Brothers and sisters, we are gathered here together to get through this thing called waffles.
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[6.29]
Alfred Soto: Al Green excepted, I can’t think of another figure in music whose voice remains unblemished by age, whose unfailing rhythms take their cues from this unblemished voice. For such a titan, Prince has writ his gestures small in the last ten years, so this trifle won’t sail into the top five. But there’s pleasure in a devotion to the carnal so absolute that it’s ascetic.
[7]
Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy: Credited to 3rd Eye Girl, “Breakfast Can Wait” was released to the internet in February under a cloak of Princian mystery: What and who were 3rd Eye Girl? Were any of the rock’n’roll/funk throwbacks accompanying “Breakfast” preludes to a new album? Is there any relevance of the mp3 costing eighty-eight cents? (Never consider randomness when it comes to His Royal Badness.) Prince’s gift to keep the listener guessing as virtue of his very Princeness is a gift and a curse — in recent years, his eccentricity threatens to overshadow the music, perhaps because he’s not been crafting great material. Thank goodness then for “Breakfast”: his first truly great single since “Black Sweat”, a sex jam as funny as it is sleek. He brings back the Camille voice-pitch for a brief moment, more of an Easter Egg for fans than a virtuoso moment. He howls “you can’t leave a black man in this state,” almost as if to make a point about his liquid approach to his own ethnicity. He invites Chappelle’s Show pancake references with his food-as-sex metaphor. It’s the musical version of his recent Twitter spree: a public recognition of his own mythology and a reminder that he can be playful about it.
[9]
Anthony Easton: I understand intellectually why Prince is genius, and often his music is fantastically diverse, and I have enjoyed him enough for quite a few years, but often I cannot get past his lyrics, with overwrought metaphors, skeezy come ons, and a lack of irony…new Prince is always welcome, but this does not convince me of his erotic genius.
[7]
Patrick St. Michel: It’s incredible that something seemingly based on a (great) comedy skit that my high school classmates couldn’t stop quoting during chemistry sounds so effortlessly smooth. Then again, Prince. Still, the verses here can get a little too silly with the breakfast imagery, and given to someone else this would have been a total dud. Then again, Prince.
[6]
Scott Mildenhall: It’s alright, not feeling quite so hungry now anyway.
[4]
Brad Shoup: Is he too proud to do actual baby talk? I was coasting on a modest morning-after story — snares and snaps crisp like bacon, bass percolating like a coffeepot — and then he goes Chipmunk on me. Those talkbox-style bgvs could have done the job easily.
[6]
Jonathan Bogart: Put it this way: if he wasn’t going to be embarrassed by silly sounds and sillier lyrics when he was in his twenties, why would he start to be in his fifties? The funk’s as elastic as ever, the come-ons as ludicrous — but no less effective — and the only thing that’s changed is how fashionable the sound is. Call me a slave to fashion, then.
[5]