Crystal Ball [Box] - Prince (CD 1998)

The 3-disc CRYSTAL BALL set, originally intended as an internet-only release and then later released in chain stores around the country (thankfully, otherwise I wouldn't own it) is what EMANCIPATION should have been. For that matter, it's probably what the box set should have been, at the very least some of these songs should have made up the third disc there and the "hits" relegated to 1 disc instead of 2. The title song, at just over ten minutes, is the very sound of melancholy, with a little confusion and desperation brought in in the last half. Heavy on the drums and bass with only...

Prince has been reported to have enough music recorded in his vaults to release a new album every month for a whole year and still have a number of albums left over. The Crystal Ball, his first attempt to release a collection of older music, is a reflective look at tracks that almost made Prince s cut from back in his days with The Revolution up to his days when he was known as a symbol. The Crystal Ball is actually a compilation of bootlegs and near misses that didn t quite make the bar for other Prince releases. It is also Prince s first attempt at an album with online interaction. In that..

With next to no promotion (the only time I saw it advertised was in an add by Best Buy), and little notice outside of the occasional website hit, I began to suspect that there was new Prince music out there, so I began to call around the local chains to find out if this was true. Sure enough, there was, so I immediately reserved a copy and scrambled to get it together to go down and pick it up. I got to the store, picked it up in the headphone sample booths and listened to the title track, and I was instantly sold. I was disappointed that it was only available on CD, however, and had to go to.