PRINCE - PURPLE MEDLEY

This delightful mix was released during Prince's transition from Prince to the d symbol. He received an award of merit at the American Music awards and he performed a medley of as yet unreleased songs from "The Gold Experience". As part of the performance and prior to his appearance, dancers performed to this new purple medley. A video for the medley was later shown on television during the "Love 4 1another" special. The interesting thing about this medley is that although it incorporates samples of his older material the majority of the music seems to be newly recorded. Prince had discussed re-recording his older albums, updating them and selling them to his fans directly since Warner Bros. owned the masters to these recordings. This medley makes me think he had actually started the process. But some of the tunes he'd re-recorded for this record were fairly recent. Like a couple years prior; which makes me also wonder if it was just done for this medley.

The songs played over the course of the 11 minute medley are as follows: 'Batdance', 'When Doves Cry', 'Kiss', 'Erotic City', 'Darling Nikki', '1999', 'Baby I'm A Star', 'Diamonds And Pearls', 'Purple Rain', 'Let's Go Crazy', 'Sexy Dancer', 'Let's Work', 'Irresistible Bitch', 'Sexy M.F.', 'I Wanna Be Your Lover', 'Alphabet St.', 'Thieves In The Temple', 'A Love Bizarre', 'If I Was Your Girlfriend', 'Raspberry Beret', 'Little Red Corvette', 'Cream', 'Peach' and then a coda of jamming with crowd noises for about a minute... The jam sounds like something the New Power Generation was doing at the time.

The 'Edit' of the medley clocks in just over 3 minutes and basically is the same as the full length version, it just ends right after 'Let's Go Crazy'. 'Kirk J's B Sides Remix' is the final track and includes the following songs: 'Pop Life', 'Housequake', 'When Doves Cry', 'Head', 'Shockadelica'. 'Tell Me How U Wanna B Done'. Unlike the 'Purple Medley', this track seems to be made of new music with the original vocal tracks. Kirk Johnson was given free reign to sample the vocal tracks and produced some great, more hip hop inspired beats for the songs he used. Oddly enough considering the title of the track, only two of the songs used were b-sides of the singles they were attached to and only one was a non-album b-side.

In the end, despite poor sales I think Prince made a smart move in releasing this record. Professionally, it helped him put Prince to bed by creating a tribute of sorts and it also satisfied his fan base by releasing a medley his fans would've bootlegged and discussed on end privately. He would do well to continue to release these things as they happened. My final words: AN EXCITING MEDLEY OF GREAT HITS!

PRINCE - PURPLE MEDLEY
01. Purple Medley
02. Purple Medley (Edit)
03. Kirk J's B Sides Remix