ED NOTE: The history of hip hop and R&B is filled with broken promises. These albums,whether recorded in full, unfinished or simply hyped, have never seen store shelves. This month VIBE looks at 51 coulda-been classics from artists like Prince, 50 Cent, Lauryn Hill and Biggie Small & Jay-Z and talks to some of the forgotten few. In our third installment, Art Projects.
PRINCE AND THE REVOLUTION
Dream Factory (Paisley Park, 1986)
“Writing a song for Prince is like brushing his teeth,” keyboardist Lisa Coleman says, laughing. “He’s that guy.” But for much of 1986, the prolific artist whose albums often bore the tag, “Written, arranged, produced, and performed by Prince,” was in a collaborative mood. The outcome? The stunning 18-track Dream Factory.
During Prince’s Hit & Run tour, he entered the studio for a series of dates with his longtime backing band The Revolution. Two members of the classic lineup would have the most artistic impact on those sessions: Coleman and guitarist Wendy Melvoin. That was the relationship he, Lisa, and myself had,” Melvoin recalls of the duo’s close musical bond with the infamously independent Purple One. “We were in studios all over the world, writing and finishing tracks that were all incredibly diverse and odd.”
Following Around the World in a Day (Paisley Park, 1985) and Parade (Paisley Park, 1986), Dream Factory was a showcase for Prince at his most avant-garde. What other multiplatinum superstar would open up an album with a melancholy instrumental piano piece like “Visions”? But it only gets deeper—and weirder. Witness the dark funk title track, which rails against the crippling illusion of celebrity; “Crystal Ball,” a relentless 10-minute epic about war; and “Train,” a soulful rocker that uses train-track sound effects as a backbeat. The centerpiece is “All My Dreams,” a whimsical number straight out of a 1930s jazz musical, featuring Prince singing into a megaphone.
But Dream Factory was never officially released. After abruptly disbanding the Revolution, Minnesota’s native son included Dream Factory solo standouts like “Ballad of Dorothy Parker,” “Strange Relationship,” and “Sign O’ the Times” on his acclaimed 1987 album of the same name, erasing any trace of Wendy and Lisa. “We wanted to be Prince’s muses,” she says, “but he felt like he needed to take back the initial thing that got him to where he was at, which was, ‘I need to do this on my own,’” Melvoin
says. Yet Wendy and Lisa have thrived, releasing several albums and scoring films like Soul Food (20th Century Fox, 1997) and television shows like NBC’s Heroes, as well as working with the Edith Funker supergroup with Erykah Badu, ?uestlove, James Poyser, and DJ Jazzy Jeff. But looking back, Wendy says of the time: “We are extremely proud of that period.”
Cover art imagined for Prince's "Dream Factory"
MOS DEF
Black Jack Johnson(Rawkus, 2002)
Featuring Living Colour’s rhythm section, Bad Brains guitarist Dr. Know, and Funkadelic keyboardist Bernie Worrell, this Mos Def–led group toured after the BK MC’s 1999 solo debut and threatened a historic black rock record. Most of the songs the group wrote never made it to Mos’ follow-up, The New Danger (Geffen, 2004), on which the group played together.
Amoeba Cleansing Syndrome (Free World/EMI, 1996)
Anticipating Erykah Badu’s later experiments, Joi’s masterful balance of mournful soul and baddest-bitch funk rock remains lost to the EMI vault. Google it.
First discussed in 2006, this collabo could really happen, just not with a major-label push. Wu-Tang Clan’s Iron Man and producer Doom have worked together before, notably on Ghost’s 2006 banger “Clipse of Doom,” and already have a few songs in the can. But this is purely a vanity/nerd project.
Love For Sale (Interscope, 2006)
The devastatingly talented crooner’s experimental follow-up to the underrated 1st Born Second (Interscope, 2001) has been floating on the Web for years. But while Bilal Oliver tours regularly and contributes the occasional guest hook, Love for Sale remains on layaway.
RELATED
The 51 Best Albums That Never Were: Label Casualties
The 51 Best Albums That Never Were: Dream Teams
The 51 Best Albums That Never Were: Classic Follow-Ups
home
