You just named all the Prince albums I’ve heard, except for 3121 (from 2006.)

Dirty Mind: I probably liked this second or third best, even if it sounded like it was made using a bunch of Casio keyboards from fucking Wal-Mart! I listen to “Uptown” and “Walmart” every now and then. B or B+

Controversy: The title track and “Private Joy” are fucking wonderful. Catchy as hell. “Annie Christian” is a cool weird one. The rest is adequate but a bit rushed and I’m convinced that some songs, like “Do Me, Baby” were done better on later albums (i.e., “International Lover.”) I wish the best of this and its predecessor had been one album, but you know Prince. B

1999: I really have come to like most of the songs on this on a melodic level, and it’s great night-strolling music, but I’m still holding the album at arms length because of the fucking 70 minute run time. There is, like, ZERO excuse for the extra length padding out most of these songs, and had he even tried long songs before? “Lady Cab Driver,” “D. S. M. R.,” “Let’s Pretend We’re Married”…I don’t dislike the actual melodies, but sheesh on the length (“Automatic,” usually one of the biggest culprits, is one of the songs where I like the overlength.) The only actual song I don’t care for at all is “All The Critics Love U In New York,” but edit 25 minutes out of this thing and you’ve got a near-masterpiece. At its current length, I’d be generous to give it a very low B+

Purple Rain: A, obviously

Sign O’ The Times: He’s been given far too much credit for the “political subtext” on this album–aside from the lyrics to the wonderful title track and maybe a couple of others, you wouldn’t know this album had anything to do with AIDS or crack or the 1987 market crash or any of the other political maladies of that era, all the other lyrics are about love and relationships and a couple of parties. This album interests me on three fronts: 1)the number of weird, dark, spare “groove” songs make for a nice late 80s analogy with There’s A Riot Goin’ On (another album whose sociopolitical importance, I think, has been blown somewhat out of proportion by critics); 2)it’s interesting to read about how he cobbled it together out of several other projects he had going on at the time, like a whole album where he was going to do in the female voice he uses on “If I Was Your Girlfriend,” and 3)it’s a terrific document of CMI Fairlight Production, where artists in the late 80s opted to make entire studio albums in their bedrooms using a big expensive sampling synthesizer that totally sands all the rough edges off of every recorded instrument, thus rendering a song completely clean and making it impossible to believe the people playing the instruments were ever in the same room with each other. (Other examples include Fleetwood Mac’s Tango In The Night, Kate Bush’s Hounds Of Love and, I kid you not, The Replacements’ Pleased To Meet Me.) I don’t actually hate any of the songs on the album besides that nine minute “oh-wee-oh” bore near the very end of the album, and Prince does come up with a fair deal of diversity, but due to me only really loving the title track, “The Cross” and “If,” I’ve never thought this was anywhere near as great an album as I’m supposed to.