Prince's '20Ten': "Here Come the Purple Yoda!"

by Seth Colter Walls

So Prince is releasing a new CD, 20Ten, inside the pages of the July 22 issue of Rolling Stone … in Germany only. According to your McChrystal-dooming domestic RS website, the album will also be a cover-mount bonus in England’s Daily Mirror, Scotland’s Daily Record and Belgium’s Het Nieuwsblad. (Yes. Prince is playing some dates in Europe this summer.) Forget the fact that the last few Prince self-leaks have been pretty bad — a new disc from the dude is always cause for internet fun. But guess what — the best review of the forthcoming record has already been written.

You have to go to the German RS website to get track-by-track details on 20Ten. I don’t speak German, though, so I plugged the page into the translation machine doo-hickey Google Translate. There’s probably nothing left to say.

“His best, consistent album since the ‘Love Symbol’ plate in 1992? Sure.”

Sure! Why not? I mean, it’s all been sixes and sevens since then, no? (Though you might make a case for The Gold Experience, and I will defend most of 3121.) But how about that last track — “Untitled Bonus Track”? No critic needs to offer a judgment about it, ever, because:

“[E]ven though Prince himself and his hometown of Minneapolis here in hip-hop style and with pleasing clear words presents: ‘From the heart of Minnesota, here come the purple Yoda!’ A hard track…”

I guess we’ll see how hard! Though this gives us a hint:

The catchy, resolute synth riff smells of fresh hair spray and leather gloves. Prince licking the ear of the listener literally, this time in duet with himself, in a sleazy chanting: “Come on, darling, let’s get down to the beginning endlessly!” What type of universal enlightenment he preached here, you will soon notice.

Oh I see.

Meantime, Janelle Monae covered “Let’s Go Crazy,” and Prince seemed to be pleased with it.

But this, from the Guardian? “But even when it comes to 20Ten, the Purple One calls it ‘old music’. ‘I’m already three albums past that,’ he told Het Nieuwsblad.” UM, PRINCE: you did know you were running an expensive and mostly pointless subscription website, right?