One of the more rare and odder items in the
Prince discography,
The Versace Experience: Prelude 2 Gold was intended as a promotional cassette to be distributed at the Versace runway show at Paris Fashion Week in July 1995. The event was held a mere two months before the September release of The Gold Experience, and the cassette was designed to promote the new record without undercutting it. The album has exclusive remixes of three of the four singles from The Gold Experience -- "Eye Hate U," "Gold," and "P Control," with the actual hit "The Most Beautiful Girl in the World" left off, likely because it was over a year old at that point -- and they ground an album that runs swiftly through excerpts of album tracks, snippets of songs from both the New Power Generation and
Madhouse, half-formed instrumentals, and
Prince gravely intoning "Versace" at random moments. With its
Public Enemy samples, fashion fetishism, loopy funk, and smooth soul,
The Versace Experience is very much an artifact of its time, and while the period flair makes it interesting, it's only mildly interesting. At its core,
The Versace Experience is a promo tape, designed to hype an album that had yet to hit stores. Listening to it decades after the promotional cycle came to a close relegates it to little more than a curiosity. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine