Professional ratings
Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic
Blender
Christgau's Record Guide	A
Entertainment Weekly	A
The Guardian
Pitchfork	10/10
Q
Rolling Stone
The Rolling Stone Album Guide
Spin Alternative Record Guide	10/10

Dirty Mind is the third studio album by American recording artist Prince. It was released on October 8, 1980, by Warner Bros. Records as the follow-up to his commercially successful second album, Prince, released in 1979. Produced, arranged, and composed primarily by Prince in his home studio in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the album debuted at number 63 on the US Billboard 200 chart (peaking at number 45), and earned widespread acclaim from music critics.

On June 6, 1984, it was certified gold in shipments by the Recording Industry Association of America.

Dirty Mind was recorded primarily in Prince's home studio throughout 1980, and several of the songs were cut in one night, giving them a sparse, demo-like quality. The title track was released as a single and described as "robotic funk" by AllMusic's Stephen Thomas Erlewine, while "When You Were Mine", notably covered by Cyndi Lauper on her album She's So Unusual, is "pure new wave pop". "Do It All Night" and "Head", a sexually explicit song about a chance meeting with a bride-to-be and seducing her with oral sex, contain "sultry funk"; "Gotta Broken Heart Again", the only ballad on the record, features "soulful crooning"; and the rock-influenced "Sister" praises incest between the song's protagonist and his older sibling ("Incest is everything it's said to be"). "Uptown" and "Partyup" are "relentless dance jams", according to Erlewine; the former became a top-five hit on the Billboard Dance and R&B charts in late 1980, and the latter was performed on Saturday Night Live on February 21, 1981.

The album received critical acclaim. According to Ken Tucker from Rolling Stone magazine, "Prince's first two collections established him as a doe-eyed romantic. Nothing could have prepared us for the liberating lewdness of Dirty Mind. Dirty Mind jolts with the unsettling tension that arises from rubbing complex erotic wordplay against clean, simple melodies. Across this ELECTRIC surface glides Prince's graceful quaver, tossing off lyrics with an exhilarating breathlessness. He takes the sweet romanticism of Smokey Robinson and combines it with the powerful vulgate poetry of Richard Pryor. The result is cool music dealing with hot emotions. At its best, Dirty Mind is positively filthy."

...
Wikipedia