The Truth (1998)
After Prince, in his words, “emptied the gun” with the over-produced Emancipation album he went back to basics with The Truth, focusing more on songwriting chops than studio trickery. And in what appears to be a similar polar reaction, the previous album’s mature musings on marriage and babies gets abandoned for Circle of Amour‘s schoolboy fantasy of what four girls get up to behind locked doors. Saying this tale’s of a ménage à quatre would be lending it too much class – this in crude terms is (albeit imagined by a classmate) an all-female circle jerk, relayed through such a sweet melody and wordplay (“four hands in the place where the feet connect”) that you’d be forgiven for missing the NSFW content. It may sound refined and sylvan cool and you could even picture it being played at a wedding reception as canapés are brought out, but on an emotional level it’s Jack U Off in fine furs.