Home / Prince Discography / Posthumous Releases /
Ultimate Rave Prince album
Sony Legacy
albumParty like it’s 1999
Ultimate Rave is a three-disc box set combining CD reissues of two of Prince’s studio albums issued at the turn of the Millennium, credited to the name Prince Love Symbol – 1999’s Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic and its later remix companion Rave In2 The Joy Fantastic. The third disc is a DVD re-release of the filmed concert performed by Prince and various special guests, recorded at Paisley Park and televised for New Year’s Eve 1999 and released in 2000 as Rave Un2 The Year 2000 in VHS and DVD formats.
The backdrop in which Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic was created was a troubled period for Prince. His marriage to Mayte was in difficulty and the theme of breakup permeates through the tracklist. Prince was also searching for a commercial comeback and had signed with Arista Records to make it happen, with what he thought was a album that would appeal to the R&B market then dominating the charts. Arista had achieved success revitalising Carlos Santana’s career, returning him to the charts for the first time in decades with the number one selling album Supernatural. Prince believed that the formula Arista applied for Santana, an album boasting big name collaborations, would see his return to the level of success since leaving Warner Bros Records in 1996. Unfortunately Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic stumbled, and peaked at 18 in the US and failed to chart at all in the UK. Blaming Arista’s promotion of the album, in 2000 Prince put out a remix version of the album, Rave In2 The Joy Fantastic, and gave it a limited release to subscribing members of NPG Music Club. Although pioneering for its time, an online fanbase was far from mass market.
Ultimate Rave packages both albums for the first time and gives Rave In2 The Joy Fantastic its commercial debut. Although the collection does not contain any previously unreleased or extra music, it but beautifully repackages these long out of print originals into one boxset. Both Rave Un2 and Rave In2 LPs were also released on vinyl the same day of the CD set reissue (26 April 2019); the two each issued on purple vinyl were available individually and under their original titles. These and Ultimate Rave were distributed though Sony Legacy under license with The Prince Estate.
Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic takes its name from an earlier unreleased album Prince was working on in the winter of 1988, titled Rave Unto The Joy Fantastic. That album was aborted purely due to bad timing, as Prince’s attention turned to two back-to-back movie projects – creating the soundtracks for Batman (1989) and Graffiti Bridge (1990). Prince was dating 18-year-old British model Anna Garcia (stage name Anna Fantastic) in the autumn of 1988, at the time when he working on the original album which its title track is believed to stem from that relationship, as is the track Pink Cashmere.
The guitar Prince holds for the cover art of Ultimate Rave is the gold love symbol guitar custom produced in 1994 by German luthier Jerry Auerswald. Prince changed his name to Prince Love Symbol on 7 June 1993 in protest over his contract with his former record label Warner Brothers. The two albums Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic (released by Arista Records in 1999) and Rave In2 The Joy Fantastic (NPG Records, 2001) are significant in that they straddle Prince’s re-adoption of his birth name on 16 May 2000. So keen was he to promote Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic, it bore the credit ‘Produced by Prince’ – the first time he had used his birth name since 1993. Ultimate Rave peaked in the Billboard R&B albums chart at number 6 on 11 May 2019, twenty years after the release of the original.
Data
- Producer
- Prince
- Label
- NPG Records
- Distribution
- Sony Legacy
- Cover/Design
- Steve Parke
- Released
- 7 years ago on 26 April 2019
- US Chart Peak
- 69
- US R&B Peak
- 6
- UK Chart Peak
- Did not chart
- Orig. Formats
-
Tracklist
Disc 1: Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic
- (4:18)
- [feat. Chuck D] (4:19)
- (5:29)
- Segue (0:04)
- [feat. Eve (Ruff Ryder)] (5:11)
- (1:30)
- [feat. Gwen Stefani] (3:23)
- (5:15)
- [feat. Larry Graham] (6:12) 1
- Segue (0:19)
- (5:14)
- [feat. Sheryl Crow] (3:18)
- [feat. Ani Difranco] (3:33)
- (3:29)
- (4:12)
- (3:15)
- Segue (0:43) 2
- [feat. Maceo Parker] (4:23) 2
- Running Time
- 69 min, 52 sec
Disc 2: Rave In2 The Joy Fantastic
- (5:13)
- (5:45)
- (8:07)
- (4:22)
- (2:13)
- [feat. Gwen Stefani] (3:23)
- (5:15)
- (5:12)
- [feat. Sheryl Crow] (3:18)
- [feat. Ani Difranco] (3:33)
- (4:55)
- (3:29)
- (3:15)
- (5:35) 2
- Running Time
- 64 min, 09 sec
DVD: Rave Un2 The Year 2000
- (2:09)
- (2:34)
- (2:29)
- (3:34)
- [performed by The Time] (4:16)
- [performed by The Time] (4:21)
- [feat. Lenny Kravitz] (6:40)
- [feat. Lenny Kravitz] (5:08)
- (2:34)
- [feat. Rosie Gaines, Mike Scott, Maceo Parker] (6:32)
- (2:26)
- [feat. Larry Graham] (8:15)
- [feat. Larry Graham] (5:00)
- (11:45)
- (5:05)
- [feat. Maceo Parker] (11:28)
- (4:14)
- (4:50)
- (3:32)
- (3:37)
- (2:36)
- (1:25)
- (7:32)
- End Credits (1:34)
- Running Time
- 132 minutes
1 Written by Sheryl Crow, Jeff Trott and Brian McLeod.
2 Hidden track.
Ultimate Rave album review
Rave Un2/In2 The Joy Fantastic are much overlooked in Prince’s catalogue. No doubt like many it took their reissue under Ultimate Rave to rediscover them again. Forgetting how damn funky and fresh they were, they deserved more frequent listening over the intervening years, still punching their weight some twenty years on – can it really be so long.
Not ever being much a fan of his millennial catalogue, Ultimate Rave has me re-evaluating entirely. Let’s not go in to any individual review of the albums because you will find them on Rave Un2 and Rave In2 pages. But what about the reissue? It is amazing what a repackaging can achieve. These may not be remasters but the presentation is masterful and beautiful to boot. Following very much the packaging of the original Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic with Prince stitched into a shimmering electric blue catsuit, Ultimate Rave not only lovingly matches but even betters the originals quality. There is additionally a beautifully compiled booklet and that’s not all – bundled within is the long deleted concert DVD Rave Un2 The Year 2000. Ultimate Rave is a wonderful return to the joy fantastic, which if anything would restore appreciation for his catalogue of ‘99.
Ultimate Rave is rated 4.5 out of 5 by Goldies Parade.
Related releases
© Goldies Parade, 1998 – 2026 • Privacy