I feel so sorry for prince when I think of the emancipation album.

So many people have a bad opinion of this album, I personally think it rocks, there is some great songwriting on there, of course what lets it down is the producing.

My point is that our princy put his heart and soul into this album, 3 disks of mostly good material followed by poor sales and lukewarm reviews. No wonder he has given up trying to do a quality album after this. I feel that this episode messed up his creative streak. If I met him I would love to tell him what a good job he did on that album, despite the flaws.

I would be hard pushed to find any other artist who could release 3 disks of material of that quality..probably none.

Anyone have views on this??

The problem I have with this album is that my expectations were too high for it. I was like 'Prince is releasing a triple album!! bring it ooon!!!'

There just wasn't enough variety in the production of it. It sounded too samey for my taste. There are some great songs on there and some of the writing is also great but it's hardly as great as the the lost 'Crystal Ball' album that he had to edit down for SOTT.

soulyacolia said:

I cry everytime i think of how great it would have been if Crystal ball was released. Also I would have loved to prince to release the camille album. oh well, if only.....

well, i agree with whiskas, emancipation is my 5th fav prince album

RumAndRaisin said:

I think it's one of those albums that in the future people will look back at and realise what a good album it is!

jam of the year is such a good song to play whislt having a bbq or party in da garden, the whole album screams summer.

Whiskas31 said:

I disagree. I think it gets worse with time.

The production on it is so dated, it sounds like a casio keyboard produced some of the songs.

Cheap, cheap, cheap.

Kirky J-DIE!

Some of it sounds like Prince was really straining himself to make three discs of material.

It has too many plastic covers too.
[Edited 8/16/05 14:48pm]

I agree with PurpleKnight it does sound 'plastic'

why does evryone use the word dated, it was 9 years ago, its hardly gonna sound up to date to you criticle lot, it was a great record in my eyes

Whiskas31 said:

Yes the production is AWFUL (those R&B beats, over and over, it's like Chinese Water Torture) - But not just the producing; the album repeats itself over, and over in terms of content, 3 CDs is just TOO much for such similar content.

It was clearly based on the simple F.U. to Warners, "Hey, F.U. Warners, here's that 3LP set you wouldn't let me release, remember that, yeah, this is a 3-disc set, how you like THAT!" - Only it didn't work, since it stretched the content of a single LP over 3 tiresome discs.

Whiskas31 said:

Did he really put his heart and soul into it? Or did he just put his heart and soul into the concept, not the songs? He said from the outset it was gonna be outlandish - 50 songs blah, blah - so the *concept* was very important from the get go, I think it overshadowed the content.

RumAndRaisin said:

Right, and Purple Rain was made in 1984 and still sounds terrific.

It's the fault of Kirky J and Prince as a producer for it sounding so plastic and cheap.

It's definately one of Prince's weaker albums in my opinion, though I can never quite pin down why I feel that - though I do think the production is too bland, too samey. Then he put out New Powersoul, which wasn't much of an improvement production wise - and then Rave, which was better but still flat in places.

No wonder fans see this as quite a bad time for Prince. He was going to follow up with the 'High' album, tracks that now make up The Chocolate Invasion and Slaughterhouse - it would have been an improvement on Rave but not by a huge amount.

I think it just shows how important The Rainbow Children was, and why it was received so well by fans. Prince turned his back on trying to do something commercial and just concentrated on what he thought was interesting - and it seemed to shake him out of the production doldrums finally. Can't help thinking the drumming of John Blackwell was a big factor - the drum patterns and sound have been a lot fresher since he came along.

metalorange said:

- I agree.

And for the same reason, I think this is why Musicology was such a step backwards.

Hey,
Emancipation was a good Cd if you think about what mood Prince was in when he made it. Mayte was pregnant. Prince was in love and the Cd sounds justlike that Dopey in looooovvvvve music. That was the frame of mind Primce was in at that moment in his life. He was finally "Free" from his awful contract and he was pleased that his burden had been lifted. No, Emancipation is not Prince's best Cd,but I respect him for it.

NouveauDance said:

Totally agree. Emancipation was great in concept, but not so good in practice.
It was just too much of the same thing for 3 discs. It just wasn't varied and
adventurous enough. If you're gonna make a triple album, then you should make
the most of the opportunity to do things you can't really afford to do on a
single album, but Prince passed on that opportunity and instead delivered an
album of samey R&B tracks with generic plastic production. Compared to the
daring and diversity of the previous Gold/Come material, the new stuff felt
lacklustre and bland. This wasn't helped by Prince's decision to practically
only include happy positive songs and virtually only major chords, further
limiting the scope of the album. Plus the cover versions were a pointless
addition.

BorisFishpaw said:

I think he also pigeonholed himself creatively by making each disc EXACTLY an hour. It was just way too contrived. It would have been cool to hear one of two songs just break off into tangents. Joint 2 Joint kinda did it, but it wasn't that great. Or what I missed most of all was hearing a long looooong guitar solo. I thought for sure Emanicipation would contain at least one truly epic Prince song, but it didn't.

And you're right, Boris, the covers were pointless. All of them.

But Emancipation is still an album I enjoy revisiting every so often. It came along at an important time in my life, so listening to it brings back good memories. But when I think about what could have been, I can't help but be slightly disappointed.

You know, when I look at the promotion ads for Emancipation now, and when I see an ad stating that "Emancipation was the album was born to make" or when it says something crazy like "3 hours of sex, love, and liberty", I just laugh and ask myself, why was I so excited about this album back in 96? Even though the album spanned 3 discs long, there were many problems with it. Each disc had material with lack of focus (especially Disc 3) and it served as filler. I will admit that the production was plastic and not as real and rich as his Warner-era records from 1978-1994. The production was kind of like something that Arista Records would use for their artists like TLC. I mean don't get me wrong, Emancipation was eclectic in its variety of styles and sounds and the concept was kind of bearing, but it was just kind of generic for me, in some ways. Most of the material was solid and amazing, but some of it was just way too silly. I remember trying to hear this whole album back in '97 and I couldn't resist in skipping a track or two, but I had to. Overall, it's a great album, but I don't know if its one of my faves. Both the record and some of the tracks runs a little too long. You just can't listen 2 this in one sitting, I don't think anyone can even do that with this album. Oh, it's very self-indulgent and generic too, but it's a great record, if you take it in parts and not a whole piece. I still can't believe it went platinum.
[Edited 8/16/05 20:19pm]

I listen to the first half of the 3d disk now and again. And I do like those tracks - just the idea of Prince doing techno was pretty cool, and I loved to play it on my old radio show just to tweak people's brains.

But I'd have preferred to have a whole album to love rather than 1/6 of one.

Alliasan said:

I couldn't stand most of Disc 3. I can see where he was trying to go with doing the more experimental, techno and hip-hop stuff, but somehow it just doesn't work for me. I guess I gotta listen to that disc and see if it grows on me or if I still grow on it.

i dont think it was a waste of release at all, i mean there are some great GEMS scattered over the 3 discs. i can still manage to listen to it all without the skip button.. its also worth just choosing your favourites to make your very own one disc. i did this for my car cd collections and i really enjoy it more then

Take off the covers and The Plan and it would have fitted on 2CDs. There is 16 minutes of empty space on each disc - that is 48 minutes in total. He could have gone all the way and crammed it up with songs he had completed for other projects. It wouldn't have made any difference. It would have been a 50 song album then. As it is, it's massive, but he should have just as well made it even more massive. Or slimmed it down for a more marketable two disc release.

Ohhhhh come on you lot!!!!! For an album that everyone doesn't appear to like I think it's provoked a lot of debate!! I think he released this album to weed out the pop fans from the music fans. The 1st c.d. is basically Prince's manifesto....it shows the classic songwriting he was always famous for. The 2nd c.d. is the experimental side of the set, only the music fans can appreciate the direction of this one. The 3rd c.d. is Prince's attempt to renew his sound by adding the thumping bass-drum and house-style rhythms and samples although he ends it with a few more classic Prince moments. I think the main problem is that it takes a long time to listen to and in the current internet-driven multimedia saturated society there is too much happening for anyone to sit and REALLY listen to the whole experience!! However, if you possess an attention span which is longer than your average goldfish it is an album to be savoured and I would like to believe that this was always Prince's intention.....drop the pop fans in favour of the true music appreciators who would take some time and REALLY LISTEN instead of reducing the music to background noise

mackopolis said:

No, not really.

Novabreaker said:

is that all you can say Nova?? You seem to be more interested in the marketing anyway!!

Emancipation is far from his greatest work, but I think it gets a bad rap. True, much of it is uncharacteristically bland, but there's just enough spice here and there to make it worth listening to, even if you do have to employ the skip button.

It seems like it was such an important album to Prince at the time, that I don't understand why seemingly so little creativity was put into it. Perhaps it's true that, as someone said above, the concept was more important to Lil Man than the actual content.
[Edited 8/17/05 3:05am]

mackopolis said:

My last album sold 20 copies, so I hardly think so.

Disc 2's only experimental song was "Joint 2 Joint". "Let's Have A Baby" was a pretty original for a ballad, and there's some typical Prince quirkiness on some of the other songs, momentarily. Other than that, it certainly was the least experimental of the three discs.

mackopolis said:

I don't really see any distinction between the songwriting on the first disc and on the other discs. And it includes 2 covers.



I agree with Nova, it's no more experimental than the other discs. To my mind, disc 3 is more experimental because Prince was experimenting with a house style on a few tracks as your note below basically says:



'renew his sound' or 'experiment' depending on how you look at it. In fact he's used house-style rythms before, e.g. the Gett Off maxi single and Thieves in the Temple 12 inch.



It may take a long time, but I've been listening to it since '96 now so I think I have appreciated it as much as I'm gonna, as have a lot of people here. But you're right, it does create a lot of different opinions and debate. I don't hate the album, but it could have been so much better if Prince had taken some more risks with it.



Well, if you're a music fan rather than a pop fan, I hope you're a big fan of The Rainbow Children too.

metalorange said:

Rainbow Children.....work of genius!!!

TheBigBang said:

Very true. The contrived/limiting concept behind Emancipation (60 mins per
disc, No negativity, No minor chords) would be fine for a single album. But
was way too limiting for 3 CDs of material, and this is were the album's
main problems come from - lack of diversity. The album lacks songs that
are extreme in their musical conviction, instead flattening each potentially
diverse song to the same bland middle ground.

Where are the Rock songs?
There's nothing even remotely approaching the riffs of Let's Go Crazy, Bambi,
Endorphinmachine or I Could Never Take The Place Of Your Man.

Where's the Funk?
There's nothing with the deep funky groove of Days Of Wild, D.M.S.R., Head,
Controversy, Kiss or Sexy M.F.

And what about a bit of Blues like The Ride or something minimalist and
experimental like Sign O' The Times or When Doves Cry? I think you get the
picture.

.
[Edited 8/18/05 0:40am]

metalorange said:

This is right on. John Blackwell's drumming is the best i've ever heard. It makes listening to everything since The Rainbow Children just so refreshing. I actually only just bought that album because i'd heard some bad things, but i honestly reckon it's easily one of the best. Personally, I think the only weak tracks on Musicology are the ones on which Johnny B-well doesn't drum. Everything else is great. He truly is "the magnificent."

I like Emancipation. But the funk workouts just aren't that funky, compared to say The Everlasting Now.

Jam of the year... Right Back here In My Arms.. Somebody's Somebody... Get Your Groove On... We Gets Up. That's a pretty lame start to an album. I think it's the bass and drum sound. The Album starts getting really good from Betch By Golly Wow onwards, I think (We Gets Up excluded). White Mansion, Damned if I Do, I can't Make you Love Me, and In this Bed Eye Scream.

Disc 2 is pretty flawless, I think.

Disc 3 is hit and miss, but My Computer is a great song.