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Your support makes all the difference.There was a time when Prince albums seemed to be both endless and frequent: no sooner had one vast triple-album been assimilated than another oversized tranche of songs appeared on its heels, an apparently ceaseless stream of fair-to-middling material that simply served to cheapen the value of the Prince brand.
Like many a heritage act, his undoubted performance charisma enabled him to sustain his reputation through a series of tours and residencies, such as his 2006 40-show residency at the Las Vegas Club 3121, and the following year’s illogically-named Earth Tour string of 21 shows, all at London’s O2 arena. The exposure helped restore Prince’s chart profile, but more recently he’s showed signs of returning to his earlier excessive tendencies, with last year’s simultaneous release of Plectrumelectrum and Art Official Age. Now, we have the sudden surprise appearance, via Tidal, of HITnRUN Phase Two, a mere three months after …phase one elicited such mediocre reviews and poor chart placing. Has he once more landed on a snake, after such diligent ladder-climbing?
Well…no, actually. HITnRUN Phase Two may be Prince’s best album in a decade or two, and certainly the most confident and agreeable confirmation of his qualities for many a year. Recorded over a four-year period at his Minneapolis studio with a 16-piece horn section combining his own NPG Hornz with the city’s Hornheads, it’s a testament to both the enduring power of his Seventies funk influences and the sonic efficacy of analogue recording: the heft and balance of the horn arrangements throughout is remarkable, rich and sonorous in a way rarely encountered in these digital days. As Prince boasts in “Black Muse”, the album’s longest track, “Rock’n’roll and jazz, so you know we’re built to last – it’s cool”. And so it proves.
The album’s status is undoubtedly raised by the inclusion of “Baltimore”, last May’s single protesting at police violence (“Does anybody hear us pray/For Michael Brown or Freddie Gray?”). With its cooing backing vocals, buttoned-down guitar fills and sprightly string curlicues dancing round the edges of the melody, it’s surely the finest moment of Prince’s recent career, the climactic chant of “If there ain’t no justice, then there ain’t no peace” recalling the earlier protest party-anthems of Sly & The Family Stone. Sly is, of course, one of the major influences looming over HITnRUN Phase Two. When he sings, in the closing triumphalist march “Big City”, that “Everybody’s a star/You’re the most pretty”, it’s a deliberate nod back to the collectivist uplift of “Everybody Is A Star”; and if that isn’t former Family Stone bass legend Larry Graham slapping out that intro to “Stare”, somebody’s doing a damn good impression of him.
Not that Sly is the only touchstone here. The spirit of James Brown drives many of these grooves, and there’s even a touch of “Addicted To Love” about the slinky rock-a-boogie “Screwdriver”, with its invitation to “enjoy the view – I’m your driver, you’re my screw”. But the prevalence throughout the album of glistening Wurlitzer electric piano and those intricate horns and flutes brings to mind the golden era of jazz-funk that prospered in the wake of Miles Davis. There’s a passage, halfway through “Black Muse”, involving staccato horns and voices scatting over a stop-start groove, that could be Herbie Hancock or Weather Report, while Prince’s subsequent claim, “Like a UFO sighting/From my heart I am writing/The next close encounter…” effectively drapes around his shoulders the mantle of black space-jazz and space-funk, from Sun Ra to George Clinton. And at the most utilitarian level, a tricksy horn arrangement can rescue an otherwise routine piece like “Xtraloveable” with a little razzle-dazzle, while adding nicely descriptive musical detail to a decent song like Prince’s romance of the road “Rocknroll Love Affair”.
Overall, it’s an unexpected triumph: bright, sexy, smart and full of life, HITnRUN Phase Two is like the blind date from heaven.
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