Prince: "Ol' Skool Company"

After subjecting us to some questionable material in the ’90s, Prince has had a respectable if uneven 2000s. “Black Sweat” was new Prince doing old Prince at his absolute dirtiest, a re-thought “Housequake” with a slightly better beat; “3121” soundtracked more than a few late night dance parties in my apartment, and I maintain that it wasn’t the whisky sours talking when I said that it was among his best; Musicology (2004) was hit or miss, sure, but there were very few outright misses; and Planet Earth (2007)? Well…some of it was salvageable.

“Ol’ Skool Company,” from Prince’s upcoming three-disc (!) Target-exclusive (?) album, is the best you can expect from a legendary musician arguably decades past his prime. Which is to say that it sounds, again, like new Prince doing old Prince. Anyone put off by Planet Earth‘s relatively obnoxious rock vibe will be glad to hear him re-re-embracing his funkier side, and if his performance of this track on Leno this week is any indication, he probably gets that this is what we want to hear from him in 2009. He started with a few chords from “Purple Rain” before breaking into this number, which I guess was a polite reminder of why we love him in the first place. And I sure did and still do love Prince, so fuck the haters who insist he hasn’t been good since the ’80s: the guy’s still got it. He’s the only pop/rock legend making music today that knows how to play up his most distinctive conventions and quirks without descending into self-parody, and nowhere is this more obvious than here. I want gospel singers off to the side, a solid guitar solo near the end, and a, uh, harmonica solo—why not! Prince-isms, yeah, but I like Prince-isms, I want more of them, and I don’t want them from Hot Chip or the Junior Boys. So let’s forget about “Bat Dance” and accept “Ol’ Skool Company” for the perfectly decent Prince song that it is, and, most importantly, let’s keep listening to Purple Rain (1984). That shit never gets old.