On Wednesday, Spotify apparently decided that it had given us enough for the day, and simply decided to stop working. Rough moment for everyone who relies on Spotify as their sole method to get their ears on music. Couldn’t be yours truly though. Fun fact: I pay for Spotify, Apple Music, and Tidal. Plus, I still pay for CDs. And records. And the occasional cassette. But CDs are my primary format of physical music, because I can get them on my iPhone with ease.

For two reasons, I still rely on Spotify as my primary source for streaming music, especially when I’m at my desk working. I won’t lie, one reason is that damned Spotify Wrapped stays in my mind year-round; I like the idea of getting that recap of my year in music (even though I know it’s not entirely accurate). The main reason I default to Spotify over the others though, is Spotify Connect. This feature allows seamless switching between devices, something that is sorely lacking on Tidal and Apple Music (and would be difficult on the latter since I don’t sync my personal collection to Apple’s cloud). Between two laptops, a phone, and a Sonos speaker system spread throughout my apartment, that seamless connectivity makes a big difference in the experience, and simplifies a lot of situations.

But without Spotify, my next move is Apple’s Music app on my iPhone, because that’s where my personal collection lives. I still plug my phone into my computer and sync my music. Yeah, I’m that guy. And in moments like this, it pays off big-time. I wasn’t even phased by the Spotify outage, and I used it as an opportunity to dive into an album I finally got my hands on recently that I hadn’t heard yet.

A few weeks back, I stopped by Bookoff on 45th Street to peruse their music section, as I often do. I love Bookoff because even if I go in with a few things in mind, I never know what I’m going to stumble upon. But their prices, which used to be consistently reasonable, have become somewhat unreliable, and frequently outrageous. As I shop there I often check Discogs, a music cataloging/marketplace site, to see just how out of control Bookoff’s prices are, and whether things I find are actually worth it. Make no mistake, I’m happy to pay a few more dollars for something and support a local business. But when things are double what they cost on Discogs, that’s beyond reason.

About two months ago, as a result of those high prices, I put something back on the shelves that I was pursuing: a copy of Mavis Staples’ 1993 LP The Voice, the second of two albums released on Prince’s Paisley Park label. But this time, the price had been reduced, and the new price was reasonable enough for me to afford.

My relationship with Mavis and the Staples’ Singers is casual at best. Of course I know the hits, who doesn’t? And I’ve seen the resurgence Mavis has experienced in the last decade-and-a-half thanks to her Grammy Award-winning work with Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy; my dad has at least one or two of those albums on his CD shelves. But I haven’t yet listened to Mavis’ solo work on my own, and I’m not very familiar with her musical journey as a soloist.

I only became aware of these albums thanks to a post on Bluesky within the last two months (which coincidentally also went down later that same Wednesday). 1989’s Time Waits For No One and 1993’s The Voice, her fourth and fifth solo records, respectively are both unavailable on Spotify. That’s not uncommon with non-Prince releases from his labels: Paisley Park and NPG Records. Another album from those labels on my shelves, Chaka Khan’s 1998 LP Come 2 My House, has never been available digitally either (though a digital release was promised in 2023 and never arrived).

I thought these two LPs were entirely exclusive to physical copies, but this week as I started working on this piece, I was surprised to learn that The Voice is in fact streaming on Tidal and Apple Music, and available to purchase digitally. It’s just not on Spotify. While that gives my multi-platform-subscribing ass access, most Spotify subscribers probably don’t have access to stream it. Unlike streaming platforms for visual media, it’s highly uncommon for someone to have subscriptions to multiple music streaming platforms.

So I’ve spent my Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday spinning The Voice. With virtually no context, The Voice is an interesting and enjoyable body of work. Since it’s Staples’ second LP on Paisley Park, it’s safe to assume that both Prince and Staples were satisfied enough with Time Waits For No One (which I have not yet heard) to make another go of it.

The most interesting moment arrives on “A Man Called Jesus.” Over a fast-paced and at-times-frantic instrumental, the same Mavis Staples who started out singing gospel with her family flips the script, and spends most of the song rapping, yes, rapping, about Jesus. It’s wild to hear Staples rapping, and yet, I love it. Her deep voice gives her authority, her flow is solid, and she doesn’t restrict herself exclusively to spitting 16’s. She still injects powerful, gospel-rooted runs and “my god”’s that affirm exactly who she is and the gospel church she hails from. She spits another 16 on the album’s closer, “Positivity,” a cover of the closer to Prince’s 1988 Lovesexy.

If the Jesus rap track wasn’t evidence enough, there’s gospel in here, and working with Staples gave Prince a chance to experiment with his spiritual-infused songwriting. She sings about coming together, rejecting conflict, and embracing love, with heavy Bible references on the Prince-penned “Blood Is Thicker Than Time.”

I really love hearing Staples over these productions. It reflects her willingness to refuse musical confinement, something her family had been doing since the 60’s when they found the areas where popular music and gospel music met and helped blur those lines. But it also indicates her ability to experiment and step outside the box.

These adventures in musical deviation and experimentation are so important to not just the catalogs of these artists, but music as a whole. It’s an important reminder that artists aren’t simply here to provide us with their latest series of bops. Just like us, they’re trying things and testing the waters, which always come with varied degrees of success.

What’s cool about this album is that I hear how she’s inspired this music she’s making. The funk of The Staple Singers’ foundational “I’ll Take You There” radiates from the guitars and keyboards and elements of the percussion of the title/opening track/lead single, “The Voice.” But it’s wrapped in pure post-80’s funk in this 1993 iteration, soaked in Prince’s influence, and surrounded by his vocal contributions.

And while Prince gets most of the credit because it’s a Paisley Park release, he only produced a small fraction of this LP, and those productions are credited to ‘Paisley Park,’ which was common for him during this period. Ricky Peterson handled the bulk of the album’s production. There’s even contributions from pieces of Luther Vandross’ a-squad, including Nat Adderly Jr., Cindy Mizelle, and Brenda White. But Prince is all over this album, especially in the background vocals. He takes no credit for the vocals, but he’s unmistakably there. Sometimes he’s just another background vocalist, but at other times, he’s right there under Staples’ lead.

And this, is why I still buy CDs.