Parade: Music From the Motion Picture Under the Cherry Moon

Recorded as a soundtrack for Prince’s directorial debut, *Under the Cherry Moon*, *Parade* melds his deepening funk explorations with a fascination for *Sgt. Pepper’s*-era Beatles. The album comes on strong and playful, stripped-back yet bursting with color. There are a handful of classics here in the steel-drum double-dutch of “New Position” and the ‘40s fantasia “Under the Cherry Moon,” but nothing reaches the heights of “Kiss,” which makes more of empty space than most artists make of sound.

Prince & the Revolution shift musical moods and textures from song to song -- witness how the fluttering psychedelia of "Christopher Tracy's Parade" gives way to the spare, jazzy funk of "New Position," which morphs into the druggy "I Wonder U" -- and they're determined not to play it safe, even on the hard funk of "Girls and Boys" and "Mountains," as well as the stunning "Kiss," which hits hard with just a dry guitar, keyboard, drum machine, and layered vocals.

The Purple One’s discography rarely dipped below sublime sex-funk. We rank all 37 LPs from his polymathic 80s masterwork Sign O’ The Times to 2003’s saxophone-heavy N.E.W.S.