compared Prince's approach to George Clinton's "sonic wallop and communal craziness", adding that "the bassy murk never lets up, and at its weirdest [...] it's as dark as "Cosmic Slop."" Commenting on the scarcity of advance-release copies, he recommended that "those who pine for heavy funk should nag their local dealers". The New York Times''' Jon Pareles remarked that both The Black Album and Lovesexy "show a musician experimenting like mad with every musical parameter, and so prolific that he has to cut back his output so he won't be competing with himself". He observed that The Black Album "answers the Beatles' eclectic White Album with Prince's own tour of black music styles (from a skeletal, synthesized blues to a rap, with extended stops at James Brown, Sly and the Family Stone and Parliament-Funkadelic); it has black humor and nasty fantasies." Retrospective reviews since the album's limited official release have been more mixed. In one of the few unambiguously negative appraisals, Selects Matt Hall panned the album as "the sound of someone losing step with the times", and was particularly critical of Prince's "embarrassing, bitter rant against hip hop" on "Dead on It". David Browne of Entertainment Weekly believed that The Black Album had not aged well by 1994, writing that "[i]n the pre-gangsta days of 1987, The Black Album was jarring, but now that our ears have become jaded — at times liberated — it sounds downright average", but offered praise for the "spooky, scary, and funny, sometimes all at once" "Bob George". More sympathetically, Stephen Thomas Erlewine of Allmusic opined that the album "isn't a lost masterwork -- it's fun, but not much more". He criticized "When 2 R in Love" as "nondescript" and "Dead on It" as "one of the lamest things he ever waxed", but declared that "[t]he rest of the eight-song album is brilliant, pure funk" and "a terrific little record that still delights, even after its mystique has faded". Track listing Personnel Prince – lead vocals and various instruments Sheila E. – backing vocals (1), percussion (2), drums (7) Eric Leeds – saxophone (1, 2, 8) Atlanta Bliss – trumpet (1, 2, 8) Cat Glover – backing vocals (1), backing vocals and rap (2), spoken vocals (7) Boni Boyer – backing vocals (1) Susannah Melvoin – backing vocals (8) Susan Rogers – engineer Charts References NotesSources' External links The Black Album at Discogs Public