As a Prince fan in the age of Rumsfeld, I figure he's due for another Sign 'O' the Times. I want the little purple man to drop some of that robotic futuristic knowledge-funk on us, let everybody in the world know how it is over here under the looking glass of the evil empire and purify us all once again in the waters of Lake Minnetonka. Just like he used to two decades ago.

As a realist, I know that's never going to happen again. Nobody -- not Dylan or Lou Reed or George Clinton -- has ever been able to sustain enough forward motion after a quarter-century in rock 'n' roll to make a record anywhere near as good as their former glories. So when you read a music critic referring to something as "a return to form," all that means is the artist in question has been functionally irrelevant for at least a couple of years, but somehow managed to cobble together an album sort of like the best bits of what came before. It just doesn't happen like that.

With all that in mind, know that the new Prince album, 3121, is the best thing he's done in at least a decade. It is not in a class with Purple Rain, Dirty Mind or Parade, as that would make it a mythological "return to form." It's not even up there with Controversy, Diamonds & Pearls or Around the World in a Day. Mostly good as 3121 is, you should not buy it until you own all of the aforementioned. But for a post-Rave Un 2 the Joy Fantastic Prince record, it's splattered with the creator's trademarks, deep grooves, and yes, sex appeal.

As far as funk-rock is concerned, Prince is still the best who ever did it. But his recent output has been either sloppy or overblown (and sometimes both), the workings of a genius who made about 10 of the finest dance albums that'll ever be made and still had some juice left in his sockets. Musicology in 2004 pared the funk buffet down into song-size bites, but the grooves were mostly weak and the hooks never quite hooked.

So consider me justifiably hornswaggled by how very excellent quite a lot of 3121 is. There are shades of a Prince that I thought we'd forever lost to The Rainbow Children on tracks like the slam-bang single "Black Sweat," a dance tune that's as much Aphex Twin as Sly Stone. Equally good is the tripped-out title track; Prince never names his records after a bad song.

It's not just the funky ones that cut it, either: The synth see-saw of "Lolita" is pure "1999," but I could care less, and on "Satisfied," the man shows he still knows his way around a slow jam.

There's a real sense that Prince has been jamming on some of the more innovative dance music of the last few years, and there's a hard-edged experimental feel to a lot of these tracks, the vital ingredient that Prince's recent music has lacked. Sure, other standouts like "Love" and "Get on the Boat" are Prince-by-the-pound, but the new grooves he brings to them are past mediocre.

3121's no grand slam; clear low-light "The Dance" is formless ambient noise, as poorly named a song as I can recall. And "Te Amo Corazon" would be a bad song in any language, but the Spanish chorus doesn't help. But it's the kind of record a bona fide funk-genius like Prince should be making in his old age, and with a hit-to-miss ratio a heck of a lot higher than most of his followers have ever been able to manage, 3121's awfully good to hear. Grade: B