Well you won't find the answer on the Internet will you? Prince has declared this week that "The Internet's completely over"!!!

better make sure so that the last person who leaves turns the broadband off!

*Note to Prince's lawyers - this is a joke.

it's the only newspaper my daughter will read. Are you telling me there's a free Prince CD? She did't say anything but she is only 15 so probably doesn't think it's important. In fact, she might never have heard of him.

...is better than the awful sleeve (wouldn't be hard).

You will stash it away for the time when you have nothing to do but sit around and read/listen to music/catch up on films that you have always wanted to read/listen to/see but never had the chance in the past because you were too busy.
Welcome to the club

...not to buy the Daily Mirror. Until they start giving away Phil Collins albums of course...

Only the first song sounded really good. The rest was a bit nothingy - though that's just first listen. (And I'm a fan)

I am on track 8 and losing the will to listen. There appears to be about a hundred tracks, all of utterly standard Prince-by-numbers. He sounds trapped in a terrible 80's synth pop funk hell. All the elements of his old tracks are there, as if time had stopped about 1985, but none have any memorable lines or melodies. Reminds me of that 3 CD set he issued a while back and was similarly unlistenable. If you like Prince, I would steer clear of this in case it sullies your memories and affection for his prime cuts of pop. He sounds so isolated in his Paisley playground, with only a few acolytes to adore him, while the world outside has ceased to matter. Apparently Prince just wants to 'party', on his own by the sound of it.

*Correction: there are loads of tracks which are silent for a few seconds at the end, until track 77 which has some more funk wallpaper on it, including a reference to a purple Yoda.. Hilarious.

First track was a bit of a take on lets go crazy and 3rd track sounded similar to Diamonds and Pearls. There is much worse stuff out there but for me the biggest crime is his waste of talent. He really could do so much better - he has more talent than you can shake a stick at but as Ian said above he is stuck in a bit of a time warp.

I bought The Mirror today, the last Prince album I bought and loved was Diamond And Pearls. As discussed above, this new one sounds very dated, I'll give it a couple more listens before deciding wether to use is as a beer mate or frisbee.

Much criticism of recent Prince material is that 'it doesn't sound like the good stuff from the 80s'. So he throws in a bit of the old retro/signature Linn drum sound, and hey presto! He's 'dated'!

This album is certainly not groundbreaking, but if you're looking for revolutionary (hah!) music this far into his career, you're gonna be disappointed. Prince does seem to be judged somewhat differently to other artists, just the one cursory listen and instant dismissal. What happened to living with an album for a while and seeing if it grows on you?

Just importing into iTunes. 77 tracks , 67 of which are the silence between track 9 and the last hidden track. And no song names on gracenote!

I wouldn't wipe my arse with one of them and I wouldn't listen to the other.

It might be better the other way round. The edge of the CD might be good for getting off the claggy bits.

...on the three listens I've had so far. It sounds more like the Revolution-era Prince than anything else, with bits of Dirty Mind in there. Accusations of 'retro' are fair enough, but I'd rather Prince did it than try to stay current. He's in his fifties and he doesn't have to make, or follow, trends anymore. If the Stones' next album sounded like Sticky Fingers the public would cheer. Why shouldn't the little feller hark back to his golden period?
Mind you, the cover looks like it was done by a first-year fashion student after a bang on the head.

My name is Prince. I ain't no monkey.

Rock Profile did a superb spoof back in the 90s. Matt Lucas as a Glaswegian vagrant who's fallen on hard times because he released two triple albums within a 12 month period and wrote slave on his face, leading to people thinking him "doolally". Hilarious.

"Over 23 hours of improvised funk..."

... after 3 listens over the weekend, though I love his Dirty Mind/1999/Purple Rain synth-heavy sound anyway, and this is an obvious throwback to those times (the cynic in me wonders if any of these tracks might actually be some old cast-offs from the mythically huge Paisley Park vaults...) Already way better than "Planet Earth" to these ears, anyway...

(I did find it hard to rip to MP3 though, even leaving out the 67 tracks of silence... anyone else?)