No second Prince

With appearance of the man's debut album of Sananda Maitreya now is, a comparison to Prince was very often weighed upon; most of all because of the fact that D'Arby also more or less a one-man show, and multi-instrumentalist was just, had black skin and made coming from the soul and gospel pop music.

At closer listening but you can tell pretty quickly that the reference points of D'Arby are from the 50s and 60s, not marked as Prince of Hendrix, Syl Stone, James Brown or George Clinton, but rather by Ray Charles and the Motown and Stax Sound of the 60s. Of course there were overlaps and the funkiest track here (, Dance Little Sister ') could well find a relationship with the man from Minneapolis, but the rest was melodically as well as standard arrangement otherwise than for the 80 modernized R & B.

The great thing about this album is the songwriting - no failure is observed here among the 10 tracks (the closer, which is a cover of Smokey Robinson accapella we cling now try - also incidentally an indication of its roots). In addition to reminding of the Jackson 5 Sunhsine soulpop of, If You Let Me Stay ', the fragile, Sign Your Name', the lascivious, Wishing Well 'and the driving of Dance Funk, Dance Little Sister' you could also easily every other song from this disk can decouple the Singel. , Let's Go Forward 'for example. The in the same line as, Sign' suggests that orhwurmige, I'll Never Turn My Back On You ', or the great pumping, Rain'.

Production decreased for those days, although ok, sounds today but quite badly aged, probably also because of the fact that D'Arby did not make it (as Prince) to rooms to a unique sound in some places.

Nevertheless, this is one of the few gems of the soul-pop of the 80s and will remain so for all time D'Arby's benchmark album. Much more there is no need of it actually, even if the two successor albums fell off only slightly, but it divides high with Lenny Kravitz the same fate: better than after the debut, it no longer was.