Emancipation was such a let down for me, I can't tell you. I was so excited thinking before listening to this, what with it being three cds in length, 'fucking hell, prince has fucking exploded and produced the kind of album which will make all at Warner want to emigrate this planet, like yesteday!' Then I listened to it, ok 'Jam Of The Year', a little fruity but NOT da bomb. The other tracks began to slip by and I started to think 'where is the funk?' as much as I wanted to like it, it started to leave me cold with its compromised jazzy popness. I did like the 2nd cd but, still the funk failed to materialise except perhaps 'joint to joint' Hmmm disappointing!!!! NPS started well what with Prince sounding cocky & supercilious and then this awful 'Get freaky, let the head bob!' What the fuck? Anyway I do like NPS now, it is quite funky and deserves a lot more plaudits than it gets. I nearly stopped being a prince fan after these two albums, but I'm now glad that I persisted since I think that he IS gradually finding his way back to Planet Funk. God Gaad! Hurt me!

aww hell NO! emancipation is f**kin amazing.

Don't you think though that it could have benefitted from a greater 'funk factor'?

painfully slow, sparse beats with cring inducing bottoms and faux street lyrics does not funk make....

Emancipation had something to say, it was a picture of Prince's life at that moment, addmittedly with perhaps 12 songs too much filler...

NPS is throwaway (only topped by Rave in cynicism) with maybe 2-3 decent moments...

There's no comparison...NPS is one of the worst P albums ever, Emancipation is a good album that could be great if P had made it a double album instead of a triple one. I admire the man's exuberance; he was just so excited to be liberated that he wanted to make a grandiose statement with a 36 song tour de force. The world could have lived without ever hearing "Da Da Da" and we really didn't need 10 songs about how much P loved his computer. But "White Mansion", "Holy River", "Jam of the Year", "Curious Child", "Joint 2 Joint", "Slave", "In This Bed I Scream", and several others were great. NPS was watered down funk light; an album that either seems like a self-parody or something from a really bad Prince impersonator.

NPS, as the great poet laureates in 3rd Bass once put it, gets the gas face.

Well, I love both of them. NPS gets a hard deal when really it is a much superior CD compared to Disc One of Emancipation which I find to be rather weak except for In This Bed I Scream.

Mad Sex, Wasted Kisses, The One, Come On and NPS are far, far superior to dross like Right Back Here In My Arms, I Can't Make U Love Me, Mr Happy and the God-awful We Gets Up.

However, Emancipation makes up for a weak first disc with a beautiful second one and a third one which probably has some of his best songs ever. For Face Down alone I love Emancipation.

I think they're both great records, although I'd probably pick Emancipation as there is much more to like on a 36 track set than there is on an eleven track one.

In my mind, they are both superior to Musicology, Diamonds & Pearls and Around The World In A Day.

i can honestly say neither. they're both great albums.

MattyJam said:

Superior 2 D&P and ATWIAD?????
And Musicology is far better than NPS,everything is better than
that one anyway.
It's already been sia a lot here,make a single or double
cd from Emancipation and U've got yourself a good Prince album
that sounds a bit like the follow up 2 symbol and D&P

I like different things about both of them. I usually "splice" Prince's albums anyhow, so I guess I prefer Emancipation because there's so much more to chose from when it comes to "whittling it down".

Really, with Prince, I've given up on the possibility that he'll ever drop one full, end-to-end, funk-rock statement where I'll like EVERY song. That hasn't happened, truly, since "Purple Rain", but "The Undertaker" came close...

I don't really mind though. He's still the greatest musician of my generation, in addition to being the most prolific. I just weed out the stuff I don't like and make my own albums.

Others disagree...