N.E.W.S.

N.E.W.S. gives Prince his voice a rest and lets the music do all the talking. Four rambling tracks named North (funk), East (moody), West (confusion) and South (jazz) the music here is very different and is closer if anything to Holst’s The Planets. Yet N.E.W.S. has the hotel lobby vibe running throughout but what good can be said of the album? It has some moments North and East start off CD well but by West the listener’s finger is hovering precariously over S.T.O.P. and not Repeat. Although N.E.W.S. lacks the pace it does not sacrifice quality. The songs – let’s call them jams – are appreciated better if not played often (let’s face it repeat listening is unlikely). This is an album with two purposes: 1) to help the digestion of food during the dinner wind-down; 2) a collectable. N.E.W.S. appears to be the project which Prince was either using to round off his legacy and showcase his musical dexterity, or get his style over substance period out of his system in the wake of the duller Xpectation and marginally less irritating C-Note. The music is what you would expect from Prince, masterful, but with that he sacrificed his smart, albeit cleaned up, lyrical craft – and thank God come 2004 Prince stemmed his musical decline with Musicology.