20Ten

“Let’s go,” Prince declares on “Bonus Track #77.” It’s followed by total silence: the end of the album. So where are we going, then? It’s almost certainly giving him too much credit to be this smart and self-aware, but the answer is right there: we’re going nowhere.

It’s safe to say at this point that Prince’s 2000′s comeback, that started with “Musicology” and hit its peak with “3121″, is over. His latest album, “20Ten,” if remembered at all in his once-unflappable canon, will most likely be remembered as the album where Prince declared the internet as “over.” It was a silly remark, one that made it’s rounds in internet memes and tumblr posts, but even then, didn’t make much of a splash. It was just more nonsense coming from Prince, more of the same, more of his increasingly predictable jabber.

“20Ten” is an album that reflects this “more of the same” attitude that a new Prince album radiates, but steers that reflection in an admittedly surprising way. When (and if) people listened to “MPL5OUND” and heard that he was using his old drum machines and synths again, they were confused by his willingness to look back and scratched their heads at the reasoning behind it. Was it a cash-in to the old glory days at the top of the charts? Was it a joke? A shameless bid to His Purple Majesty’s Nostalgic Side?

What no one could have expected was that “MPL5OUND” was actually the sign of Prince’s next move. “20Ten” takes the retreading of retro drum/synth and runs far off into the mountains with it, leaving us with an album that tries excruciatingly hard to sound like it was made in 1981.

“20Ten” takes “MPL5OUND”‘s retro-activity and leaps it into the next level, removing almost any traces of modernity to the sound. Prince has even produced it to sound much more raw than his oily-slick last few albums. The lack of sheen, instead of adding a sense of urgency to the songs (like it did on “Dirty Mind,” an album that, sad to say, is “20Ten’s” best companion piece), makes them sound empty and incomplete.

Another difference between Prince’s 80s sound and this mess is his choice of sound. Prince’s early albums had their energy because of his careful choice of instrumentation, often steering away from the more cheesy or kitschy sounding synth noises of the time unless they distinctly applied to an aside or a joke he was making in the song. Prince’s early albums were strokes of genius for their melding of loose-sounding grooves disguising a very well-woven song.

Of course, the other thing missing from “20Ten” is the tight composition that made his older songs so danceable (or at the very least, listenable). Prince has been getting looser in his jams for years, but they were more fitting to the slow-adult-contempo-jazz numbers he was working with. Applying that looseness to these new retro-jams makes them all plod along at dirge-like speed.

“Beginning Endlessly,” personifies almost all of the problems with “20Ten.” It’s a song begging to be played fast, but here on the record it sounds like it’s played through molasses. Prince further derails it by adding auto-tune and the worst kind of “I’m writing a techno song” kind of sounds on top of it. Then, to top it off, the increasingly boring slog stretches out to almost six minutes. Where is the restraint?

That last question is one that keeps cropping up when listening to “20Ten.” Prince’s older songs often were quite lengthy, like the album cuts of “Controversy” or “1999,” but they were content to stay on a similar groove for most of their seven-plus minutes. On “20Ten,” it sounds like Prince is getting bored with his own songs, and chooses to add more and more and splice in another movement here and add twelve more choruses there, so on and so on— by the end of each and every song, you don’t even know what you’re listening to anymore.

All that said, it just proves the point that when Prince keeps the songs short, they shine (however dimly). “Sticky Like Glue” has a tight groove, well-placed harmonies and a head-bopping and catchy chorus, and a manageable length. Of course, Prince then throws an inane rap on top of it, ranting about going to see a movie with a girl but not really watching it. I’m sure he means because they were kissing, but his delivery makes it seem more like he went to see Avatar and forgot his 3D glasses.

“Lavaux” and “Everybody Loves Me” are as close as he gets to achieving the compositional prowess of his earlier work. Prince was always at his best when you had to remind yourself that it was often only one man playing every single instrument. Most of “20Ten” sounds like Prince is performing the album by himself in his fur-lined basement, and didn’t bother to do any second takes if he missed the beat. “Lavaux” is pleasant and danceable, but he’s not really saying anything. “Everybody Loves Me” really does manage to sound like an outtake from “Controversy,” but the kind that gets buried on the lowest-grade bootleg.

It seems virtually impossible to divorce discussion of “20Ten” to his older works. It inevitably happens whenever he releases a new album, and similar to the constant tag on new Bowie albums of “his best since Scary Monsters,” every Prince album since “Purple Rain” has either “his best since Purple Rain” on it, or just “New Prince Album. Again.”

Yet this time, Prince is driving the comparison into our faces. He’s using all his old sounds, all his old tricks, and barely even trying to make them sound fresh. What does it mean that Prince, once upon a time the most impressive innovator in popular music, is now looking back so ardently? It’s difficult to say what is more depressing: that Prince is finally out of ideas, or that he’s fully put himself in “American Life” territory with terrible “raps” about ordinary things (for rich people) and declaring himself “The Purple Yoda.” The Purple Yoda? What does that even mean? That he’s 900 years old? That he’s a puppet?

And he ends his worst album yet with the words “Let’s Go.” And after trying to listen to this fan-baiting mess for a second time, I think I know where we’re going: to sleep.