The four hundred and ninety-seventh album: #497 Prince - 1999
So much of 1999 makes for a catchy album - it's hard to get away from all the songs that stick with you. There are some long funk fadeouts - still too much for my taste - but when it hits the groove and the song really gets going, the album is amazing. Even its double length mostly doesn't matter because so much of it is infectious enough to keep you going along. At the same time, parts of it feel forward looking, experimenting with electronic music in a way that hasn't intersected with R&B before. I'm not sure how many of those will move forward, but it does feel like an album made with a license to experiment and figure stuff out, with something polished still being released at the end.