Low, low Prince

Times are tough, but there are bargains to be had. On Sunday morning at the Target store on City Avenue, for instance, customers were presented with some sweet "Expect More. Pay Less" options at the point of purchase.

For starters, there were four packs of Tastykake Tasty "Tweets" available for just $2.99. (If only I had a Twitter account, I could have tweeted about it on the spot.)

Right next to that, another great deal, with a "Chocolate Box" of its own: a three-CD set that includes two new albums by Prince - Lotusflow3r (*** out of four stars) and MPLSound (**½) - plus a third, Elixer (**), by his latest comely protege, Bria Valente. The bargain-basement price for the 31-song troika? A hard-to-resist $11.98.

If you want hard copies of the CDs, on Prince's own NPG label, you'll have to go to Target, the box-store chain based in Prince's hometown of Minneapolis. (And in case you're not on the same phonetic wavelength that the Purple One's been on since long before text messaging existed, MPLSound means "Minneapolis Sound.")

There is another, pricier way to get the music. For $77, you can join Lotusflow3r.com, which allows users to download all three albums, plus gain access to all sorts of live performances, videos, and previously unreleased content that the super-prolific 50-year-old imp has been keeping to himself for decades. Tempting for completists, but dubious for the rest of us, especially since Prince has sold "lifetime" memberships to online music clubs before, only to later shut the sites down.

But never mind the distribution details, which are appealing to Prince not only because he behaves in kooky ways, but also because he's a businessman who understands that with Tower Records long gone and many Virgin Megastores going out of business, artists popular with older fans have to find new places to sell CDs. He follows other long-in-the-tooth heavy hitters who have recently sold CDs exclusively through big-box chains such as the Eagles and AC/DC, who have done deals with Wal-Mart, and Guns N' Roses, whose Chinese Democracy was sold solely at Best Buy.

The Target triple disc is a bare-bones package that lists song titles, and nothing else. That's OK. Though Lotusflow3r, the strongest of the bunch, is a full-band album that ranges from topical guitar freak-outs ("Dream") to full-on funk ("Feel Good, Feel Better, Feel Wonderful") to, of all things, Italian film-score curiosities ("77 Beverly Park"), we know that our control-freak auteur is ultimately responsible for every note being played.

MPLSound is essentially a nostalgic throwback to the synthesizer-flavored pop-funk that Prince and Twin Cities cohorts like The Time specialized in back in their '80s heyday. And we're not surprised to find that the multi-instrumentalist actually did play every note of the album - which proudly kicks off with a (not brilliant) celebration of self called "(There'll Never B) Another Like Me."

And as for Valente, Prince's Grammy-night date falls somewhere in the middle of the long line of beauteous babes he's taken under his wing, dating all the way back to Vanity 6, in 1982. The intentionally misspelled Elixer is a quiet-storm album, with sort-of-sexy songs like "2Nite" and "Immersion," written, produced, and arranged by the Svengali-with-a-hip-replacement, that are not nearly as dynamic as those he kept for himself.

Valente has a pleasant voice, but doesn't distinguish herself as a significant talent. Better than Carmen Elektra, but not Sheila E., by a long (rim) shot.

But then, no one outside her immediate family is buying this package to get Bria Valente's debut CD. The value proposition question here: Are Prince's albums, his first since 2007's uneven Planet Earth (which followed the solid Musicology and 3121), worth shelling out $12 for?

The answer: Why not? Sure, nothing here is going to make anyone forget "Raspberry Beret" or "Adore." And Prince is often guilty of coasting, as he does with a cover of Tommy James & the Shondells' "Crimson and Clover," or a banal ballad like "Better With Time."

But he still has his weirdly resonant moments. In "Ol' Skool Company" he decries the Wall Street bailout and sings, "Everybody talkin' bout hard time like it just started yesterday / The people I know been strugglin', at least it seems that way," in a voice that sounds as though he's been inhaling helium.

And most of the music found here rises to the quality of typical latter-day Prince. That includes MPLS's mildly naughty "Valentina," said to be addressed to Salma Hayek's daughter so he could put the moves on her mom; Lotus' "Colonized Mind," in which the clean-living Jehovah's Witness rejects received ideas and plays wicked guitar, and MPLS's "Chocolate Box," the most freewheeling party tune here.

Which is to say that none of it recaptures the genius of classic albums like Dirty Mind and Sign 'O' the Times. But had it been recorded by a musically omnivorous, polymorphously playful, previously unknown artist, she or he would be immediately praised as the most dazzlingly talented musician to come down the pike since . . . Prince.