Prince (1979)


  
 
 1. I Wanna Be Your Lover
 2. Why You Wanna Treat Me So Bad
 3. Sexy Dancer
 4. When We're Dancing Close and Slow
 5. With You
 6. Bambi
 7. Still Waiting
 8. I'll Feel For You
 9. It's Gonna Be Lonely

 

For the longest time, I had it in my head that Prince was the man’s debut. You’d think naming your album after yourself would be the starting point, but no—this was album number two. Not that it matters much. What does matter is that Prince is a huge step forward from For You. That first album was promising, but this one shows a young artist tightening the screws and finding his footing. He’s still writing, producing, and playing just about everything, but this time he’s figured out how to craft a proper song—and then some.

Side one is a killer. I Wanna Be Your Lover, Why You Wanna Treat Me So Bad?, and Sexy Dancer all share a common structure: tight, radio-ready R&B grooves up front, with extended instrumental workouts on the back end. The middle track finally lets Prince showcase the electric guitar heroics he’s so often denied credit for. He was always buried in that conversation, and this one could have changed that if more people had been paying attention. That final minute? Blistering stuff. He wraps the side with When We’re Dancing Close and Slow, and it’s exactly what it sounds like—a slow jam that leans into intimacy, falsetto and all. He nails it.

Side two isn’t quite as bulletproof, but there’s still a lot to like. The only real misstep is Bambi, where Prince takes a hard left turn into arena rock territory. It's loud, aggressive, and distorted—all fine in theory—but here it just feels like he’s trying a little too hard to prove he can rock. It’s not bad, just jarring against the smoother soul elsewhere. On the plus side, there’s I Feel For You, which Prince fans know well—but most people probably think of the Chaka Khan version from a few years later. This was his first great “songwriting for others” moment, even if he didn’t plan it that way.

Prince would be the last time—at least for a while—that he’d play things this straight. The future held twisted funk, sexual provocations, and rule-breaking genre experiments. But here, at 20 years old, he already sounded like a pro. There’s no clumsiness, no awkward transitions. If this was a transitional record, you wouldn’t know it by listening. It stands just fine on its own—and it’s where the legend really begins.

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