Prince - 1999 [2LP]

Prince threw the party of the decade early with 1999, his 1982 double album, presented here on 150-gram vinyl across two LPs.

This was the record that broke Prince wide open. After a run of albums that had critics paying close attention, he went long, sprawling across four sides with extended grooves, drum-machine funk and pop hooks sharp enough to cut glass. He wrote, arranged, produced and played much of it himself, and the result sounds like one restless mind pushing a studio as far as it could go.

The title track sets the tone with apocalyptic dread delivered as a dance-floor invitation, a doomsday anthem you can't help moving to. Little Red Corvette is pure pop gold, a sleek, slow-building rocker with one of his most effortless vocal performances. Delirious bounces along on a rockabilly-tinged synth hook, and Lady Cab Driver stretches out into a hypnotic, funk-heavy workout that shows just how far he was willing to take a groove.

Synths, drum machines and falsetto would never sound quite the same after this, and the Minneapolis sound it helped define echoed through pop and R&B for years.

As a double LP, 1999 is best experienced the way it was designed: one side at a time, volume up, nobody sitting down.