Prince "1999" [1982]

There's a good rule of thumb that if someone's been an unbelievably obnoxious freak just to get your attention, you shouldn't believe them when they tell you they've changed. Prince, after years of disgusting everyone on the R&B scene with his itchy, hyper ditties about fucking his sister, makes his first lewd move toward mainstream crossover success with "1999." We all should have known better than to let this pint-size Rick James in through the front door. But no -- he's changed, he tells us here: instead of all the songs home recorded and under two minutes, in this album he puts a big, keyboard-heavy band in the studio and runs his simplistic lust-pop songs well past their pain threshold. Basically, he's still putting out the same number of tracks, but on double-album "1999" he's watered them all down with a lame 12-inch-single treatment. This gives him plenty of room to revert back to his true colors, where he's persistently trying to stick his purple wiener in your ear. The grooves are pretty much all interchangeable, too: stripped-down Kool & the Gang mixed with two-dimensional second British Invasion synthesizer. And if you're still somehow seduced by this midget pimp, keep in mind that once he's done sexing you up like a zoo monkey on Viagra, he's going to bend your ear about a lot of fundamentalist Christian bullshit. I mean, even Michael Jackson knew enough to keep that crap to himself.