The Gold Experience

Prince tacked his final top 10 single, “The Most Beautiful Girl in the World,” onto an album that’s harder, friskier, and just plain weirder than that graceful hit’s gentle ’70s soft-R&B falsetto might have you expect. “P. Control” is the salacious and admiring tale of a self-sufficient woman, “Endorphinmachine” a hecka slammin’ slab of guitar funk, “Eye Hate U” a seductive and conflicted psychodrama, and “We March” a militant anti-racist protest anthem. *The Gold Experience* is as close as Prince came to a masterpiece in the ’90s.

Each Sunday, Pitchfork takes an in-depth look at a significant album from the past, and any record not in our archives is eligible. Today, we revisit Prince’s best album of the ’90s, a funked-out opus mired in extra-musical drama.

With this LP, our former Prince turns in his most effortlessly eclectic set since 1987’s Sign o’ the Times.

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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.