Prince‘s 1991 album Diamonds and Pearls introduced his band the New Power Generation & is by some counts his second best-selling album period, after Purple Rain. It went double-platinum. It contained his fifth, and final (to date), #1 single. Yet the album does not seem to have stood the test of time with some critics. NOT AN ALBUM from a cutting-edge upstart but a pop music masterclass offering from an established star. So its version of the “new” might not feel as new, might feel like revisions to past formulas. At the same time, Diamonds and Pearls does have a distinct style and approach within Prince’s catalog, and amidst the music of the day. If Prince was trying to jump on a hip-hop bandwagon, he was intentionally not going for the newest-latest style or the purest form of the genre, but taking a pop/R&B version of it (new jack swing, essentially) and wedding it to a more old-school form of entertainment, with elements of Las Vegas, of James Brown, of Cab Calloway.