The masterpiece? Not on first listen, but perhaps this is a slower burning album than Purple Rain or 1999. It's an iconic start, the synth drum hustle of the title track, a sound of Bambatta and street battles. Perhaps any double album is doomed to feel like hard work from the get-go. There is a lot to love in the well-known tracks - You Got the Look sounding well ahead of its time, while simultaneously challenging a kind of Van Halen on Thriller guitar style that sounds very, very eighties. Sheena Easton, Scotland's favourite, providing the uber-American vocals.

It's undoubtedly ambitious, there's no doubt about it, and perhaps it's that sense that there's something for everyone that makes it special. I dunno. Maybe it feels like he's trying too hard? All the 5/5s seem to talk about "breathtaking scope" and all of that, but is it enough to make you actually want to listen to it again and again?

If Purple Rain is the heavyweight vinyl, Around the World in a Day is the thrift-store find, then maybe this one is the CD in the car. Maybe it needs an epic landscape, a cross-country road trip, to make sense of it all. I have to confess, at times I find this a bit self-indulgent.

I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man. That's a solid gold track though. I think pop is the shade of purple I prefer with Prince, no surprise there though. Hang on, now The Cross has come on. This is a very different vibe... maybe I need to give this another chance...

Some things are the work of a lifetime, not an hour.