3121

The centrepiece of Prince’s most exhilarating 21st-century album is “Black Sweat”, a spare, bass-less electronic drum track overlaid with whining synths that slams like a grittier revamp of “Kiss”, or maybe the missing link between James Brown and mid-2000s Oakland rap. Whether effortlessly seducing with the humid ballad “Te Amo Corazón”, playfully rejecting a young woman’s advances on “Lolita” or launching into a psychedelic guitar workout on “Fury”, Prince didn’t so much cover new ground on <i>3121</i> as demonstrate that his home turf remained an inexhaustible source of inspiration. He hadn’t sounded so contemporary—or timeless—in years.