In the tradition of the The Journey From Prince To O(+> and Prince Vs. Warner Brothers – The Fans Lost blogs, here’s a sequel covering the music O(+>/Prince released from 1998 to 2004 from his famous vault of hundreds of unreleased songs. Crystal Ball, The Vault… Old Friends 4 Sale, Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic, The NPG Music Club, The Chocolate Invasion and The Slaughterhouse, including looks at abandoned projects like Roadhouse Garden and Crystal Ball II – it’s all here!
The unreleased 1993 and 1994 configurations of Come and The Gold Experience whose stories were chronicled on the Prince Vs. Warner Brothers – The Fans Lost blog would be the last truly inspired and great new O(+>/Prince material for many years afterwards. Some of his subsequent album releases were marred by his lyrics dealing more and more openly with his Jehova’s Witnesses beliefs, making bass player Larry Graham disliked by a lot of Prince fans for having converted him.
Fans took solace in collections featuring material from O(+>/Prince’s famous vault with hundreds of unreleased tracks – releases like Crystal Ball (1998), The Vault… Old Friends 4 Sale (1999), the NPG Music Club releases (2001), The Chocolate Invasion (2004) and The Slaughterhouse (2004). This blog examines the evolution of these projects, as well as the unreleased Roadhouse Garden (1998), The New Power Generation: Peace (2000), High (2000) and Crystal Ball II (2000). And with its title track coming from the vault, here’s even a look at the 1999 Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic project which signaled O(+>’s return to using the name Prince.
The genesis of Crystal Ball as The Vault When O(+> released his Emancipation album on 19 November 1996, it was announced in the booklet: “Coming soon: The 3 CD set of previously bootlegged material – Crystal Ball.”
Crystal Ball was originally the title of Prince’s 1987 album Sign O’ The Times before the record company Warner Brothers had him reduce it from three to two LP’s and leaving out the Crystal Ball title track. When O(+> talked to Rolling Stone to promote the release of the triple CD album Emancipation, he said: “Sign O' The Times was originally called Crystal Ball and was supposed to be three albums. ‘You'll overwhelm the market,’ I was told. ‘You can't do that.’ Then people say I'm a crazy fool for writing on my face, but if I can't do what I want to do, what am I? When you stop a man from dreaming, he becomes a slave. That's where I was. I don't own Prince's music. If you don't own your masters, your master owns you.”
Now that he was free of his contract with Warners, O(+> was going to do the things they didn’t allow him to do, and that included releasing a triple CD Crystal Ball, now a collection of tracks from his famous vault with hundreds of unreleased songs. The idea for the Crystal Ball collection came earlier, when Prince’s publicity firm announced on 7 June 1993, his 35th birthday, that Prince had changed his name to the symbol of his latest album. O(+>’s intention was to fulfill his Warner Bros. contract with “Prince” recordings from the vault while continuing to record and release new material as “O(+>.” And in 1994 he started making The Vault collections for Warners to release, numbering them Volume I, II and III. These collections spun off into the 1996 Chaos And Disorder and 1999 The Vault… Old Friends for Sale Warner releases before morphing into the independently released Crystal Ball collection as work on them continued on and off for three years until Crystal Ball finally saw release in early 1998.
The Vault Volume I became The Gold Experience In the summer of 1994, O(+> had tried in vain to get Warner Brothers to release his Gold Experience album in tandem with the Come album. With no release of The Gold Experience in sight, O(+> figured that the songs on it were becoming old news = vault tracks and assembled a Vault collection that contained many tracks from The Gold Experience. This Vault configuration was one of the sources for the Outtakes 1993-‘94 bootleg which appeared in 2004.
O(+>: The Vault Volume I (summer 1994) 1. Chaos And Disorder (4:13) 2. Listen 2 The Rhythm 3. Now (4:30) 4. Right The Wrong (4:42) 5. Acknowledge Me (5:27) 6. Ripopgodazippa (4:39) 7. The Most Beautiful Girl In The World (4:37) 8. 319 (3:19) 9. Shy (5:04) 10. Billy Jack Bitch (5:31) 11. Eye Hate U (6:12) 12. Gold (7:36)
The song Chaos And Disorder became the title track of its own 1996 album that also included Right The Wrong which was recorded on the same day as Chaos And Disorder in October 1993. Listen 2 The Rhythm, recorded as The Rhythm on 6 April 1989, would get re-recorded as The Rhythm Of Your Heart for Mayte's 1995 Child Of The Sun album. Acknowledge Me and Ripopgodazippa carried over to disc 1 of the 1998 Crystal Ball collection. The rest of the tracks from The Gold Experience ended up getting released a year later when that album was released after all in 1995.
O(+> also set out to make The Vault Volume II and III which along with a then assumably reworked Volume I were offered to Warner Bros. in late 1995 before spinning into the released Chaos And Disorder and The Vault… Old Friends For Sale albums in 1996 and ultimately becoming the 3-CD Crystal Ball collection in 1998.
The Vault Volume II tracks Detroit Free Press asked O(+> in December 1997, “You’re one of my favorite guitar players. Are we going to see any more music like Purple Rain or Chaos & Disorder? I’m interested to hear more of that rock, bluesy style,” to which O(+> answered: “Disc 2 of Crystal Ball is for you!”
And even from the genesis of that disc as The Vault Volume II, the concept seemed to be a collection of mostly guitar driven tracks. O(+> shot a video for the Vault Volume II track The Same December on 8 November 1994. The song had a similar sound to the version of Dolphin that was included on The Gold Experience, indicating that they were probably recorded at the same time.
A video for the Come remix 18 And Over was also made which indicated that O(+> had come to regard the track as a song in its own right and that it was probably included as such on the original The Vault Volume II collection.
Two older songs, the 4 August 1985 Prince And The Revolution recording of the song Empty Room and the May 1993 recording of Zannalee, also got the video treatment, indicating that they were also included on The Vault Volume II.
I Like It There was recorded in late 1994 and in October 1995 a video was made for the track featuring a playback performance of the song with The Paisley Park Power Trio of Michael Bland on drums, Sonny Thompson on bass and O(+> on guitar.
Another likely candidate for inclusion on The Vault Volume II was Calhoun Square which was recorded 15 June 1993, and which was bootlegged around this time. It was an overdubbed version that finally saw release on disc 2 of the 1998 Crystal Ball collection, though.
O(+>: The Vault Volume II (October 1994) Track list unknown but includes: I Like It There (3:15), The Same December (3:24), 18 And Over (4:52), Zannalee (2:51), Empty Room (3:25) and Calhoun Square (4:28)
Except for Empty Room and 18 And Over, all of the tracks had been recorded with members of The New Power Generation.
Possible The Vault tracks The Vault Volume II appear to have been a compilation of songs that didn’t make Come or The Gold Experience. As such, Interactive, What’s My Name and Strays Of The World could have been on it. Those three songs were certainly on Crystal Ball disc 2, but Hide The Bone was on Crystal Ball disc 1 but not on The Vault Volume I. It’s About That Walk was probably saved for Volume III because it got released on The Vault… Old Friends 4 Sale which Volume III morphed into. Somebody’s Somebody and New World could have been included on either volume before getting included on Emancipation. Of course, the compilation could also have included tracks that have never been released or bootlegged and remain unknown to fans.
Work on the three The Vault volumes wrapped in December 1995. At that time, the collections were offered to Warner Brothers who declined to release them, but in 1997, quite a few tracks from The Vault were bootlegged on the Past, Present & Future II bootleg credited to The Artist Formerly Known As Prince.
Prince: The Vault Volume I, II and III (December 1995) Track list unknown, but includes Chaos And Disorder (4:13), Right The Wrong (4:42), Acknowledge Me (5:27), Ripopgodazippa (4:39) and Dark (Remix) (5:14) on Volume I; Interactive (3:04), I Like It There (3:15), Calhoun Square (4:29), The Same December (3:24), Zannalee (2:51), Empty Room (3:22) and Strays Of The World (5:06) on Volume II; 18 & Over (4:56), 5 Women (5:19) and Sarah (2:51) on Volume III
Dark (Remix) was retitled So Dark for Crystal Ball, but is identical, while 18 And Over was retitled 18 & Over.
The Vault spins into Chaos And Disorder In early 1996, negotiations began between Warner Bros. and O(+>’s new attorney, L. Londell McMillan. An agreement was quickly reached that O(+> would ultimately deliver two albums of material from the vault to the label which would then release him from his contract.
O(+> decided that those two vault-releases should be The Vault Volume II and III, but instead of just letting them be released as they were, he decided to do quite a lot of additional work on Volume II in particular, updating tracks, removing tracks and adding new ones and transforming Volume II into the Chaos And Disorder album and Volume III into The Vault… Old Friends 4 Sale. Chaos And Disorder would get released in the summer of 1996, but The Vault… Old Friends 4 Sale wouldn’t get released until 1999.
O(+>: Chaos And Disorder (1996) 1. Chaos And Disorder (4:20) 2. I Like It There (3:15) 3. Dinner With Delores (2:46) 4. The Same December (3:24) 5. Right The Wrong (4:39) 6. Zannalee (2:43) 7. I Rock, Therefore I Am (6:15) 8. Into The Light (2:46) 9. I Will (3:36) 10. Dig U Better Dead (4:00) 11. Had U (1:26)
Chaos And Disorder and Right The Wrong were taken from The Vault Volume I. The album retains the guitar-driven rock theme of The Vault Volume II without actually including all of the tracks from there. Besides Chaos And Disorder, I Like It There, The Same December, Right The Wrong and Zannalee, it’s unknown if Dinner With Delores, I Rock, Therefore I Am and Had U also came from The Vault, but Into The Light, I Will and Dig U Better Dead were taken from an early 1996 configuration of Emancipation. Except for I Like It There, The Same December and Had U, the rest of the tracks were reworked for inclusion on the Chaos And Disorder compilation. Zannalee was the only song previously known to fans and many preferred the original version to the overproduced version on this collection.
Prince: The Vault… Old Friends 4 Sale (1996) 1. The Rest Of My Life (1:40) 2. It’s About That Walk (4:26) 3. She Spoke 2 Me (Extended Remix) (8:20) 4. 5 Women (5:13) 5. When The Lights Go Down (7:11) 6. My Little Pill (1:08) 7. There Is Lonely (2:29) 8. Old Friends 4 Sale (3:27) 9. Sarah (2:52) 10. Extraordinary (2:28)
The Vault… Old Friends 4 Sale had a nice, cohesive – almost jazzy - feel to it musically. All of the tracks were recorded – or reworked as in the case of Old Friends 4 Sale – in the 90s. An unknown version of The Rest Of My Life surprised fans, but along with My Little Pill and There Is Lonely it had previously been bootlegged on a tape with songs for the aborted soundtrack for the 1993 movie I’ll Do Anything. An edit of She Spoke To Me had appeared on the soundtrack for the 1996 movie Girl 6.
Besides 5 Women and Sarah, it is unknown how many of the rest of the songs that came from The Vault Volume III, but Extraordinary came from an early 1996 configuration of Emancipation.
It's About That Walk, When The Lights Go Down and Extraordinary were the only previously unknown tracks for fans, but some of the previously bootlegged songs had been reworked. The piano intro of 5 Women had been cut off and horns by the The NPG Hornz had been added to the track. Sarah had some rhythmic guitar playing added and keyboard had replaced the piano at the end.
The Vault becomes Crystal Ball Where The Vault Volume I, II and III featured mostly recent recordings from O(+>’s vast mid-90’s projects, the release of some of them on the Chaos And Disorder and The Vault… Old Friends 4 Sale collections left room for even older tracks when The Vault got reworked into Crystal Ball in 1996/1997.
In July 1996, Hans-Martin Buff became O(+>’s main recording engineer on the Emancipation album, and when work on that album was wrapped, they set about assembling Crystal Ball and built it around the skeleton that The Vault Volume I, II and III provided after removal of the released tracks.
In 2018, H.M. Buff told The Violet Reality about working on Crystal Ball: “It was fun for me as a fan, of course. I virtually got a list of songs, and he opened the vault for me and then I went shopping and it was one of those little trolleys like you have in hospitals and such and I filled that sucker up and brought it upstairs. We started transferring it from tape machines to digital and we did a lot of editing. Quite a bit. Specifically, I remember the song Crystal Ball itself and Days Of Wild and Cloreen Baconskin and weird stuff like that. We mixed one or two and did a couple of segues and stuff, but it was a very quick process – like two weeks so that was really easy. (…) It happened quite a bit that we would take old tapes up which was one of the real perks of my job. (..) There were a couple of comments about a song I’m not going to tell you about that did not make it onto Crystal Ball which is quite amazing. It was a well-known song by another eighties pop star that he did a new backing for that he was asked to. It was never released. And he commented on how the stars - people were just partying to it. (…) There was one song which is out now which was my favorite bootleg ever which is Wonderful Ass and that was the one Revolution song I remember that was supposed to make it onto Crystal Ball. And that was left off.”
It is possible H. M. Buff was talking about Why Should I Love You? by Kate Bush as the song by another eighties pop star O(+> was asked to do a new backing for. After all, they had recently collaborated again on the song My Computer for Emancipation, so why not include their past collaboration from March/April 1991 on Crystal Ball? That didn’t happen, though, but Prince’s take on Why Should I Love You? turned up on YouTube in January 2022 and can be heard right here while reading on:
H. M. Buff edited Crystal Ball tracks shorter “Probably the most independent task I had… He would – and I did that with Crystal Ball, and I did that with Days Of Wild on that project and with any new song he did – he would say ‘cut out the beef,’” H.M. Buff revealed to Funkatopia in a 2022 interview and mentioned his work on Emancipation as an example: “So let’s say the new song would be like eight minutes long, it would be based on a beat Kirk programmed that would be eight minutes long and then he would write a song through there and then he’d do a rough mix and then he’d give it to me and say ‘cut out the beef’ and then I would just listen to it, musically with producer ears, and go, like ‘this is where I’m getting bored. Maybe we should take that out?’ And then I’d suggest that to him. ‘Why don’t we…?’ And then that eight-minute song would be 5:20 or 4:50 or something. And the same with Crystal Ball, he said ‘edit it’ so I went and made it a bit more concise, and he approved some edits. Some he didn’t.”
H.M. Buff’s 8-9 minutes long edit of Crystal Ball obviously wasn’t approved by O)+>, as the version that got released on Disc 1 lasted ten and a half minutes. Anyway, “Same with Days Of Wild live thing. It’s on the third Crystal Ball disc,” H.M. Buff continued in the Funkatopia interview. “And it’s the same with Cloreen Baconskin. That as well was twice as long. That’s the thing about Prince. He was an enormous Prince fan. He thought that the guy Prince was just awesome. Me personally, I like Cloreen Baconskin because I like weird. A lot of the more pop-oriented people, they start foaming at the mouth. ‘Why would you out that on a record?’ (…) but Prince, he liked everything on there equally.”
Cloreen Baconskin wasn’t exactly “twice as long,” though. In Matt Thorne’s 2012 Prince biography, H.M. Buff also recalled working on Crystal Ball: “There were two songs on that album that I edited until the cows came home – Crystal Ball itself and Cloreen Baconskin. (The latter) was really long, there was another four minutes to it.”
Artists are partial to their recent stuff She Gave her Angels was also an edit and probably replaced Empty Room on Crystal Ball as they had musical similarities. She Gave Her Angels was likely recorded in June 1995 as the lyrics mention that month. In the booklet for Crystal Ball, O(+> said it was about his then fiancée Mayte. The song was originally supposed to have been on the Emancipation album, though. “I think one of the great losses of Emancipation was She Gave Her Angels which ended up on Crystal Ball,” H.M. Buff said in the 2022 Funkatopia interview. “And the reason why it ended up there was that it was on the Muppet Show so it should be released, but that was like the center point of the second disc until The Holy River took over. That would have been a huge Bohemian Rhapsody size song sonically and in terms of content.”
A new longer edit of 18 & Over was also made, and it’s possible Crucial is also a 1997 edit of the 1986 song. Movie Star, also from 1986, had an intro added with a bit of Jam Of The Year from Emancipation played at the party Prince enters in the song and the “right there, honey” part was edited out. Fans would be a bit peeved about essentially getting a new version of Movie Star instead of the original version. Tell Me How U Want 2 B Done was an edit of the summer 1994 How Tou Want To Be Done remix of The Continental by by Kirk J.
As for the selection of songs on the collection, H.M. Buff told Funkatopia: “I would have taken some of that cool stuff like Splash or Wonderful Ass that was on the list as well but didn’t make the cut on Roadhouse Garden or there. Somehow, he thought a remix of 2morrow was just as valid as that stuff and that’s something I learned during that project: He doesn’t see a difference between the creative worth of what he did last year compared to some treasure of the eighties.”
Number one at the bank O(+> decided to sell Crystal Ball directly to fans over the internet. His keyboard player in his New Power Generation band, Morris Hayes talked about that decision in a 2018 The Current interview: “The internet was an interesting situation because I think that's around the time where Madonna and all them got these big crazy deals, and I think he was just telling me, ‘Man, I don't need a label. Think about it. If you have a name - Madonna don't need a record label. Janet Jackson doesn't need a record label. They have names that are so big now, if we implement the sales online that we could do, then I think it's over.’ And I think that could've really singlehandedly sunk the record labels had he succeeded outright.”
1-800-NEW-FUNK began taking pre-orders for Crystal Ball in May 1997 and it was announced that the set would be shipped within a month, but nothing happened. In an interview published in July 1997, O(+> said that Crystal Ball might be ready to ship by Christmas. The delay became official when O(+>’s website Love 4 One Another stated in August that the album would not be manufactured until 1-800-NEW-FUNK had received 100,000 orders.
At an MTV press conference in August 1997, O(+> talked about the impending release of Crystal Ball: “I have a new package called Crystal Ball. And it’s a 50-dollar package and there’s gonna be 4 CDs in it. And it’s kinda like a piece of art. It’s a crystal ball, sort of, and the CDs go inside and you can sit it on your coffee table. Now it’s an expensive package to make so to cover the cost we have to price it that way. But if you do the math, 150,000 copies - you’ve taken care of your business and it’s a good day at the races. You see what I’m saying? Alright. You have to understand, NPG is going to be taking the bulk of that money and then we pay our cost to the manufacturer, and distribution is just a postage stamp. Crystal Ball is pretty much a bootleg. You know underground classics.”
“It’s finished. We just mastered it and we’re just pressing out copies now. And we’re taking orders. It’s ready to go. We’re waiting till the orders get to a certain point and then we start mailing them. ’Cause after a 100,000, like I say, that’s a good day at the races. (…) I don’t like the ideas of platinum albums and all that other kind of stuff. It doesn’t mean anything. When you’re taking the bulk of the proceeds... I mean what do you care. I don’t need to be on a chart at that point. I don’t need a number one. It’s number one at the bank.”
“At the bank, I’m platinum at 50,000 copies,” he added to USA Today.
Crystal Ball distribution angered fans O(+> explained in several interviews by fax while on tour in the US how wonderful the Internet was because he could record music and the fans could have it instantly. “As soon as I’m done with it, I get it on, take orders and press records.” In an interview with Sacramento Bee published 28 September 1997, it said O(+> had received more than 70,000 pre-orders for Crystal Ball. “It’s coming out by Christmas,” he stated.
By October, the number was reported as 84,000. Still, it would take an additional month after Christmas for the wait to be over. On 29 January 1998, 1-800-NEW-FUNK began shipping Crystal Ball to fans who had pre-ordered the set. The 3-disc Crystal Ball collection consisted of mostly outtakes and leftovers and a fourth disc was the acoustic The Truth album from 1997. A 5 CD limited edition of O(+>'s Crystal Ball collection that was only available from 1-800 NEW FUNK also contained The NPG Orchestra: Kamasutra. The mail order edition did not have the booklet with O(+>’s comments to the songs chosen for the compilation. The fans were expected to get that information from a website created specifically for the project.
The delays and lack of information regarding the release caused a great deal of frustration and anger amongst O(+> fans. Shortly after the news that shipping would commence, it was announced that the set would also be officially released to retail stores which upset many fans who had been led to believe it would only be available to those who ordered it from 1-800-NEW-FUNK. To further rub it in, Crystal Ball (including the booklet) became available in many retail stores in mid-February 1998 before it reached fans who had mail-ordered the set – and at a much lower price. This caused many fans to cancel their pre-orders. The botched marketing of Crystal Ball was widely viewed as a fiasco.
"When somebody wants to say that you’re a flop in the industry, that’s because you only get seven cents an album” (if you’re signed to a label), Prince told The Guardian in July 1998. “We sold 250,000 copies of Crystal Ball. That’s all we ever intended to sell. Now it’s finished, over, and guess who gets the lion’s share?”
Evaluating the release model NPG keyboard player Morris Hayes talked about the Crystal Ball release in a 2018 interview with The Current: “The biggest problem I think he had was that he didn't trust anybody. So, in order to make that record, Crystal Ball, there was a big kerfuffle about it because people had put in orders for this thing and waited like months and months. Then he did a deal with Best Buy, and it ended up coming out in the regular store while the people who had put deposits were still waiting for theirs. I think it was just a fulfillment thing. We had three people in the back that was trying to get these things out, and he had so many orders, you can't get three people - but he didn't want outsiders in there, so he had people that he trusted, but only a few that were doing it. And I think - just in my own mind again - I'm no record mogul and I'm not anybody that is savvy with that whole thing, but I just thought, ‘Wow, had that rolled out in a big way it could've upended the situation.’ Anybody that had stature like him could say, ’Oh, so Prince had this model that he's proven could sell these things and get them out there.’ Of course, nowadays that's commonplace. But back then I think it would've been a very frightful thing for the record labels had he been really successful in the rollout of Crystal Ball on the internet like he wanted. I think then it would've been really scary for them because any artists with a name, once they got out of their record deal, would be like, ‘yeah’ – they’d have their own distribution because now they have the name recognition to put it out.”
Evaluating the content Crystal Ball encompassed 25 tracks and five remixes that concentrated on two periods: The 1985-1986 Parade and Sign O’ The Times era and the 1993-1996 years which spawned Come, The Gold Experience, Chaos And Disorder and Emancipation. The only exception was Cloreen Baconskin which dated back to 1983. Thus, the Crystal Ball collection was hardly representative of Prince/O(+>’s entire career.
O(+>: Crystal Ball 1998 (CD) Disc 1: 1.Crystal Ball (10:28) 2. Dream Factory (3:07) 3. Acknowledge Me (5:27) 4. Ripopgodazippa (4:39) 5. Lovesign (Shock G’s Silky Remix) (3:52) 6. Hide The Bone (5:03) 7. 2morrow (4:13) 8. So Dark (5:14) 9. Movie Star (4:25) 10. Tell Me How U Wanna B Done (3:15) Disc 2: 1. Interactive (3:03) 2. Da Bang (3:19) 3. Calhoun Square (4:46) 4. What’s My Name (3:03) 5. Crucial (5:06) 6. An Honest Man (Vocal) (1:13) 7. Sexual Suicide (3:39) 8. Cloreen Bacon Skin (15:37) 9. Good Love (Edit) (4:55) 10. Strays Of The World (5:07) Disc 3: 1. Days Of Wild (Live 9/12-1995) (9:19) 2. Last Heart (3:01) 3. PoomPoom (4:32) 4. She Gave Her Angels (3:52) 5. 18 & Over (5:40) 6. The Ride (Live 28/10-1995) (5:13) 7. Get Loose (3:31) 8. P. Control (Club Mix) (5:59) 9. Make Your Mama Happy (4:00) 10. Goodbye (4:34)
Crystal Ball started out with the title tracks from Prince’s unreleased 1986 Crystal Ball and Dream Factory albums – Crystal Ball being a different edit of the previously bootlegged track and Dream Factory being a slightly different version of the then recently bootlegged track. Crystal Ball also included previously unheard versions of Crucial, An Honest Man and Sexual Suicide from the 1986 era, as well as a pristine release of Last Heart which had been bootlegged since the 80s. Cloreen Bacon Skin was basically an early version of the 1984 The Time B-side Tricky. The previously unknown Make Your Mama Happy was a nice surprise.
The collection was a treasure trove for fans of O(+>’s 1993-1996 era of music. They finally got songs like Acknowledge Me, Ripopgodazippa, Hide The Bone, Interactive, What’s My Name, Strays Of The World and 18 & Over which they knew from bootlegs since 1994.
A live recording of Days Of Wild from Paisley Park on 9 December 1995 got included on Crystal Ball instead of the original studio recording of the song, though, which was a bit disappointing, but obviously O(+> himself was more pleased with this recording. The live version of The Ride was lifted from the 1996 Love 4 One Another TV movie. Get Loose was previously known as Loose Dub #2.
Critical reaction Crystal Ball didn’t attract much attention from the mainstream music media or radio. The reviews were mixed with some critics complaining that much of the music sounded uninspired and aimless and concluded that O(+>’s famous vault didn’t contain many superior tracks. “As usual the music is funky and often fun – but most of it is for fanatics and completists only,” noted the Minneapolis Star Tribune. “There are good reasons most of this stuff wasn’t released,” added Entertainment Weekly. Still, around 100,000 copies of Crystal Ball were sold in the US, so it did become number one at the bank. It peaked at number 62 on Billboard’s Pop Chart and at number 59 on the R&B Chart.
Many fans felt the release was an anti-climax after the long wait. Almost everything had previously been bootlegged or heard in concert – Make Your Mama Happy, Da Bang and Poom Poom were the only tracks that had been completely unknown to fans prior to the release. They wondered why O(+> hadn’t included the gold they knew were in his vault. Some also thought that the collection should have presented the tracks as recorded chronologically, but O(+> had approached making the collection as if he was making an album. And once initial feelings of disappointment had died down, many fans came to realize that it was actually a pretty good release. And the reason a lot of tracks that seemed obvious for inclusion weren’t included was because they featured contributions from Lisa Coleman and Wendy Melvoin and O(+> was saving them for a projected Prince And The Revolution collection.
The official Crystal Ball website that was made featuring O(+>’s liner notes and the lyrics to the songs on the collection has been preserved online right here: Explore the Crystal Ball
The genesis of Roadhouse Garden When Wendy & Lisa released their Girl Bros. album on the Internet in September 1998 like O(+> had done with Crystal Ball, they told Rolling Stone: “When last we spoke (with O(+>) he wanted us to do a reunion for the VH1 Honors, and we thought, ‘Oh that could be a really cool idea. We’d go onstage and do like four of the old tunes on a couple of acoustic guitars and a piano.’ You know, like really strip it down, get rid of all the fluff. He came back to us with a proposal that we would dance through the audience with these outfits on and have a huge parade of people behind us, waving banners and playing like five of the songs, but only like ten seconds of each song and the rest is just jamming. We were like, ‘How about if we do it this way: No one else onstage but the three of us, no big deal, la la la – that would really be something.’ We never heard from him again on the subject. That was two years ago.”
Instead of a reunion with Wendy & Lisa, O(+> performed The Holy River from his Emancipation album at the VH1 Honors on 10 April 1997, but later he began to consider making an album with Prince And The Revolution – the first since Parade in 1986. However, it would be made up of Prince And The Revolution tracks from his Vault instead of getting the band together to make new music. The album was to be called Roadhouse Garden and would be made in much the same fashion as the Crystal Ball compilation released in 1998. Both of these compilations derived their titles from unreleased albums with Roadhouse Garden originally being the title of a Prince And The Revolution album made in between Parade in 1985 and Dream Factory in 1986.
Paisley Park Recording Engineer H.M. Buff revealed that in a 2018 interview with The Violet Reality: “And then we actually started Roadhouse Garden. I got another list with songs. Splash was among them and Roadhouse Garden. That came out of the vault, but we only worked on that for like two days. We did that in ‘98. And I’m personally glad he didn’t do it because I remember Roadhouse Garden, he actually transferred the mix to tape and then started doing overdubs. Yeah, so…”
Lisa & Wendy
Abandoned after updating three tracks On 7 October 1998, O(+> announced on his Love 4 One Another website that he was working on a new Prince And The Revolution album entitled Roadhouse Garden named after the unreleased 1984 track. The album would consist of “things left unfinished” when the band broke up and “several new cuts that O(+> is putting together using parts from many tunes.” O(+> claimed to have offered Lisa Coleman and Wendy Melvoin co-production work on the project, something which they later denied. It was initially planned for a 1999 release.
On 19 January 1999, O(+> chatted with a webmaster for his Love4OneAnother website. He mentioned two tracks intended for Roadhouse Garden, the previously mentioned Splash and Witness 4 The Prosecution.
In an email to SonicNet published 3 March 1999, O(+> said: “Eye have been allowing 4 the run of Girl Bros. b4 the release of the Garden record. It has songs on it that feature The Revolution in a front role, as a band; where songs on Crystal Ball were more recent “bootlegs” with various other musicians. Some song titles include: Splash, All My Dreams and In a Dark Room with No Light. The beauty of r ownership of the master tapes will b felt when one hears the REMIXED newly digitized versions of these classic REVOLUTION songs.”
However, the Roadhouse Garden project was quickly abandoned. Prince then said anyone wanting to know what happened to the project should ask Wendy and Lisa, so Matt Thorne – author of the biography Prince from 2012 - did. They told him: “Because we’re gay. The Lord thinks we’re evil, and we’re damning the Revolution to hell.”
H. M. Buff further told Matt Thorne: “I’m glad it didn’t work out, to be honest with you. I was very excited about it, but he thought he could improve on things, so I would transfer the mix of what was there, and he would add those keyboards he liked so much at the time. But we didn’t work on many songs. I remember Splash was worked on. Roadhouse Garden. And Wonderful Ass once again came out of the vault. Maybe there were a couple of more that I don’t remember.”
When asked by a fan in a Q&A on his Love4OneAnother website what happened to the song Empty Room released as a video in 1995, O(+> had replied, “Empty Room will b released with many other gems on a new compilation called Prince and the Revolution’s Roadhouse Garden,” so that song was definitely included. Other tracks considered for Roadhouse Garden included Go, A Place In Heaven and Moonbeam Levels.
Prince & The Revolution: Roadhouse Garden (October 1998) Track list unknown, but includes Roadhouse Garden, Splash, Witness 4 The Prosecution, All My Dreams, In A Large Room With No Light, Wonderful Ass, Empty Room and possibly Go, A Place In Heaven & Moonbeam Levels
In an interview with MTV on 6 November 1999, Kurt Loder asked O(+>: “There’s been some talk of some old tracks with The Revolution, your previous band, your old band, coming out as an album called Roadhouse Garden. Is that possibly, maybe, going to happen?”
O(+> replied: “We did three tracks for the record, meaning I went in and finished them, and then I put Roadhouse Garden on the backburner, so nothing’s really happening with it.”
Photo: Steve Parke
Not exactly a Prince And The Revolution release In early November 1998, Warner Brothers re-issued the 1982 Prince single 1999. It reached as high as number 10 on the UK chart. O(+> criticized the release on his Love4OneAnother website, complaining that the bulk of the profits went to the owner of the master recording, Warner Bros. He then announced that he himself was preparing to release several new versions of 1999.
The 1999 – The New Master EP was initially planned as a preview of the Roadhouse Garden album by Prince And The Revolution which was said to be only a few months away. Paisley Park Engineer H.M. Buff commented on the matter in the 2018 interview with The Violet Reality: “Yes, there was a lot of talk about re-recording the masters and we worked on 1999 and there was one attempt at a remake of Let’s Pretend We’re Married, and I know that Morris Hayes did some really cool backing - almost drums and bassy background tracks - for that, but that’s where that ended. The end of the re-recording project. By the way, it was really interesting for me doing that 1999 thing. Most people don’t know about it and that’s probably okay, but there’s like this Latin part in it and I always thought, ‘What a weird idea to stick that in there,’ and then I got the original tape out so I could listen to it and there’s a Latin part in there, so he just in that version put it out but it had been thought of before.”
1999 – The New Master was released on 2 February 1999 credited to Prince And The Revolution even though no actual members of The Revolution appeared on it. The EP co-credited The New Power Generation and Chaka Khan, Larry Graham, Rosie Gaines (who told biographer Alex Hahn for his 2004 book Possessed – The Rise And Fall Of Prince that she didn’t get paid for her participation), Doug E. Fresh and actress Rosario Dawson appear on some of the tracks. “We all thought, ‘1999, that’s Prince’s year,’” H. M. Buff told Matt Thorne for his Prince book. “We did that stupid version late November of 1998, and it should have been ready to rock. Like I said, it’s all on his terms and we went with the flow.” But 1999 – The New Master which featured seven updated versions of 1999 peaked at number 150 on Billboard’s Pop Album Chart and number 58 on the R&B Album Chart. It was priced as an EP which is why it didn’t chart as a single.
Prince And The Revolution: 1999 - The New Master EP (1999) 1. 1999 - The New Master (7:09) 2. Rosario (1999) (1:19) 3. 1999 (The Inevitable Mix) (5:46) 4. 1999 (Keepsteppin’) (4:33) 5. 1999 (Rosie Doug E. In A Deep House) (6:23) 6. 1999 - The New Master (Single Edit) (4:30) 7. 1999 (Acapella) (5:11)
Photos: Steve Parke
An unfulfilled re-recording ambition On 10 January 1999, an open letter to Madonna was posted on the Love4OneAnother website. O(+> told of a dream in which he approached Madonna at a Grammy Awards ceremony and asked for help in his “fight to retain ownership” of his recorded legacy. There was no response from Madonna.
“I wanted to buy my masters back from Warner Bros.,” O(+> told Paper in June 1999. “They said no way. So, I’m going to re-record them. All of them. Now you will have two catalogs with pretty much exactly the same music - except mine will be better - and you can either give your money to WB, the big company, or to NPG. You choose.”
Prince had done a re-recording of his 1978 song Soft And Wet prior to 26 January 1999, but if his re-recordings were anything like 1999 – The New Master, no one really wanted him to re-record his old albums. (1999 – The New Master wasn’t very good if you’re not into rap.)
“The plan at the time was to redo the whole 1999 album,” H.M. Buff told Matt Thorne. “He even announced he was going to re-record the original album, but it never went anywhere other than my taking the original tapes and transferring them to digital tapes. (…) A lot of people complained about the Latin part in 1999 – The New Master. Funnily enough, there was a Latin part on the original that was edited out at the time.”
Releasing something under the name “Prince” helped ease O(+>’s upcoming name-change back to Prince into the public consciousness. As a Jehova’s Witness, his name could not be a heathen symbol, and in May 2000 Prince discarded the symbol name and became Prince again.
Photo: Steve Parke
An almost Prince And The Revolution reunion To celebrate him being called Prince again, the inaugural Prince: A Celebration convention took place at Paisley Park 7-13 June 2000. This special event celebrating Prince’s legacy included an onstage reunion with the male members of The Revolution, Dr. Fink, Bobby Z and Brownmark at the closing show on 13 June at the Northrop Auditorium in central Minneapolis. They performed America. Larry Graham was also present on stage during the show which probably explains the absence of Wendy & Lisa. Because, as Alex Hahn wrote in his 2004 book Possessed – The Rise And Fall Of Prince: “Ex-Revolution drummer Bobby Z. Rivkin, who visited Paisley Park in 2000, was forced to listen to Prince and Larry Graham engage in a homophobic rant, according to another former band member whom Rivkin told about the meeting. Prince explained to Rivkin that prior to any reunion of the Revolution - an idea discussed several times over the years - Wendy and Lisa would be required to publicly renounce their homosexuality. As Rivkin listened incredulously, Prince said he would insist that the women hold a press conference and ‘apologize’ for their lifestyle.”
A Celebration with 20 re-mastered recordings On 17 December 1999, O(+> told in an interview on The View on the US ABC TV channel that he was planning to release a Greatest Hits collection of re-recorded versions of Prince classics, so that was what his plans to re-record his Warner Bros. catalogue had come down to. Skip a year ahead, and in NPG Ahdio Show #4 released 15 May 2001, a Prince album entitled A Celebration was announced. The announcement stated that Prince was in negotiations with a major record store chain to distribute the album, said to contain 20 "remastered re-recordings" of Prince’s greatest hits along with "at least four brand new songs". This album was not released, however, likely due to the Warner Bros. release of The Very Best Of Prince in July 2001.
Prince: A Celebration (2001) Track list unknown but 2-CD set of 20 re-recorded and re-mastered greatest hits plus 4 new songs
It is not known which songs would have been included on the album, and how much the track list overlapped with the setlists used on the brief A Celebration tour, which was likely initially intended to promote the album. The tour was canceled after only six concerts, partly to avoid the appearance of supporting The Very Best Of Prince, and partly because of Prince wanting to spend time with his father, whose health was ailing at that point.
Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic started out as Beautiful Strange While O(+> was concerned with the Prince And The Revolution vault release and considerations of re-recording his Warner Brothers catalogue, the reason why nothing came of those projects might have been that his urge to record brand-new songs won out. Even before those projects were initiated, O(+> had begun work on a new album following on the heels of the 1998 Newpower Soul album credited to the New Power Generation. In fact, a couple of the songs included on this new album originated during the Newpower Soul sessions.
O(+>’s recording engineer H.M. Buff told biographer Matt Thorne for his 2012 book Prince that the song So Far, So Pleased was originally recorded during those May to August 1997 Newpower Soul sessions. So Far, So Pleased made it all the way through several incarnations of the new album until the new album finally got released as Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic in November 1999. The new album initially got the title Beautiful Strange after the song Beautiful Strange which had also been recorded during the Newpower Soul era, then was titled Madrid 2 Chicago for a while before O(+> got the idea to add the vault track Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic and make that the album title – an idea that didn’t come around until well into the process of making the album, H.M. Buff told Matt Thorne. Maybe the idea to title the album Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic came from O(+> having just worked on two other projects utilizing titles from unreleased 1980s albums, Crystal Ball and Roadhouse Garden, with Rave Unto The Joy Fantastic being the title track of an unreleased album made in 1988 in between the Lovesexy and Batman albums. (Joy Fantastic was the stage name originally proposed by Prince for his 1988 muse Anna Garcia.)
Anyway, when O(+> assembled an album entitled Beautiful Strange in 1998, only the title track and a cover of Twisted have been confirmed being on that album.
O(+>: Beautiful Strange (1998) Tracklist unknown, but includes Beautiful Strange (4:55) and Twisted
There was a video clip of the original version of the song Beautiful Strange in the Beautiful Strange TV special which premiered on Channel 4 in England on 24 October 1998. The TV special also featured an edited version of an interview with O(+> conducted by Mel B. of the Spice Girls interspersed with footage from a show at Café De Paris in London the night to 28 August 1998 during the New Power Soul Tour. Beautiful Strange was also performed acoustically by O(+> in a Paisley Park studio. The TV special was released as a VHS home video on 24 August 1999, but it only became available through O(+>’s 1-800-NEW-FUNK website and O(+>’s store in Minneapolis.
Twisted was originally written as an instrumental by Wardell Gray in 1949 before getting lyrics added by Scottish jazz singer Annie Ross in 1952. It was released as a single the same year and later got included on the album King Pleasure Sings/Annie Ross Sings.
An album created during troubled times O(+>’s wife Mayte wrote in her 2017 book My Life With Prince that in 1998, O(+> hired a girl who kind of looked like her to handle merchandising and charity work for him – jobs Mayte had been doing up until then. The girl was Manuela Testolini, a superfan who had connected with O(+> on Internet sites dedicated to all things Prince, and whom O(+> now seemed to bring everywhere and give expensive gifts. At the same time, bass player Larry Graham and his wife Tina had moved into O(+> and Mayte’s guesthouse and were busy converting O(+> to the Jehova’s Witness faith – a path Mayte wasn’t willing to follow along with him, but Manuela was. And suddenly, Mayte found herself being banished to live in a house in Spain while Manuela was the girl living with O(+> in Minneapolis. And to add insult to injury, occasionally Manuela would be mistaken for Mayte during public appearances.
O(+> occasionally visited his wife in Spain and Mayte revealed in her book that once he asked her to meet him in L.A. where he asked her to flush his pills out in the toilet when they left their hotel, suggesting that the drug problem that would kill Prince in April 2016 had already started then. In 2009, gossip magazines would report that Prince had taken antidepressants since that fateful and tragic time when his and Mayte’s son had died coinciding with the release of Emancipation in November 1996.
So when O(+> was working on the Beautiful Strange/Madrid 2 Chicago/Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic album, he was undergoing big changes in his personal life – becoming a Jehova’s Witness, replacing Mayte with Manuela Testolini and developing a drug addiction. According to the gossip magazines in 2009, he was also taking pain killers because his Jehova’s Witnesses faith didn’t allow for him to get surgery and a new hip after years of performing in high heels. However, O(+> would tell Billboard in an interview published 6 November 1999 that “this album is an expression of many emotions, but it mostly comes from a place of pure joy and happiness.”
Beautiful Strange evolves into Madrid 2 Chicago In November 1998, O(+> recorded the songs Madrid 2 Chicago and Breathe and the Beautiful Strange album morphed into a “smooth jazz” Madrid 2 Chicago album. “Madrid 2 Chicago and Breathe were one suite,” H.M. Buff recalled in the 2012 Prince book by Matt Thorne. “There was something else I forget and Man 'O’ War. And that would be the start of the album for a while, and then we’d take some from the previous batch into it and then he would reconsider and make new sequences.”
Prince: Madrid 2 Chicago (1998) Track list unknown but “smooth jazz album”, includes Madrid 2 Chicago (3:14), Breathe (2:01) and Man ‘O’ War
A sample of Madrid 2 Chicago was made available as a download from O(+>’s Love4OneAnother website on 26 January 1999 along with a cover version of Shania Twain’s You’re Still The One with Marva King on co-lead vocals. On 3 March 1999, O(+> replied to a question from SonicNet about the inspiration behind those two songs: “Mayte now lives in Spain, and the flight eye have grown accustomed 2 is “Madrid 2 Chicago.” (...) “U’re Still the One” is a well-written pop song that begged 4 VOLUME. We gave it that.”
The Madrid 2 Chicago album became votable for release during Prince: A Celebration week at Paisley Park in June 2000. When it didn’t get released, the songs Madrid 2 Chicago and Breathe were released as a digital single in the NPG Music Club in January 2002.
Meanwhile, at a press conference in Madrid, Spain, on 11 December 1998, O(+> announced that he and wife Mayte were annulling their marriage. He read a statement that said that they would renew their vows in a ceremony free of legal contracts on their anniversary 14 February 1999. O(+> ostensibly based the decision to annul the marriage on his new belief that all contracts, including marriage vows, were morally wrong. The entire statement was published on the Love4OneAnother website on 1 January 1999.
Mayte wrote in her 2017 book My Life With Prince that “a legal marriage is not annulled just because an eccentric rock star says it in a press conference. (…) Over the course of the following year, there was never any mention of the annulment or a renewal of our vows. He continued to refer to me, publicly and privately, as his wife. I kept flying to wherever I had to go to meet up with him for red carpet and press events, and he kept promising to take time off to be with me in Spain.”
Apparently the announcement at the press conference was for O(+> to seem less guilty in the public eye about being unfaithful to his wife with other women.
Photo: Steve Parke
Madrid 2 Chicago evolves into Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic On 15 December 1998, O(+> launched a two-week European tour, the New Power Soul Music Festival Presents… The Jam Of The Year. He performed the new song Hypnoparadise as an instrumental. It is unknown if that song was included on the Madrid 2 Chicago album, but Steve Parke later said that he remembered working on the artwork for the album. By early 1999, that album morphed once more, though, becoming Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic but still including Man 'O' War.
O(+> wrote quite a few new songs for the project between January and April 1999, including Wherever U Go, Whatever U Do which has been likened to This Is Your Life which would also get included on early configurations of Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic, but left off the released version. This Is Your Life has been described as a mid-tempo pop/rock number with a Linn drum machine beat and a chorus consisting of the words “yes, this is your life.” H.M. Buff recalled This Is Your Life for Matt Thorne’s book: “It’s not quite as dramatic or as preachy as We March, but it was a ‘listen up, I’ll give you some good advice’ song.”
The Sun, The Moon And Stars was reportedly written in Marbella, Spain after a dinner with Mayte and Larry Graham and his wife Tina. The lovers in the lyrics want to throw their past onto a fire, just like O(+> wanted to do with Mayte. “We pretend it didn’t even happen,” he said of their marriage in an interview with Paper published in June 1999. “Like a lot of things in life I don’t like, I pretend it isn’t there and it goes away. We decided to go back to the Garden (of Eden).”
Other songs recorded were I Ain’t Gonna Run which remains unreleased and Strange But True, Hot Wit U, Tangerine, and Prettyman which would all make it to the released configuration. So would Undisputed which was lyrically similar to a track that didn’t make the album, Y Should Eye Do That When Eye Can Do This? that featured former member of O(+>’s NPG band Michael Bland on drums. Also, on 11 February 1999, O(+> recorded The Man In Your Life which would get left off the Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic album, but get re-recorded as If Eye Was The Man In Ur Life in 2003 and then get released on the 2004 Musicology album.
In 1999, O(+> also found time to record the song R U Ready? for his Jehova’s Witnesses mentor Larry Graham and it was performed live at Paisley Park on 8 May 1999, but it remains unreleased.
Looking for a record company to release Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic On 12 April 1999, O(+> announced on his Love4OneAnother website that his new album would be Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic. At the beginning of the month, he had gone to New York for meetings with a few record company executives, including Arista Records founder and head Clive Davis, to discuss a possible deal for his next solo album. “Since leaving Warner Bros. in 1996 and ending a distribution deal with now-defunct EMI Records in 1997, The Artist has successfully marketed a constant stream of music via the Internet and other avenues,” USA Today reported on 13 April 1999. “But he’s hoping to put out his next album, Rave Un2 the Joy Fantastic, on a major label as long as he retains ownership of the master tapes.”
“This business is really structured and rigid, and I had to get outside of it to see things differently and to see the effect it has on your psyche,” O(+> told USA Today of possibly working again with the companies he fought so hard to get away from. “Now it’s like going back to school and knowing that you don’t have to stay.”
He hadn’t decided on a release date but said the album would include some surprising collaborations - and, for the first time in his 21-year career, he would let somebody else produce him, although he wouldn’t say who. This led to a lot of speculation among fans about who the producer would be. Apparently, getting a producer was something O(+> had to agree to in his talks with the record company executives in order to get a deal. Was O(+> - who had always produced himself – selling out?
Back at Paisley Park in Minneapolis, O(+>’s Jehova’s Witnesses mentor Larry Graham replaced NPG bass player Rhonda Smith and at a show at Paisley Park on 17 April 1999, O(+> handed out copies of Watchtower, the Jehova’s Witnesses’ magazine. Watchtower was infamous for publishing prejudiced articles like “Reading superhero comics can turn you gay” and stuff like that. O(+> was transitioning from being an unaffiliated prophet preaching love to becoming a follower of a close-minded sect.
10 tracks for Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic On 19 April 1999, it was announced on the Love4OneAnother website that O(+> had 10 tracks completed for Rave Un2 the Joy Fantastic. Of the songs released on the final 15 track configuration, Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic, Undisputed, Hot Wit U, Tangerine, So Far, So Pleased, The Sun, The Moon And Stars, Man ‘O’ War, Strange But True and Wherever U Go, Whatever U Do had assumably all been recorded at this time, although the tracks would get worked on further before release except for maybe Wherever U Go, Whatever U Do. Tangerine would get edited for the final configuration, but the full version would get released on the Rave In2 The Joy Fantastic remix album made afterwards. And then This Is Your Life makes it 10 tracks, leaving out I Ain’t Gonna Run, Prettyman which was later said to have been intended for Morris Day and The Time, Y Should Eye Do That When Eye Can Do This? and The Man In Your Life.
“The title track is one I did 12 years ago, but it sounded so much like Kiss that I wanted to put it in the Vault and let it marinate for a while,” O(+> had told USA Today in the interview released 13 April 1999. It seems at this point that the album was a condensed experience that would have been stronger than the later expansion to 15 tracks which kind of watered it out a bit.
There is references to drinking in three consecutive tracks, Tangerine, So Far, So Pleased and The Sun, The Moon And Stars, increasing the album’s maudlin feel even at this early stage, though, coming from the usually abstemious O(+>.
On 23 April 1999, Hot 97 New York radio reported that O(+> was in town again, this time to record a track with Busta Rhymes for an album against police brutality, but no collaboration between the two was ever released. On 3 May 1999, O(+> also attended a Sheryl Crow concert in New York which probably inspired him to invite her for a guest spot on the Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic album when looking for the “surprising collaborations” he had already announced. O(+> attended the Sheryl Crow concert with MTV video jockey Ananda Lewis whom he spend a great deal of time with in New York in the spring and summer of 1999, often frequenting the Life club together.
O(+> and Mayte
The initial Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic configuration Further work commenced on the Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic album with the Hornheadz doing overdubs on five songs on 17 May 1999: Hot Wit U, Man ‘O’ War, I Ain’t Gonna Run, R U Ready? and Y Should Eye Do That When Eye Can Do This?
Michael B. Nelson of the Hornheadz – previously known as the NPG Hornz – described I Ain’t Gonna Run as an upbeat track. It is uncertain if it was included on the initial configuration of the Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic album, though, and Y Should Eye Do That When Eye Can Do This? was probably left out because of its thematically linked lyrics with Undisputed while R U Ready? went to Larry Graham. The Love4OneAnother website announced on 20 May 1999 that Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic was now fully tracked and sequenced, with post-production and mixing remaining.
O(+>: Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic (20 May 1999) Track list unknown but includes Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic, Man ‘O’ War and This Is Your Life
O(+> had a history of adopting a new look for each new album, and during the night to 22 May 1999, O(+> debuted a look with braided hair and a piece of cloth at the end of each braid, plus a goatee, at a show at Paisley Park. He told the audience, “Some people say I’m out of touch. But I am the touch!” – quoting the lyrics for Undisputed.
At the end of May 1999, O(+> met with Arista Records head Clive Davis again and played him Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic. Davis liked what he heard and a deal for the release of the album was worked out with O(+> reportedly receiving a $11 million advance. O(+>’s attorney L. Londell McMillan told The Los Angeles Times, published 8 August 1999, that O(+>’s agreement with Arista Records was for one album only and was a “straightforward licensing agreement for manufacturing, distribution and promotions” of Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic. However, Clive Davis would also exert some influence in the content of the album which became evident as the year progressed and Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic got reworked to accommodate his wishes for proven hitmaking strategies.
On 12 September 1999, New York Times reported: “Clive Davis, the renowned founder and chief executive of Arista and a no-nonsense industry veteran, is betting that Rave will please Mammon as well as God. While he has supported outsiders like the Grateful Dead and Patti Smith, Davis is best known as a hit maker, a man with sharp commercial instincts and ambitions. Most recently, he signed the guitarist Carlos Santana - one of the Artist’s idols - to Arista, helped produce his new album Supernatural and guided him to the Top 10 for the first time in decades. And, of course, lest we not forget the consistent success he has bought to Whitney Houston: Yes, Clive Davis is the consummate hit-maker and that's exactly what Prince Rogers Nelson needs right now - hits.”
The New York Times continued: “Typically, the Artist professes no awareness of Davis’ relationship with Santana or anything else about Davis’ career. ‘I knew nothing about him,’ he said simply, explaining that their meeting came about at the suggestion of L. Londell McMillan, the Artist’s business partner. ‘But he knows me. We agreed that the album is full of hits. It was just a question of whether or not we would agree on how it should be put out.’”
Work on Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic recommences On 9 June 1999, O(+> and Mayte attended a gala event hosted by Donatella Versace in England. The party was also attended by Madonna and O(+>’s friend and colleague Lenny Kravitz. A few days later, O(+> and Mayte went to Marocco for a short visit. Reportedly, this trip provided some musical inspiration for the song The Greatest Romance Ever Sold. The title of the song is an obvious variation of The Greatest Story Ever Told, a book by Fulton Oursler about the life of Jesus, which is considered a classic, reverent work. The song was said to be the last song recorded for the Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic album.
A bit later, during the night to 19 June 1999, the DJ played some tracks from Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic while O(+> gauged audience reactions after a show at Paisley Park, and on 26 June 1999 former NPG drummer Michael Bland attended a show at Paisley Park where O(+> performed the title track of Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic. A few days later, on 1 July 1999, Michael Bland would play drums on two new O(+> songs, Baby Knows and Don’t Say No. Baby Knows was reportedly inspired by O(+>’s “hangout friend” Ananda Lewis at the Life club in New York. O(+> told Guitar Player for their January 2000 issue that with his guitar solo on Baby Knows, “I tried to go after Chuck Berry for that one. I think I used my Tele through a small amp.” Only Baby Knows would get added to Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic while Don’t Say No remains unreleased.
Also recorded on 1 July was the song What Should B Souled which O(+> performed live at Paisley Park during the night to 3 July 1999. Audience members described it as a funky jam-type number, but it would not get included on Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic, but on the 2000 Crystal Ball II compilation that remains unreleased.
Between mid-June and mid-July 1999, O(+> also recorded Silly Game, Eye Love U, But Eye Don’t Trust U Anymore and a cover of the Sheryl Crow song Everyday Is A Winding Road for the Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic album. H.M. Buff told Matt Thorne for his book, that those songs along with The Greatest Romance Ever Sold were written or recorded after the sequence had been set to round out and finish the album.
O(+> has reportedly said that Eye Love U, But Eye Don’t Trust U Anymore was partially inspired by his recollection of seeing his father accusing his mother of having another man when she returned home from shopping with her new dress on backwards.
The songs Man ‘O’ War and The Sun, The Moon And Stars received string overdubs as work on Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic progressed.
Photo: Steve Parke
“Surprising collaborations” for Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic One of the agreements with Clive Davis for Arista Records to release Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic besides getting a producer was obviously for O(+> to have guest-stars on it to help it sell. By July 1999, O(+> was seriously setting out to get the promised “surprising collaborations” in the can. His friend Lenny Kravitz might have been an obvious choice, but O(+> went for Sheryl Crow instead. She was in Minneapolis on 1 July 1999 to record with O(+> on Baby Knows. “Sheryl Crow played harp on that song. She nailed it in one take,” O(+> told Guitar Player for their January 2000 issue. O(+>’s cover of Sheryl Crow’s song Everyday Is A Winding Road from her self-titled 1996 album may have repaid the contribution from Sheryl Crow, as she would receive writer’s royalties for the cover. O(+> debuted it by performing it live at a Paisley Park show the night to 3 July 1999.
On 3 July 1999, indie singer/songwriter Ani DiFranco played a show in Minneapolis and O(+> invited her and her saxophone player Maceo Parker to Paisley Park. Maceo Parker added saxophone to Prettyman and Ani DiFranco played a guitar part on Eye Love U, But Eye Don’t Trust U Anymore. In turn, O(+> would add backing vocals to the song Providence by Ani DiFranco which would get released on her To The Teeth album shortly after the release of Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic. And Maceo Parker would record sax versions of The Greatest Romance Ever Sold and Baby Knows in the style of the previously released 1994 and 1995 sax versions of The Most Beautiful Girl In The World by Brian Gallagher and Eric Leeds. Maceo Parker’s sax versions would get released on his 2000 album Dial M-A-C-E-O.
O(+> told Associated Press in an interview published 17 November 1999 that he admired Ani DiFranco for the way she maintained contractual independence and built a successful recording career on her own. "I love her guitar playing,” he said. It’s the most expressive acoustic playing that I’ve ever heard. She’s a risk-taker, and that appeals to me as well. These are the spirits you want to know in your life.” He told Minneapolis Star Tribune in an interview published 3 September 1999: "I wanted to meet Ani DiFranco and, lo and behold, she’s everything I expected. We jammed for four hours, and she danced the whole time. We had to quit because she wore us out.”
O(+> added to Guitar Player for their January 2000 issue about her contribution to Eye Love U, But Eye Don’t Trust U Anymore: “I showed her the chords to the song, but I didn’t tell her how it actually went. If I’d told her too much, then silence wouldn’t have been one of the sounds.”
“When we were doing Prettyman, I was singing ‘Maceo, blow your horn,’ and I thought, what if I could get him on it?” O(+> told Addicted To Noise in an interview published 30 October 1999. “So, I called him, and he came in and laid down an eight-minute solo that just killed. He came down for two to three hours of jamming and by the end Maceo was lying on his back on the stairs playing, and everyone just stopped, and we were just near tears. This is what life is about.”
The night to 10 July 1999, Gwen Stefani of No Doubt and her boyfriend attended a show at Paisley Park. “I saw Gwen jump up on David Letterman’s desk when they performed on his show, and I said, ‘I gotta know her,’” O(+> told MTV on 5 November 1999. Gwen Stefano remained in Minneapolis after the show to record her vocals on So Far, So Pleased. It is unknown if the track was included on the 20 May 1999 configuration of Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic, or if it was pulled out of the Vault from the 1997 Newpower Soul sessions because O(+> thought it would be perfect for him and Gwen Stefano. In return for her contribution, O(+> re-recorded the No Doubt song Waiting Room which they sent him on a tape on 10 July 1999. It got released on their 2001 album Rock Steady, but “vocal, keyboards and stuff” had been added by No Doubt to O(+>’s version.
Photos: Steve Parke
Winding up work on Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic Work on Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic winded down in July 1999. To make room for the five new songs recorded for the album including Prettyman as a hidden track, Prettyman and Tangerine were edited shorter. O(+> told Minneapolis Star Tribune in an interview published 3 September 1999: “Prettyman is the new song that I originally wrote for the Time, but it was so good I kept it. In fact, I wish I had kept some other songs I gave them. I wish I had kept Cool or at least still had one like it.”
The deciding factor for O(+> to add Prettyman to Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic after all although as a hidden track was likely the opportunity to have Maceo Parker play on it. Strange But True also received some overdubs as revealed by H.M. Buff in the Matt Thorne book: “There’s a song on there that wouldn’t be on there if it wasn’t for me, Strange But True. I begged and pleaded for him to put that on there because I thought it was awesome, and then he had to add those scratches. Before it was just straight Prince 1980s stuff, which I loved.”
H.M. Buff added that him and Manuela Testolini also fought hard for the inclusion of Tangerine. “I tried to get The Sun, The Moon and Stars off. I thought it was terrible. And then he goes, ‘Hans, how’s your sex life?’ He thought he needed that to get laid.”
H.M. Buff also recalled: “There was one thing where he wanted to do something for Man ‘O’ War, this great guitar solo, and Clive said something to the effect of, ‘They won’t play it on urban radio.’ And Prince said, ‘Well, I’m a guitar player.’”
The song Beautiful Strange left over from previous incarnations of the Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic album would also get reworked during July and would get released on the Rave In2 The Joy Fantastic remix album following on the heels of Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic. With the album practically done, it was time to relax a bit and on 18 July 1999, O(+> and Mayte attended a Versace fashion show in Paris also attended by Madonna. The day after, O(+> accepted an award for Best Internet-only single, The War, at Yahoo! Internet Life Awards in New York. Afterwards, he played a show at the Life club attended by Clive Davis. Maceo Parker guested on stage for a jam based around Prettyman.
Photo: Steve Parke
A late addition to Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic While in New York in late July 1999, O(+> worked on Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic at the Electric Ladyland studio in New York. He mixed So Far, So Pleased and Baby Knows at the studio. Baby Knows was edited shorter in the process.
The night to 7 August 1999, O(+> hung around the dance floor at a Paisley Park party where a DJ played several new songs, including Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic and his newly recorded cover of Public Enemy’s Fight The Power. Although the cover remains unreleased, Chuck D of Public Enemy added a rap to Undisputed at Paisley Park in mid-August 1999 – one more guest-star for Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic to also appeal to a black rap audience.
“It was a gigantic vibe session,” Chuck D told Addicted To Noise in an interview published 30 October 1999. “I guess Prince has his particular way, because he’s first and foremost a musician, and second and foremost a master producer. So we gelled on many ideas and mutually expressed our admiration for each other.”
Chuck D added that he wasn’t nervous when meeting the singer. Instead, it felt like meeting family, the rapper joked: “To be straight-up and honest, obviously I’m gonna have the utmost amount of respect and admiration for him. He’s a master at what he does, and he’s been in the business much longer as a trendsetter. So, I followed his lead, and now he’s following mine, of course.”
The resulting rap-funk song Undisputed says it all, according to Clive Davis: “Over the years, they’ve both thought of the other as the undisputed (best at what they do).”
Meanwhile, O(+>’s relationship with Manuela Testolini was getting serious. On 22 August 1999, he sang and played guitar for a performance of Everyday Is A Winding Road with Sheryl Crow at her concert in Toronto, Canada where Manuela Testolini was born.
Photo: Steve Parke
The producer of Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic revealed On 25 August 1999, a joint Arista/NPG Records press release announced the release of Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic. It was revealed that the producer of the album was none other than Prince which caused quite a stir among fans. Was this just a ploy for Arista Records to have the name Prince appear on the cover of the album to help it sell? Or to gradually ease the name Prince back into the public consciousness now that his contract with Warner Bros. Records had expired and he needn’t go by the unpronounceable “O(+>” symbol anymore?
Because Arista/BMG would distribute Rave Un2 the Joy Fantastic in a deal similar to the one with EMI for Emancipation, giving O(+> unrestricted ownership of the master tapes, it was trumpeted by the press as O(+>s return to a major label after his much-publicized departure from Warner Bros. and his recent effort to sell CDs via the Internet. "People are looking for drama in it. It’s for one album. There could be a second. The contract is this thick,” O(+> told Minneapolis Star Tribune in an interview published 3 September 1999 while holding his forefinger and thumb millimeters apart.
Prince also said that he met directly with Arista’s president, Clive Davis. “Record companies want to own their creations, but no one owns the creation but the creator. It’s an actual ideology and Clive agrees you should own your masters. He also told me, ’I have free will, too.’ Which was good that he said that to me.”
O(+> celebrated the impending release of Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic by performing his cover of Fight The Power as well as Prettyman and Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic during a show at Paisley Park the night to 4 September 1999. Two days later, O(+> performed at the Music Mill City Festival in Minneapolis with Mayte and Maceo Parker guesting on stage. O(+> performed his cover of Everyday Is A Winding Road and introduced Prettyman as being written for Morris Day: “But it was so funky, so I kept it.”
Photos: Steve Parke
Release of The Greatest Romance Ever Sold Between 10 and 15 September 1999, O(+> wrapped up work on Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic at the Electric Ladyland studio in New York by having rapper Eve record parts for Hot Wit U and The Greatest Romance Ever Sold (Adam & Eve Remix featuring Eve) – the latter to be released on the first single off the album. “’Tell me that’s not a hit,’ O(+> insisted as the swelling choruses and Arabic scales of The Greatest Romance Ever Sold washed over us,” the New York Times reported on 12 September 1999 and continued: “Asked, ‘Is it fair to say that this upcoming album is something of a comeback effort for you?’ the Artist shot back, ‘A comeback from what?’”
On 15 September 1999, the Love4OneAnother website announced that Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic was complete and that the mastering process had begun. The day after, Arista founder Clive Davis hosted a listening party for Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic in a 500-capacity auditorium in The Equitable Building on Manhattan in New York. O(+> performed, but strangely didn’t play any of the new songs. The night to 26 September 1999, he did play Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic and Prettyman at a Paisley Park show, though.
Another Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic listening session was held on 9 October 1999 during the Billboard Monitor Radio Seminar at Fontainebleu Hilton Hotel, Miami Beach, with a performance by O(+>. This time he did play one song from the new album, Prettyman.
Meanwhile, The Greatest Romance Ever Sold single was released on 5 October 1999.
“The Greatest Romance Ever Sold is gonna cut through everything on radio” O(+> told Blues & Soul, published 14 December 1999. “Programmers won’t be afraid to play it." However, it only reached number 63 on Billboard’s Pop Chart and number 23 on the R&B Chart. The video for the song didn’t premiere until two months after the release of the single, which clearly contributed to the disappointing chart impact.
Mayte said in her 2017 book My Life With Prince: “The lyrics about ‘why Adam never left Eve’ were clearly about me and might have been another pang of hope, if not for that bitter little twist in the refrain – ‘the greatest romance that’s ever been sold’ – though I wasn’t sure who sold it to whom.”
Fans also paid attention to the typically arrogant O(+> lyric “this is where you end and you and I begin” – not “this is where we end” - because of course he didn’t end. All in all, the lyrics really weren’t that romantic. The song was seemingly written and released in the hopes of imitating the success of The Most Beautiful Girl In The World in 1994, but The Greatest Romance Ever Sold just wasn’t as romantically appealing.
Photographer Steve Parke told Matt Thorne for his Prince book: “I got to go to Spain to shoot Prince and Mayte at their house. A lot of the stuff for The Greatest Romance Ever Sold came from that.”
The Greatest Romance Ever Sold CD-single (1999) 1. The Greatest Romance Ever Sold (Radio Edit) (4:33) 2. The Greatest Romance Ever Sold (Album Version) (5:32) 3. The Greatest Romance Ever Sold (Radio Edit featuring Eve) (4:35) 4. The Greatest Romance Ever Sold (Adam & Eve Remix) (4:29)
The Adam & Eve Remix reuses the first verse of Silicon, a track recorded during the May to August 1997 Newpower Soul sessions according to H.M. Buff in Matt Thorne’s book. Silicon would get released in the NPG Music Club in 2001.
O(+> and Mayte photographed by Steve Parke
O(+> on Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic being produced by Prince For promotion to build excitement about the forthcoming release of Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic, O(+> would give quite a few interviews. Of course, like the fans, the press was very interested in the album being produced by Prince and what that signified. Was Prince the other personality of the Gemini O(+>?
The New York Daily News reported on 3 October 1999: “All he says about the music on Rave is that ‘it’s full of hits,’ and ‘it’s very daring.’ He chalks up part of this to the album’s producer, whom he credits as Prince - in other words, to his old persona. ‘He knows a hit,’ says the Artist, wryly. ‘He’s a good editor.’”
Arista head Clive Davis told the Philadelphia Inquirer for its 9 November 1999 publication that what struck him most about Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic was its balance: “It’s rare to find an artist who is both pushing frontiers and also making music for a large audience.” He added that it was no accident that the album was produced by Prince: “It was time for him to do a radio-friendly album” – suggesting O(+> hadn’t made any and that Arista had demanded something more akin to the albums O(+> had made back when he was known as Prince. Of course, O(+>’s take on the story was that “I just thought it would be interesting to show that genesis, to make the album sound like Prince again,” he told Pulse! for their February 2000 issue. “So, I went down and blew the dust off all the old instruments.”
“Ultimately, I think (the album) is different,” O(+> told MTV on 5 November 1999. “I think it is the past. I think it is kind of what I’ve been doing the whole time, and that’s why I gave production credit to Prince, because he was in charge of picking the instruments and saying the direction that the grooves should go, and he’s in charge of pulling out the old Linn drum machine and saying, ‘Let’s go with Old Faithful. Let’s not worry about what everybody else is doing. Let’s go with what we know,’ you know? That’s a hard thing to do, you know, to not let the collective consciousness move you in a particular direction. It’s hard if you don’t have God in your life.”
O(+> indirectly admitted to Music Connection, published 8 November 1999, that “I figured Prince produced my greatest hits, so who better than him to work with me on my first project for the new millennium? Creatively, he knows me better than anyone."
"Prince could make decisions that I wouldn't make," he continued. "Prince knows what it took to make those records. Those things were kicking, weren't they? For Rave, I wrote the material and I'm playing the instruments, but Prince made the creative decisions in the studio. I wanted him in there with me on this one."
O(+> told Blues & Soul, published 14 December 1999: “I didn’t want people to say to me 'Why don't you sound like your old stuff anymore?' I think in a lot of ways I still sound like I did before, so by having Prince produce it, it helps make that connection. (…) I think it’s alright to use the same chords and copy yourself sometimes. It's when you copy someone else you've got a problem!”
The unspoken admission was that O(+> was trying to emulate the success of Prince in producing hit records because O(+> hadn’t been as successful and he wanted a comeback with a hit album, so short of calling himself Prince again, he had somewhat folded to Clive Davis’ assumed advice that by using the name Prince again in some capacity, it might improve sales.
Release of Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic A few days before the release of Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic, O(+> performed at Paisley Park the night to 6 November 1999 with live premieres of The Greatest Romance Ever Sold and Baby Knows. Everyday Is A Winding Road was also played. During a 10-minute break, The Sun, The Moon And Stars was aired.
Between 6 and 8 November 1999, O(+> worked with director Malik Sayeed on a music video for The Greatest Romance Ever Sold. However, the premiere of the video got delayed by O(+> having to undertake a promotional tour of Europe in support of the album which finally saw release on 9 November 1999.
O(+>: Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic (1999) 1. Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic (4:19) 2. Undisputed (4:20) 3. The Greatest Romance Ever Sold (5:29) 4. Segue (0:04) 5. Hot With U (5:11) 6. Tangerine (1:31) 7. So Far, So Pleased (3:24) 8. The Sun, The Moon And Stars (5:15) 9. Everyday Is A Winding Road (6:12) – by Sheryl Crow, Jeff Trott & Brian McLeod 10. Segue (0:18) 11. Man ‘O’ War (5:14) 12. Baby Knows (3:18) 13. Eye Love U, But Eye Don’t Trust U Anymore (3:35) 14. Silly Game (3:30) 15. Strange But True (4:12) 16. Wherever U Go, Whatever U Do (3:17) 17. Segue (0:43) 18. Prettyman (4:24)
The segue preceding Hot Wit U is four seconds of silence while the segue preceding Man ‘O’ War is part of the string overdubs recorded for the song. Wherever U Go, Whatever U Do was tracked with a lot of silence at the end so its actual total run time is 8:51. The 5 minutes and 30 seconds silence at the end were to separate the bonus track from the actual album tracks. The segue following the silence and preceding the bonus track Prettyman is an advertisement for 1-800-NEW-FUNK.
The album came with a poster. Photographer Steve Parke recalled in Matt Thorne’s book: “Those shots we took in Spain. I really liked the ones in the pool because I liked being out of the studio with him. I like the idea he’s in the water. At the time he was talking about bringing things to the Internet, making things virtual. I was thinking of the Kraftwerk album with the models for heads. I liked the idea with the hands: You think of connection, the organic with the digital.”
In the lyrics for the very beautifully performed Eye Love U, But Eye Don’t Trust U Anymore, O(+>’s wife Mayte was addressed by the lines, “I remember meeting you here in the good old days, I would never pick the flower of my favorite protégé.” Mayte spoke out about the song in her 2017 book My Life With Prince: “The lyrics are the bitter lament of a betrayed lover, and when people heard the lyrics, they leapt to the obvious conclusion that I’d been cheating on him.” For many fans, though, it seemed like an obvious attempt by O(+> to gain sympathy from his fans about his troubled marriage by presenting himself as the victim, when in fact, he was the one doing the cheating.
Fans generally enjoyed the same songs as H.M. Buff, Tangerine and Strange But True plus Hot Wit U, So Far, So Pleased, the rocking Baby Knows for those who liked Peach in 1993, Wherever U Go, Whatever U Do and Prettyman that all actually sounded like they might have been produced by Prince. Songs like Man ‘O’ War and Silly Game were syrupy R&B efforts in the vein of the worst of Emancipation, and the cover of Everyday Is A Winding Road was marred by the presence of Jehova preacher Larry Graham asking “do you love God?” But the album was generally better received than the previous one, Newpower Soul.
Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic met with mostly positive reviews too. Many critics felt it was one of O(+>’s strongest albums of the 90s. However, despite the positive response and O(+>’s promotional efforts by doing a lot of interviews and going on a European promotional tour, the album met with moderate success. Unquestionably, one reason for the album’s lack of impact was the failure of the first single, The Greatest Romance Ever Sold, and the lack of any further singles to get released although two further singles would get produced, Man ‘O’ War and The Hot Experience. Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic reached number 18 on Billboard’s Pop Chart and number 8 on the R&B chart. It ended up selling about 800.000 copies worldwide which was better than O(+>’s previous album Newpower Soul which was credited to The New Power Generation, Chaos And Disorder and The Vault… Old Friends 4 Sale, but less than Come, The Gold Experience and Emancipation. O(+>’s second attempt at major label distribution and promotion after leaving Warner Bros. would end as a disappointment for him. Many fans felt that an archival release of the 1988 configuration of Rave Unto The Joy Fantastic might have been a much more interesting and critically successful release, because the title track was so good, it made them want to hear the rest of that.
Photo: Steve Parke
The European PR tour for Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic Having done quite a bit of press interviews to promote Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic in the United States, O(+> embarked on a two-week promotional tour of Europe in mid-November that would include a string of television appearances. The plan was to also do television appearances in the States upon his return. O(+> hadn’t engaged in this level of promotion since the release of Emancipation in 1996 and it was probably part of the agreement with Arista Records for them to release Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic.
The promotional tour of Europe started out with a new listening party for journalists on 15 November. It was held at the 600-capacity Mermaid Theatre in London. Clive Davis presented the songs and O(+> performed with The Greatest Romance Ever Sold and Baby Knows as the encore numbers. Those were the two songs O(+> would perform on various European TV shows, either one or the other or both of them. O(+> would occasionally lip-synch The Greatest Romance Ever Sold instead of performing it live.
While O(+> was on the PR tour of Europe, a maxi-single was released of The Greatest Romance Ever Sold on 23 November 1999. Original Radio Edit was the same as Radio Edit on the first single.
The Greatest Romance Ever Sold – The Remix CD (1999) 1. The Greatest Romance Ever Sold (Original Radio Edit) (4:32) 2. The Greatest Romance Ever Sold (Jason Nevins Remix Edit) (3:53) 3. The Greatest Romance Ever Sold (Neptunes Remix Edit featuring Q-Tip) (3:45) 4. The Greatest Romance Ever Sold (Jason Nevins Extended Remix) (6:48) 5. The Greatest Romance Ever Sold (Neptunes Extended Remix featuring Q-Tip) (5:07)
A 12” promo single of Jason Nevins’ mixes was also made. The Vocal version was identical to Jason Nevins Extended Remix on the officially released maxi single.
O(+>: The Greatest Romance Ever Sold – Jason Nevins Mixes 12” promo single (October 1999) A) Vocal (6:40) Beats (6:47)* B) Dub (5:49)* Instrumental (6:47)*
O(+> celebrated the release by giving a show in Madrid on 24 November 1999 which Mayte attended and shortly after, he cut the PR tour short and travelled back to Minneapolis where the video for The Greatest Romance Ever Sold finally premiered on MTV on 9 December 1999. O(+> said he made the video as a contrast to videos that are sex-oriented. However, in her 2017 book, Mayte observed: “The accompanying music video featured my husband getting down and dirty – and I mean VERY down and VERY dirty – with a girl I later discovered was a stripper from Le Crazy Horse. This was pushing the envelope, even for him.”
A couple of pages earlier in her book, Mayte had recounted how she got upset about O(+> bringing her, his wife to that particular strip club in Paris, so no wonder she took it personal. “Mama had blood in her eye after she saw that video,” Mayte continued. “Who would humiliate his wife in public that way? No good man! No son of mine!” her mother had said.
The unreleased 2nd single off Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic O(+>’s hangout friend at the Life club in New York earlier in the year Ananda Lewis was visiting O(+> at Paisley Park in December 1999 where she was among the VIP-guests for a The Time concert at Paisley Park on 17 December 1999 and a O(+> show there too the day after. The two shows were videotaped and the second on 18 December 1999 would make up the bulk of the Rave Un2 The Year 2000 TV special broadcast on pay-per-view on New Year’s Eve 1999/2000. Subsequent broadcasts followed in many countries, and it would get released on DVD in June 2000.
On New Year's Eve 1999/2000, O(+> also released One Song as a download on his Love4OneAnother website. The song lasted 3:28 but was preceded by almost six minutes of sermonizing about mankind’s artificial barriers between itself and God, making the download clock in at an 8:54 total. Many fans who were unhappy about O(+>’s Jehova’s Witnesses leanings weren’t thrilled about the speech and fan edits were made, cutting the speech off so it was just the song.
O(+>: One Song download (1999/2000) 1. One Song (8:54)
In the beginning of the new year, O(+> was working on a limited edition of Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic titled Rave In2 The Joy Fantastic complete with a remix of Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic titled Rave In2 The Joy Fantastic. The remix was possibly already remixed in December 1999. The limited edition would get postponed, though, and it wouldn’t get released until April 2001 where it was made available through the then Prince’s NPG Music Club.
By March 2000, Clive Davis flew to Minneapolis for a visit to Paisley Park. He had invested significant time and a $11 million advance in the Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic project, but according to Alex Hahn in his 2004 book Possessed – The Rise And Fall Of Prince, he was met by a O(+> who was frustrated with Arista’s promotional efforts. “Clive Davis and Arista Records allows Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic to languish at the netheregions of the chart (ain’t nobody really trippin’),” O(+> wrote on his Love4One Another website in early March. O(+> reminded the chairman of the hits he had promised. O(+> made it clear he wasn’t wasting any more time on promotion unless a second single was rushed out.
However, Associated Press had reported on 17 November 1999 that the deal with O(+> was one of the last Davis made before learning that Arista parent BMG Entertainment was forcing him from his job. The New York Daily News reported that L. Londell McMillan, an attorney for the Artist, called Davis’s situation “a corporate media assassination at best and at worst, age discrimination.”
So, it’s possibly Clive Davis wasn’t in any position to greenlight further singles from Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic. Certainly, the second single choice Man ‘O’ War was only released as a promo single with the official remix single remaining unreleased.
O(+>: Man ‘O’ War promo single (2000) 1. Radio Edit (without guitar solo) (3:56) 2. Radio Edit (with guitar solo) (3:59) 3. Call Out Research Hook (0:10)
O(+>: Man ‘O’ War – The Remix Experience single (spring 2000) Track list unknown
Photo: Steve Parke
Rave In2 The Joy Fantastic gets postponed In March 2000, O(+> posted on his Love4OneAnother website that he had postponed a limited edition of Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic with remixes and extended versions, a delay that “will give Mr. Davis time to make good on his promise to deliver a couple of real hit singles to the top of the charts.” It is therefore likely that besides the title track Rave In2 The Joy Fantastic, the other remixes done for the limited edition were also done at this point: Undisputed (The Moneyapolis Mix), Chuck D.’s Rhyme which didn’t make the remix album, Hot Wit U (Nasty Girl Remix) of which an edit would make the remix album and The Greatest Romance Ever Sold (Extended Version featuring Eve).
About the latter. H.M. Buff revealed in Matt Thorne’s Prince book that “there were two remixes of The Greatest Romance Ever Sold and Clive wanted to combine them to make something new, and I had passed that on, and Prince didn’t want to talk to him. And finally he was in the same room looking at me, and I gave him the puppy eyes, and he said, ‘Oh, that’s what you want? I’d rather be dragged through nails.’”
But he made it anyway. O(+> also made an NPG Records sampler cassette featuring a remix of Man ‘O’ War now that the single wasn’t released, but the track would get released on the Rave In2 The Joy Fantastic remix album. The sampler also contained a couple of samples of songs recorded with Rosie Gaines who had just guested on O(+>’s New Year’s Eve Rave Un2 The Year 2000 TV special. Both songs would get released later. There was also a sample of an unreleased track for his Jehova’s Witnesses mentor Larry Graham and one from Chaka Khan’s 1998 album Come 2 My House. The two samples credited to The New Power Generation were previews of future releases while the two samples credited to Madhouse were retitled unreleased tracks from the abandoned 1995 Madhouse: 24 album.
O(+>: Man O War (Remix) NPG Records Sampler promo cassette (2000) 1. Man O War (Remix) (5:11) 2. The New Power Generation: Peace (Edit) (1:31)* 3. The New Power Generation: 2045: Radical Man (Edit) (2:18)* 4. Rosie Gaines: Hit U In The Socket (NPGMC Remix) (Excerpt) (1:18) 5. Rosie Gaines: Trouble (Never Give Up) (Excerpt) (1:15) – released as T.R.O.U.B.L.E. 6. Madhouse: Seventeen (Excerpt) (1:27)* - cover of Kamasutra/Overture #8 7. Madhouse: Eighteen (Excerpt) (1:49)* - cover of Promise/Broken 8. Chaka Khan: Come 2 My House (Edit) (1:49)* 9. Larry Graham: Do U Wanna Get Funky (Excerpt) (1:34)**
On 11 April 2000, the Maceo Parker album Dial M-A-C-E-O containing his sax versions of The Greatest Romance Ever Sold and Baby Knows was released. A promo-single was made of his version of The Greatest Romance Ever Sold around the same time, containing two different edits of the track.
Maceo Parker: The Greatest Romance Ever Sold promo CD-single (Spring 2000) 1. The Greatest Romance Ever Sold (Radio Edit #1) (3:57) 2. The Greatest Romance Ever Sold (Radio Edit #2) (3:52)
Photos: Steve Parke
Release of Rave Un2 The Year 2000 On 20 March 2000, Mayte sent a letter to her husband about how unhappy she was and that it was obvious he didn’t love her anymore and wanted her out of his life and asked how he wanted to resolve the situation legally. She just wanted to move on, so she accepted the very first offer of settlement from his attorney, which was to get a little money and keep the house in Spain which she figured she could sell. In May 2000, Mayte signed the papers, and the divorce was officially announced. At the same time, O(+> made it official that his name was now Prince again with contractual ties to Warner Brothers having ceased. And of course, a Jehova’s Witness cannot be called by a heathen symbol.
Around the time of his divorce, Prince kept busy by recording a duet called Make That Move with former girl group TLC member Lisa “Left Eye” Lopez. The song was left off her solo album by request from Prince, though, and it remains unreleased.
And then the New Year’s Eve Rave Un2 The Year 2000 TV special was released on DVD on 5 June 2000 with a running time of 132 minutes. Arista Records was not involved with the release, and now it was credited to Prince. Like on the European PR tour, the only Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic songs performed in the show were The Greatest Romance Ever Sold and Baby Knows.
The DVD is akin to the 1995 Home Video release The Sacrifice Of Victor of a 1993 aftershow in London where O(+> took the backseat to lots of guest stars on stage. This new bigger and bolder take on that is framed by O(+> performing abridged versions of some of Prince’s greatest hits, but any momentum the show might have built up is lost when O(+>’s Jehova’s Witnesses mentor, bass player Larry Graham takes center stage for three songs, and it’s not even any of the ones O(+> wrote for him. Then O(+> precedes a Purple Rain performance by telling the audience that “you only have one birthday” because Larry Graham told him so. And then they have to suffer through a duet with O(+> and Larry Graham performing The Cross, but with the lyrics changed to The Christ because Larry Graham told O(+> that Jesus didn’t die on a cross, but a stauros. It’s practically unwatchable. After that, there’s some blues playing and now the audience is just bored. It’s not until the performance of Baby Knows that interest is rekindled, but then the show is almost over. It was great seeing Rosie Gaines perform with O(+>, though, and Lenny Kravitz was great, too. Sax player Maceo Parker is also among the guest stars, and he would later join Prince’s band. Mercifully George Clinton’s performance and a fourth Larry Graham song were saved for the DVD extras, or the show would have dragged on.
Prince In Concert: Rave Un2 The Year 2000 (DVD) Let’s Go Crazy She’s Always In My Hair U’ve Got The Look Kiss Jungle Love – feat. Morris Day and The Time The Bird – feat. Morris Day and The Time American Woman (Lenny Kravitz) Fly Away (Lenny Kravitz) Get Off – Gett Off/Gett Off (Houstyle) feat. Rosie Gaines Medley (Rosie Gaines, Mike Scott, Maceo Parker) It’s Alright Everyday People (Cynthia Robinson & Gerry Martini) Higher Purple Rain The Christ Blues Medley (Maceo Parker & Johnny Blackshire) – Purple House Nothing Compares 2 U – feat. Rosie Gaines Take Me With U/Raspberry Beret Greatest Romance Baby Knows 1999 Intro Baby I’m A Star 1999 Bonus features: Innerviews George Clinton: Fleshlight Cathy Jenesen: The Undertaker (Sax solo) Jimmy Russell: The Undertaker (Harmonica solo) Larry Graham, Prince, NPG: Release Urself Freedom Newz Peep This
Freedom Newz is a couple of speeches about the music industry, and Peep This is an advertisement for The NPG New Funk Sampling Series which remains unreleased.
The NPG: New Funk Sampling Series (2000) 7 CD set of samples with discs entitled Bass, The Human Voice, Guitar, Keyboards, Loops & Percussion, Sound FX and Orchestral
The first song to be released by the re-christened Prince was CyberSingle. As the title implies, it was released digitally as a download from NPG Online on 14 July 2000.
Prince: CyberSingle download (14 July 2000) 1. CyberSingle (2:43)
On 21 July 2000, two samples of live tracks recorded at Paisley Park on 15 July 2000 were made available as downloads from NPG Online. Tell Me What It Is was a cover of a Graham Central Station song.
Prince: Live At Paisley Park 15 July 2000 download (21 July 2000) 1. Tell Me What It Is (2:30) 2. Good Life (2:27)
Photo: Steve Parke
The unreleased 3rd single and Rave In2 The Joy Fantastic Even though the Man ‘O’ War single wasn’t released, that didn’t stop Prince from making a new one for Hot Wit U that didn’t get released either. As the song was on a O(+> album, The Hot Experience was also credited to O(+>. The new track on the single, Underneath The Cream which was inspired by a line in the lyrics to Hot Wit U, would get released in Prince’s NPG Music Club the following year. Nasty Girl Remix would get released on the Rave In2 The Joy Fantastic remix album while the club/dance remix would get included in NPG Ahdio Show #11 which was released to members of the NPG Music Club on 17 January 2002. The hip hop-like Redefine Hot Remix would get bootlegged, leaving only the House mix of So Far, So Pleased unknown to fans. It has been described as a club/dance remix mixed with elements of the Rave In2 The Joy Fantastic remix.
O(+>: The Hot Experience 12” single (pre 19 July 2000) Hot Wit U (Nasty Girl Remix) (4:28) Hot Wit U (Redefine Hot Remix) (6:32) Underneath The Cream (4:02) Hot Wit U (Club/Dance Remix) So Far, So Pleased (House) (6:04)
A music video was made for Hot Wit U (Nasty Girl Remix). It featured a few sexy girls now that Prince was no longer a married man.
On 20 October 2000, a new in-house 12” single of Hot Wit U was made, supposedly for O(+>’s DJ to bring on tour to play for Prince. Lil Buddy Mix was new from the previous configuration, and the Rave In2 The Joy Fantastic remix was added instead of one of the Hot Wit U remixes – it is uncertain which of the remixes that’s track 2 on side A.
Prince: Hot Wit U in-house 12” (20 October 2000) A) Hot Wit U (Nasty Girl Remix) (4:28) Hot Wit U (6:57)* Hot Wit U (Underneath The Cream) (4:01) B) Hot Wit U (Lil’ Buddy Mix) (3:43)* Rave In2 The Joy Fantastic (5:15) So Far, So Pleased (House) (6:04)*
According to Alex Hahn’s book, Possessed – The Rise And Fall Of Prince, months after the release of Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic, Clive Davis told a reporter: “Prince made a great record, but it didn’t appeal to the thirteen- to nineteen-year-old age bracket, which means the demographics weren’t sufficient to create a hit. It wasn’t bad. I mean, it was a hit among a certain bracket. But it didn’t go down with the youth.”
On 29 April 2001, the Rave In2 The Joy Fantastic limited edition album finally became available through the NPG Music Club. The album was sent on CD to premium members during the first year of the club, and later became available for purchase from the club as a stand-alone item. It featured remixes and variant versions of Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic tracks, including the remixed version of Beautiful Strange from summer 1999 as an added incentive to buy the album. In turn, Everyday Is A Winding Road and Strange But True were removed from the album.
H.M. Buff told Matt Thorne for his Prince book: “It’s not that different. There were a couple of steps taken making Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic, they were just undone.”
Supposedly he was referring to Tangerine, Baby Knows and Prettyman having been edited for inclusion on Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic, but on Rave In2 The Joy Fantastic, they were the original unedited versions.
O(+>: Rave In2 The Joy Fantastic (2000) 1. Rave In2 The Joy Fantastic (5:14) 2. Undisputed (The Moneyapolis Mix) (5:45) 3. The Greatest Romance Ever Sold (Extended Version featuring Eve) (8:06) 4. Hot Wit U (Nasty Girl Remix) (4:23) 5. Tangerine (Extended Version) (2:13) 6. So Far, So Pleased (3:24) 7. The Sun, The Moon And Stars (5:18) 8. ManOwar (Remix) (5:12) 9. Baby Knows (Extended Version) (3:53) 10. Eye Love U, But Eye Don’t Trust U Anymore (3:33) 11. Beautiful Strange (4:55) 12. Silly Game (3:29) 13. Wherever U Go, Whatever U Do (3:16) 14. Prettyman (Extended Version) (5:35)
This Is Your Life, I Ain’t Gonna Run, R U Ready?, Don’t Say No, What Should B Souled, O(+>’s cover of Fight The Power and the Make That Move duet with Lisa Lopes remain unreleased, as does the early O(+> version of The Man In Your Life. Along with O(+>’s early solo versions of the songs he invited guest-stars on, the unreleased Hot Wit U remixes and the remix of So Far, So Pleased plus non-album tracks like One Song and CyberSingle, there’d be enough material for a Vault disc if Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic should ever receive the Super Deluxe Edition treatment by the Estate of Prince. The Beautiful Strange and Madrid 2 Chicago albums should get individual releases.
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