495: Beginning Endlessly

20ten (2010)
This mid-tempo, robotic, jitter-funk anthem is adorned with dirty synths that has Prince on restrained mode to keep us tantrically charged, teasing us with flashes of When Doves Cry. Either that or he’s held back on turning it up to 11 on a throwaway freebee album that was bundled in with The Mirror newspaper. The lyrics contain some classic Prince pick-up lines, smoothly pirouetting on cosmic contemplation that we’re all “minerals and chemicals of space you carry within your womb” into an invitation to go home with him to “get nice, till serious is gone.” Both celestial and corny, it’s Eros’s seduction of Psyche acted out by replicants with magnetic eyes of tempered steel.