Planet Earth

It's all right--in the dispiriting way that everything he's put out since his "Symbol" era has been all right.

While all three albums ["Musicology," "3121," and "Planet Earth"], at their best, contain precisely the sort of seasoned professionalism you wouldn't ever cite as an actual compliment, there remains a nostalgic pull that's no less electric for being completely anesthetized and overly rehearsed.

Overall, Planet Earth is a competent collection of songs that are certainly too good to be given away free.

This sounds more like a new Gnarls Barkley album than an old Prince one. A genius on autopilot is still very clever indeed.

Prince's 26th album will be remembered more for its method of distribution--a reactionary tabloid's covermount CD--than for being tighter and more tuneful than 2004's "Musicology" and last year's "3121." [Sep 2007, p.113]

Planet Earth’ll leave you feeling decidedly short-changed.

What actually lies inside Prince’s twenty-somethingth album is more than disappointing; it’s thinly if grandly produced, tapped with a veneer so dumbly decades behind any sense of interesting or intriguing taste that one can’t help but sit back and swallow the benign whole, thinking all along, Who the fuck even makes music like this anymore?

The rest of the album is stuff he's done before and better.

Anti-war, pro-environment, religious ('Chelsea Rodgers' only gives up trim if you're baptized), and funky, Planet Earth is still merely an excuse to tour.