Review Summary: And even if the sun don't shine, I'm warm enough.
For You is a remarkable debut. Not because of the inherent quality of its songs - there are assuredly better debut albums out there, and Prince has assuredly written better songs. But it's a remarkable study of the evolution of a young, incredibly prolific musician. There's a shocking amount of talent built into this record - not only did Prince write *and* produce every song (a less common move in pop music than you'd think, especially for a young upstart like Prince), he played every single instrument. Vocals, bass, keys, guitar, drums - all of it. In a way,
For You is the rawest form of Prince material one could ever hope to find:
For You is all Prince, from start to finish. And yet, in spite of
For You's very intimate and Prince-centric existence, the entire album has a whiff of "professional, overproduced product" about it, which makes it one of the least Prince-y things out there. It's all Prince, and yet it's nothing like Prince at all.
It's understandable - Warner Bros. was expecting a hit record, and thus, Prince was obligated to write some hit material. And like many fresh, untested musicians before and after him, Prince's "record sense" was... decent, but lacking. Songs like the arguably disco-worthy "My Love Is Forever" awkwardly rub shoulders with songs like the brooding, mysterious "So Blue". In places, the production is sparse and low-key (the angelic, pitch-perfect overdubs on the short, but heavenly "For You")... but in most places, you get the overproduced, overdub-heavy "Soft and Wet", which drowns Prince's falsetto beneath an ocean of synthesizers and winding basslines. The instrumentation and musicianship is top-notch, and Prince's passion and burgeoning ingenuity are obvious, but Prince's ambition and desire to avoid being shoehorned into "just another R&B artist" frequently clashes with his simultaneous desire and obligation to write some hit singles.
For You just kind of shuttles along from song to song - there's a few highlights and strokes of brilliance every now and then, but otherwise the album's given no chance to express any real kind of personality or identity. Those aforementioned highlights *are* pretty good, though, popping along well enough in the moment and serving as strong reminder of Prince's unrefined but genuine talent. The steady, strutting synthfunk of "In Love" paints a fun, retro picture of turn-of-the-80's pop, with its dreamlike synths and bouncy, up-n-down rhythm. "Just As Long As We're Together" is a 70's funk banger, the song that emanates the most identifiable 'Prince' energy on the whole record: there's a ton of forward momentum, Prince's gliding vocals are confident and brilliantly syncopated, and that one-man instrumental jam that comprises the second half of the song is irresistibly groovy. And "I'm Yours" is a fascinating demonstration of funk rock at least ten or fifteen years before it struck gold. Ferocious guitars and a swaggering bass rhythm etch a lot of feisty energy out of "I'm Yours"; Prince's soft vocals are somewhat drowned amidst the blazing wall of hard rock, but the musicianship and turbulence on display here is impossible to ignore.
At the end of the day, Prince's debut exists in a very *weird* place in his career.
For You is flawlessly produced in places, but overproduced in others, and its' overall production "sound" contains virtually none of the grit that Prince became known for (the Minneapolis Sound). There's a decent amount of variety on display here, but most of the material is grounded, inoffensive RnB, backed by disco stylings so dated at this point that it's no wonder Prince left it buried in the past.
For You is more of a case study than anything truly interesting, a case study of a man with a lot of talent but not really doing much of anything with it just yet - undeniable technical proficiency, but no real personality or direction. Not yet.
For You is amateurish in spades, and its' inconsistency hurts its core identity, but it's a decent, enjoyable record nevertheless - Prince, even at his most middling and unrefined, is still Prince, and spades of his tradition of excellence, passion, and musical brilliance can still be found in this record of humble beginnings.
RECOMMENDED TRACKS:
For You
In Love
Just As Long As We're Together
I'm Yours
