Planet Earth (2007)
Since Mr Happy Prince has rewritten his playboy playbook. No longer the bluntly unromantic “dinner at eight, then intercourse at my place” – now it’s all private jets and mouthfuls of chocolate-covered raisins. Is this a sign of maturity or is he making amends for calling his date a Future Baby Mama? Mr Goodnight is smooth with fourteen O’s and it’s the attention to detail that lifts the beat above your standard hip this-one’s-going-out-to-all-the laydees hop. The synth washes are like being bathed in milk, and the twinkling “3121” leitmotif is a purple-wrapped gift left for you to discover. Add in lyrics that make James Bond look gauche and you have the finest fan fiction Cyrano de Bergerac never wrote.
This was posted on my birthday one year ago.
Therefore, continuing to go up this list after some time off, I’ll chime in with a girl’s point of view about Prince’s lover personas. I’m actually not the biggest fan of his rich smooth playboy personna. I’l always prefer the freaky gender bending, a tad naive human animal who’d have you in your daddy’s car or on the stairs or anywhere and who just really really wants to fuck you so bad it hurts. I think it suited him better and I think he only party pulls off the supposedly “alpha” playboy going by every cliché hook in the hiphop ladies’ man book. I also generally think that the corresponding music tracks tend to have more bite and than the tamer crooner balads, well orchestrated and sung as they are.
That said, to each his/her own. I can totally see someone relating more to that other persona, or even finding it more exciting.