Review Summary: An album that needs to be understood less like a misbehaving child and more like a friend with mature differing worldviews.
This album came at a very inopportune time in Prince's history; after losing his son to Pfeiffer syndrome, he started doing seemingly everything in his power to alienate his fans. If he wasn't doing that well enough with his market saturation by releasing almost two albums a year and two triple albums back-to-back, he most certainly succeeded by doing such stunts as suing his own fans for inappropriately using his unpronounceable symbol, among other crazy stories Prince was legendary for, embracing the lifestyle of a media-secluded recluse. Needless to say, as mainly an eclectic pophead, it was not a business savvy move to shift your sound into ultra-religious jazz fusion while your fans were at their boiling point towards you…
Now that we are up to date with the context of this album, it is time to face the music;
The Rainbow Children is Prince's most musically sophisticated and the most lyrically eloquent album he has possibly ever made, and certainly the most consistent he'd come through with since
The Gold Experience, it is right up there with the best of his late career albums. Make no mistake however, it is also one of his toughest to swallow, as the album is aggressively inspired by Prince's newfound conversion to the Jehovah's Witness dogma, and as such, it is sometimes even offensive in how it adheres to and promotes both the religion and a plethora of kooky conspiracism.
As a concept album,
The Rainbow Children is more of a thematic exploration of the ideas of the Martin Luther King Jr.-inspired social movement that acts as the link between songs, as opposed to a conventionally structured story. With the ideas touching not only the Jehovah's Witness interpretation of scripture, but also referencing Egyptian monotheism and New Age notions in numerous metaphors, the tone gets rather eccentric at a few points, perhaps most aptly exemplified by the interlude "Wedding Feast" which momentarily turns the record into something straight out of
Jesus Christ Superstar.
The themes feature all the urgency of Prince's Seventh-Day Adventism, sexuality and racial politics explored through the lens of the beliefs of a born-again Jehovah's Witness, some of the concepts narrated by a droning, low-pitched voice akin to his 'Spooky Electric' counterpart to 'Camille'. However, this time it is less the manifestation of drug-induced hallucinations, rather on
The Rainbow Children it is something more ominous, a voice muttering about Biblical prophecies and beckoning you to redeem yourself for the doomsday is coming. This inorganic narration is easily the worst part of the whole record, mostly serving as nothing more than an interruption to the flow of the smoothness of the otherwise groovy tracks, though fitting in songs like the title track and "The Everlasting Now", those conveniently being the ones beginning and wrapping up the concept of the album respectively.
Musically, because the concept is so thickly layered in Prince's newfound beliefs at the time,
The Rainbow Children is an intimate experience, the most amount of live instruments being used since the
Chaos And Disorder album. The production is distinctly 'Princesque', the stylish dynamics highlighting every instrument on display at any given time beautifully and never devolving into unintelligible noise. Mirroring Prince's desperate undertones explored through a new religion, like how he has experimented with heavy metal, psychedelia, funk and hip hop through various overarching genres, on here he recreates this eclecticism with jazz like he hadn't lost an ounce of inspiration since
Purple Rain. Even Prince's often-cringeworthy self-sampling works well here as an expression of self-rediscovery when he reworks a line from "Sexuality" into the title track or "Erotic City" into "1 + 1 + 1 = 3", serving as a testament to how a statement can re-contextualize itself in a new perspective.
As opposed to many other artists' albums you may be thinking of, artists who estranged themselves from the public, this is far from a crazed avant-garde-fest nor is it something cooked up in a mental hospital, rather
The Rainbow Children sports very lucid but dangerous isms wrapped up in a legitimate attempt at a hooky jazz fusion album. The instrumentation has a lot of distinct flair and every other song has a catchy hook or two that create a somber and moody atmosphere that is actually enjoyable to listen to at a specific time, but there are enough jarring elements about it that make it a 'challenging' listen for casual music consumers. It is an album for a music enthusiast who wants to sit down and dedicate his time to an album for a while.
