The New Power Generation – Diamonds And Pearls (Super Deluxe Edition)

DON´T feed the sharks. , JPC the whole set EUR 269,99.-

so now i have 120 unreleased songs ? 24 from 1999 and 63 from sign of the times and 33 from diamonds and pearls. It would be better to just release the unreleased songs . i made my own . i made 3 separate discs and then one disc with all 120 songs. i am cutting up ,magazines and making collages for artwork.

Beautiful box set, but for the one I got, sound quality was not flat for most of the vinyls.. and vinyls did not come with poly inner sleeves like 1999/Sign O' The Times box sets.. quality control lacking. But still happy to have this in my collection

Super Deluxe 1999… great, Sign of the Times…. good. Diamonds… just ok. Now what I’d pay good money for would be a Super Deluxe of what’s available in the Vault from his first 4 LPs.

👍 Definitely go out and buy this beautifully curated box set! Especially if you're a loyal, devoted Prince's vast and undeniably great musical legacy and his legendary “vault” with great care and respect 👏.

Undoubtedly, another gold 🏆 standard has been set for box sets here in of the overall quality appearance of the product, the presentation (Blue-ray, gatefold sleeves, hardback-book etc.) and the surprisingly quite affordable price. Kudos!

But did I personally buy it after all? 🤔 Well, see below my additional comment below.

It also gives you a personal assessment of why this box, despite its beauty, hasn't flown off the shelves of (virtual) record stores yet with still no buyer frenzy in sight. Hint: It's not because of the price 😉...

⭐⭐⭐
Here you go: No, I didn’t pull the trigger on this one. The reason why is I didn't like the predominantly New Jack Swing sounding musical direction that Prince & The New Power Generation - Diamonds And Pearls back then, and certainly not now.

As a die-hard Prince fan, you probably won't agree with me, but this album sounded a bit desperate to me when he released it in 1991.

But you can't blame Prince certainly saw this trend as an opportunity and tried to capitalize on the New Jack Swing and even resorted to lame rapping to revive his then somewhat stagnating career.

This LP made me hear Prince for the first time not as a pioneer and inventor of a new sound, but as a kind of safe er of an already existing style of music. A disappointment.

To be clear, the underlying production and musical craftsmanship were still superb. Unfortunately, the “new” musical direction no longer appealed to me.

This box contains a song that best illustrates my point - ironically, it comes from the so-called "Vault" collection of this SDE - "Don't Say U Love Me”:

https://youtu.be/VAFM_hGUvlo?si=xujMZ6cMi-rb-L2V

I don't know what else to say, but "Don't Say U Love Me” is really dreadful. It also sounds so dated today. Like most of the rest of the album as well as the “Vault” extras.

This song also strikes me immediately as a bit of a cheap knock off of the 1990 "In Living Color" intro, which itself however, was a really cool and super edgy, successful TV comedy series from the New Jack Swing era with lots of fresh music performances:

https://youtu.be/sWHX7QF8ETE?si=daiYJQJqvzxHXudG

Looking back, Prince did the right thing commercially by taking this detour via New Jack Swing, but unfortunately not so much artistically.

IMHO this is the context in which Prince went from being one of the groundbreaking artist of the 1980s to becoming just a more regular, although still highly talented, conductor of various already-existing musical styles in the early 90s.

For me personally, that was simply not enough to stay vested in Prince was unrivalled and remained among the best.

So there you have it. This box set and its great presentation are first-class, the actual musical content is still not really convincing even after 30 years, despite the additional but rather boring-sounding “Vault” tracks - unfortunately there is no new musical revelation to be found therein either 😐.

This box set is worth every single penny. Beautifully executed by The Prince Estate. The whole package looks and sounds absolutely exquisite. And the Bluray….it’s going to blow your mind!!! Listening thru all of it made me feel like a kid in 1991 again.

expensive but it's PRINCE.

word word word word word word

First day purchase here , Who else has problems during the playback of the blu ray disc too ? mine has an error during “ sexy mf “ and it stops at the 55 min mark only to return to the main menu…is this a manufacturing error or perhaps ( the software) my blu ray player . The special Olympics segment and video collection had no flaws

love, love, LOVE this box set so far. The pressings are beautiful and the live show is incredible. Also the book is so dense with content it'll take me some time to comb through it all. This box set is expensive but well worth it even for the casual Prince fan.