Prince (August 1, 1996) This Time, He Rocks – MOJO magazine (UK)

A fiery two-page review in MOJO magazine celebrating Prince’s return to loud, guitar-driven rock on his album Chaos and Disorder, praising the raw energy and creativity during his post-marriage “honeymoon” period with Mayte.

PUBLICATION Publication: MOJO Date: August 1, 1996 Country: United Kingdom Section / Pages: Album Review / Two-page spread Title: This Time, He Rocks

THE STORY In this enthusiastic MOJO review, Charles Shaar Murray dives into Prince’s (TAFKA) new album Chaos and Disorder. The writer highlights Prince’s return to cranking up his guitar “to 11,” blending rock, funk, and raw energy. The piece portrays the album as a creative outburst following his marriage to Mayte, featuring the reunited NPG with Rosie Gaines, and positions it as a strong rock statement during a time when many thought Prince had drifted away from his roots.

CONTEXT AND NOTES Published in August 1996, this review covers Chaos and Disorder — Prince’s final album under his Warner Bros. contract. It reflects the transitional and often misunderstood period of his career, where he was rebelling against the label while delivering high-energy rock-funk material. MOJO’s coverage shows the respect Prince still commanded in the UK rock press.

FEATURE HIGHLIGHTS Event: In-depth review of Chaos and Disorder album Era: Mid-1990s / Chaos and Disorder / TAFKA Prince era Tone: Energetic, appreciative, rock-critic enthusiastic Photography: Large artistic graphic illustration by Ian Wright (purple/green abstract design) Audience: Serious rock and funk music fans

WHAT THE CLIPPING SHOWS A bold two-page MOJO spread with the striking headline “This Time, He Rocks,” dense text by Charles Shaar Murray, and a massive, colorful abstract illustration by Ian Wright dominating the right side. The layout captures the loud, rebellious spirit of the album.

RELATED MATERIAL

• Prince (October 23, 1996) Prince cambia – Scrapbook Entry (Italy)

• Prince / Various Artists (March 19, 1996) Girl 6 – Soundtrack Album

• Prince O(+> (November 19 1996) Emancipation - Album

COPYRIGHT NOTICE All magazine scans, photographs and original text excerpts remain the property of their respective copyright holders. This entry is a transformative, non-commercial archival summary created for historical documentation and educational reference.

In other words, this one rocks. In the vernacular, it rocks like a bastard, and that's 'rock' as in P-Funk, Sly and live Cameo (in their hot phase between She's Strange and Word Up!, natürlich) as well as 'rock' in the guitar-crunching tradition of Who-Hendrix-Pistols and the little guy's own Dirty Mind and Purple Rain phases. Check it out: 30 seconds into the stomping Hendrix- plus-Hammond opening title track and it's like Lenny Kravitz never happened.

Apart from the occasional poppy, radio-friendly pace- changer - Dinner With Dolores, complete with R.E.M. ish acoustic arpeggios, sounds like a trailer for some forthcoming TAFKAP Unplugged special; Into The Light and I Will are faintly twee inspirational piano ballads which itch to be covered by Meat Loaf or Cher; Had U is a string-laden throwaway closing snippet yer man has his funny-shaped guitars plugged in and cranked all the way to 11. He hasn't spanked this much plank on record for a very long time, and the range displayed here stretches from scratchy nuevowavo rhythm guitar in the Cars-Costello bag through lotioned funk motion to 57 varieties of hardrock filth: Jimiesque wah-wah gobbles, Billy Gibbons squeals, Creamy Claptonian woman-tones, Stevie Ray Vaughan snarls, Santana rhapsodics, Townshend chord-monoliths.

And if you've had enough of Himself being pompous (about sex, God, his career and everything), then rest assured that he appears to feel the same way. Chaos And Disorder is as light of heart and feet as it's heavy on the one, and on the loud pedal. Zannalee, for example, is an exuberantly rocking blues shuffle which sounds like a young T-Bone Walker high on E in the year 2000, I Like It There is as free-flowingly carnal as rock gets these days, and Dig U Better Dead is a way-cool exercise in post- P-Funk dancefloor candy.

But the album's real murderer is I Rock Therefore I Am, the 'dopest, flyest, O.G. pimp hustler gangster player

ILLUSTRATION BY IAN WRIGHT