With new producer Joshua Welton at the helm and much jamming in the studio, the album is Prince's most experimental and shapeshifting in years. There are sonic collages, mystical segments, dips into eastern-tinged funk ('Ain't About to Stop', with input from Rita Ora), big club bangers (the Latin-influenced 'Like a Mack'), ballads (a superior reworking of last year's 'This Could Be Us'), electronica and rock, as Prince inhabits familiar characters, from sensualist to dreamer to campaigner and even the more rarely heard humorist.
With new producer Joshua Welton at the helm and much jamming in the studio, the album is Prince's most experimental and shapeshifting in years. There are sonic collages, mystical segments, dips into eastern-tinged funk ('Ain't About to Stop', with input from Rita Ora), big club bangers (the Latin-influenced 'Like a Mack'), ballads (a superior reworking of last year's 'This Could Be Us'), electronica and rock, as Prince inhabits familiar characters, from sensualist to dreamer to campaigner and even the more rarely heard humorist.