Prince: Prince [WARNER]

Why you'll love it

This Dutch pressing restores the album that turned Prince from promising newcomer into a star, with "I Wanna Be Your Lover" topping the R&B chart and becoming his first Hot 100 hit. The album went platinum within four months.

This edition

• Pressed in the Netherlands
• Original nine-track running order

About the album

Warner Bros. wanted a hit. Prince, all of 20, went into Alpha Studio in Burbank in the spring of 1979 and came out five weeks later with one, having played practically every note himself: guitars, bass, drums, synths, piano and every vocal part, high and low.

"I Wanna Be Your Lover" is a featherlight falsetto groove that still sounds like sunshine, "Why You Wanna Treat Me So Bad?" adds a fiery guitar solo, and "Sexy Dancer" is lean, mean funk built for the floor. "Bambi" turns up the rock, "With You" and "Still Waiting" are tender ballads, and "I Feel for You" became a huge hit for Chaka Khan a few years later. The album peaked at No. 22 on the Billboard 200 and No. 3 on the R&B albums chart.

Robert Christgau gave it a B+ and predicted big things, and he was right. Dirty Mind would follow a year later and change everything, but this is where the purple story properly starts, made by a 20-year-old who seems to have found band rehearsals much quicker with a membership of one.

Also at Kops: more Prince on vinyl · browse 70s Soul On Up

Tracklist

Listen

On Warner Bros., a reissue of the 1979 album.