Children - review by Ian MacDonald for UK monthly magazine Uncut

[Bart Van Hemelen]

Prince - The Rainbow Children

review by Ian MacDonald for UK monthly magazine Uncut
[http://www.uncut.net/], February 2002, issue 57

2 out out 5

Squiggle goes cosmo-Biblical

Prince (he resumed the name 18 months ago when his final contract with
Warners expired) is now 43, a Jehova's Witness, and no longer a Sexy
MF -- or at least no longer allows himself the luxury of cussing. A
large chunk of his repertoire has consequently become off-limits,
although the pleasures of the flesh clearly remain legitimate
inspiration.

The Rainbow Children is, it seems, the first fruit of this new phase
of Prince's imponderable spiritual life. A completely integrated
concept album with every lyric scrupulously laid out to avoid any
misunderstanding. The Rainbow Children appears to be Prince's personal
take on the Jehova's Witness belief-system. Beyond that, it's
difficult to say what it's about or, indeed, to care very much. With
the exception of the anthemic "Last December", the music, though lithe
and limber in a jazz-fusion-funk bag, lacks melodic distinction, while
the vocals are delivered in a variety of electronically treated styles
that are irritating at first and increasingly so on repeated
exposures.

Where they aren't platitudinous calls to unity, the lyrics are the
album's chief barrier to easy appreciation, apparently consisting of a
self-created mythology ("the new translation") concerning a
salvation-bound elect who are here on earth to do "the work" of
recruiting new members and sorting out those ("the banished Ones") who
aren't coming along for the ride. "The opposite of NATO is OTAN", the
Enlightened One informs us, among other curious pseudo-revelations.
Woman, it seems, must be content to be subordinate to man in this
religious order. (Proverbs 31:10 is mentioned as ostensible
justification for this.)

Prince has obviously taken trouble over this bizarre product and the
actual playing and production are beyond reproach. However, so obscure
and eccentric is the libretto of TRC that it's difficult to conceive
fo the album as anything more than yet another purely private function
form a man whose talent continues to dissipate itself in elaborate
self-indulgence.

--
Bart Van Hemelen
http://pr1nc3.com/BVH/
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"Room 101", BBC 2, January 19, 2001