with both Prince and Mariah coming off of less-than stellar sales of their previous albums....each claimed to be "Emancipated" from their past on their ne walbum. I just remember when Prince's came out, he had that "live" special on mtv, BET and vh-1, Oprah...a whole bunch of fanfare (for him, anyway...) and the debuted at like 11 or 14 on Billboard, not bad for a 3-cd set, but i think they were hoping for higher sales (Bryant Gumbel asked Prince if he was disappointed in the sales and he said "no", since he had already made his money back on the project.
Mariah's cd is slightly abover average at best..kinda not-too r&b, but not too poppish...and it's doing very well on the charts, probably better than a lot of people thought it would, with a #1 soong to boot...so my question is..what made her big "comeback" happen and the public kinda give the cold shoulder to Prince?

Prince did what he wanted to do. Mariah gave the people what they wanted to hear and see.

Because Mariah has a marketing team that Prince didn't have.
Also, Mariah's record is more mainstream.

And the only similarities between these 2 albums is the word "emancipation"

jayaredee said:

And Mariah also has a vagina

Mariah's record company didn't go bankrupt in the midst of pushing the album.

jayaredee said:

prince sure does act like he does sometimes though..

Octavius said:

true..however, mariah is smart enough to foster relationships within the industry where as prince seems to operate his business w/ a self sense of entitlement....these one album deals he keeps seeking will never earn him any real valued marketing for his albums..

Well, if you call MAriah's sad piece of crap and album that "works" then that's your thing.

More people stood to make $$$$ off of Mariah's album than Prince's so you can be damn sure that they made sure that her album "sold".

Snap said:

meltwithu said:

You already answer your own question.

Prince's Emancipation was 3CDs to Mariah's 1 CDs.

Naturally, Prince's album was higher in price.

sosgemini said:

Mariah doesn't care about owning her masters that she left behind as Sony Music Entertainment. She's happy to just get royality checks as a songwriter.

Mariah's alright. It is not groundbreak material at all. Especially not the first single "It's Like That." That is a cookie cutter song if ever there was one. It also took some years to get back to making hits.

Snap said:

I agree with you 100%.

For a 3disc set that sold more than 2-million copies, that sure isn't bad at all!
The first 2 songs released were played in high rotation on radio and on bet/mtv/vh1 networks...

So alot of ppl knew about the emancipation project!
His concerts did very well...and he got alot of media attention.
Mariah on the other hand...just had more mainstream songs to choose from...prince's music is real music and usually unedited, complex and very deep!

Now a days...ppl have to write cute bubble gum ditty's with a cute hook to get a song to number 1.

ask...Gwen Stefani and 50 Cent

Well, Emancipation didn't actually sell two million copies. With multi-disc sets, each disc is counted towards its certification. Emancipation sold around 660,000 copies, which times three got it a double-platinum certification. Make sense?

And Prince's Emancipation was full of just as many cookie cutter, radio-friendly songs as Mariah's. People were still just put off by the whole name-change/slave thing. Mariah had a massive dud with "Glitter" and had her breakdown, but she never intentionally put off the public the way Prince did... so she had less to 'come back' from. Plus she had a larger hard-core fanbase. People wanted her back around. The same thing happened with Prince last year. After all those years away (and with much of the weirdness of the '90s forgotten) I think people just wanted Prince to comeback. And fortunately a more relaxed, down-to-earth Prince played the hits, gave the people what they wanted, and had an amazing year because of it.

Had P parred Emancipation down to 1 cd it would have done much much better.

TonyVanDam said:

are we sure about that? but whatever the case may be, im sure prince would be able to negotiate a longterm contract with him retaining ownership of his masters....

owning masters is not a foreign thing folks..more and more artist are stipulating they retain ownership rights when signing.....artist also did this in the past.....smart artist do it right...

prince just wasnt smart enough (and he was very very young in his defense) at the time he signed his warners deal...

heck, wasnt U2 that renegoiated their contract and won rights to all their back catalog...theres a smart way to negotiate..and then theres the prince way...(slave anyone?)

sosgemini said:

We don't know the particulars of either "negotiations" enough to comment on them. The slave thing was likely Prince's reaction to failed negotiations not his negotiation strategy. Could he have handled it better? Sure, but I doubt WB decided against returning his masters because of it.

Cuz Prince is Prince.

Mariah has become what others want.

...and it's a shame too...i used to like her.

whodknee said:

but we *do* know that big artist are now negotiating for their masters..ala u2 and madonna....why prince doesnt just negotiate a longterm contract that favors himself is beyond me...

renfield said:

This is easily the best post on this topic that I've read...very real and to the pont...Prince is human just like any other artist...the problem with Emancipation (which I think is underrated) was that it was too much...A three disc CD set is cool when you are selling 5 to 17 million albums...But when you are trying to comeback from a PR disaster (the name change, the fight with WB) and dwindling sales, you have to make a swift statement; give it to us straight and to the point...Emancipation was just too much to handle, even for the real fans... And can we stop bashing every artists that's not trying to make a serious musical statement...for the people that like Mariah, she's alright...I would rather for the kids to listen to the woman with the great voice singing pop songs than say Ashanti...That's real...

murph said:

Because Mariah makes tired music that can fit in with the rest of today's music. If it's something boring, people today will buy it like hotcakes. The music buying public these days are a bunch of dead asses. Just look at the charts, there have even been Disney soundtracks that sold well. A Disney soundtrack back in the day, would have been laughed out of here.
[Edited 6/5/05 8:56am]

vainandy said:

huh? what chu talking about? Sound Of Music, WestSideStory, Grease, Beauty & The Beast, The Lion King, The Lil Mermaid.....

musicals have always sold well.....

I think the fact that the album didn't resonate with the young, mainstream music-buying crowd hurt Emancipation's sales as well. As much as many orgers bitch about that project, there was a lot of strong material on it--and some down right FUNKY shit as well. But picking "Betcha By Golly Wow!", "Somebody's Somebody", and "The Holy River" as lead singles isn't going to pack the masses into the record stores (although I think the later two songs are great). Those songs just don't have a great "hook" needed to get the songs stuck in people's heads.

I think "Jam of the Year" would have made a better lead single. Cookie-cutter, yes. But it's fun and catchy. "Sex in the Summer", "Sleep Around", and "Style" would have been good choices for singles, too, I think.

Better choices for singles would have taken the album further up the charts, I'm certain.

I can see something like "Grease" or "Fame" selling well but anything by Disney was totally laughed at. Disney was the absolute definition of "uncool" back in the day and it wasn't until the 1990s that people lost their minds enough to buy it.

If he had released the funkier stuff as singles, it still wouldn't have sold because rap and hip hop had taken over that decade and everyone was, and still is, stuck in midtempo. They wouldn't know funk if it bit them in the ass.

andy...

i *hate* your new avi!!

sorry if someone already mentioned this
but have a think about the difference in cost of both albums

people would buy mariahs even if they arent fans..
with the cost of princes emancipation i think only the people that already had a love for him would buy it

+ any chick in a short skirt and bouncing boobs can sell
prince isnt nelly

if he was nelly yeh compare the 2

That's Venus from WKRP. I thought about Vanity Smurf but I think I'm going to look for another "hot" man like I had on my other two avatars.