Personally speaking, I'm a big fan of the Emancipation album. Upon first listen I didn't really like it and found it decidedly lacking, but it quickly grew on me, and I now look upon it very fondly like an old friend.

Sure, it's not perfect - there are a number of weak 'filler' songs scattered throughout: 'Sex In The Summer', 'Da, Da, Da' (with the truly awful 'Damned If Eye Do' sounding nothing more than a 'Chaos & Disorder' outtake). Some of the production is weak and destracting in places (the title track immeadiately springs to mind) but that's relative and overall, I think it's a goodie.

By Prince standards it's no classic, but it certainly contains some real overlooked gems like 'Somebody's Somebody' (one of my fave P videos too), 'One Kiss At A Time', 'Style', the increadibly pretty 'Curious Child', 'Joint 2 Joint', 'The Holy River', and what I consider to be the stand-out track on the album: 'The Love We Make'.

Ego-stroking project? Or simply flexing his creative muse? These and other factors aside, as a three disc set it doesn't quite work for me. I think something similar to this was done last year, but here's the deal, just for fun - if you had been handed the task of settling on a tracklist for Emancipation - (ONE DISC, TWELVE TRACKS ONLY), what would your choices have been?

THAT'S TWELVE CHOICES - NO CHEATING!


Oh, and if anyone knows anything about where the basic track of 'One of Us' was recorded, feel free to enlighten me.

JOINT TO JOINT

dawntreader said:

Thanks for your twelve-track participation That's one short-assed album.

I really love the album also.
Mmmmmm, let's see; maybe something like this:

Jam of the Year
Right Back Here In My Arms
In This Bed I Scream
Sex In The Summer
Emale
Dreamin' About U
Joint 2 Joint
The Holy River
Face Down
Style
Sleep Around
The Love We Make

BananaCologne said:

I don't know where the track was recorded but I do know that it was completed about a year before Emancipation dropped because they played it for us at Paisley in December of 1995. It was the same night they gave us the "Christmas Present" which was an audio cassete promo of "Slave" and "New World". The tape was wrapped in a photocopied piece of paper signed by all the members of the band and Prince wrote something about freeing the slave but then around the entire outside of the piece of paper he wrote "Joan Osbournes One Of Us Rules" over and over again. Wish I still had the piece of paper....I still have the tape though which is quite rare.

BananaCologne said:

but the pyramid based structure of the set will be completely lost!

lovemachine said:

Cool, cheers D. I like his version of it a lot - both versions give me shivers. I'm really intruiged as to where that was recorded, so I'm guessing Paisley was a pretty fair bet.

Sex In the Summer
One Kiss At a Time
Joint 2 Joint
Face Down
One Of Us
Somebody's Somebody
Courtin' Time
In This Bed Eye Scream
Style
Sleep Around
New World
The Holy River

Right Back Here In My Arms
Somebody’s Somebody
White Mansion
Damned If Eye Do (Yeah I like it...Whut!!!!!)
Mr. Happy
In This Bed Eye Scream
Emale
Curious Child
The Holy River
Dreamin’ About U
Style
My Computer


That's my story and I'm sticking to it...
[Edited 1/28/06 8:27am]

oh.... i think i'm gonna make my iTunes version of this 12 track a-bim.

1. Jam Of The Year
2. Somebody's Somebody
3. White Mansion
4. Mr. Happy
5. Emale
6. Joint 2 Joint
7. The Holy River
8. Saviour
9. Face Down
10. My Computer
11. One Of Us
12. The Love We Make


anotherdamneditSaturday edit
[Edited 1/28/06 9:10am]

by the way, when you pop the cd into your computer and you ask for the tracks online, disc 2 has the artist as Prince but disc 1 and 3 comes up as The Artist Formally ..... etc.

funny.

Milty said:

Formerly, Formerly, Formerly

Prince was the Artist FORMERLY Known as Prince...

Ron Artest is the Artest FORMALLY Known as a King...

Nice to see someone's appreciation for the album, 'nana. To be honest, I think that the "reduction to one disc" thing doesn't really work for Emancipation.

We had similar efforts on here several times and I think I did not even saw two identical tracklists for a 12-track "Best of Emancipation" ever. Why? Well, most people seem to agree that there are several "not-so-strong" songs on this record, but it seems to be difficult to agree what they are.

For example, you listened "Damned if I do" as weak, I like it a lot (the rocky sound, the latino-style ending...). You appreciate "Somebody's Somebody", I like it but would put it as average compared to many other tracks on the record.

The whole concept of the record obviously was to "let it all out" and to hide nothing (or at least something next to nothing) in the vault. "Free the slave". You have the chance to find your own favourites and directly choose them on your CD player, or nowadays, you can even burn your own personal copy of favourites. The alternative would have been to choose the 12 strongest songs (from Prince's point of view) and have the rest as the usual bootleg outtakes circulating, so I think we are far better off with having the complete material as an official release.

Here's my single disc Emancipation:

I intentionally didn't include any of the covers though I love "Betcha By Golly Wow!" and "One Of Us"!

Jam Of The Year
Right Back Here In My Arms
Somebody's Somebody (Livestudio Mix)
White Mansion
In This Bed Scream
Friend, Lover, Sister, Mother/Wife
The Holy River
One Kiss At A Time
Saviour
My Computer
The Love We Make
Emancipation

This was very hard...

EmancipationLover said:

Cheers,

To address your points:
I know what the concept was, but I think you've confused my post - if you read it again it says it's all relative - so of course you'd think 'Damned If I Do' was great compared to my thoughts on it, that's totally ok - it's not a competition. This thread's not about debating which song is better than another, I simply used the songs listed in my main post as examples. I also mentioned in my main post that I KNEW this has been done before - I'm not asking for a definitive one disc track list, just simply 12 personal choices - highlights if you will, you don't have to justify them - to me or anyone else.

Personally, the one disc thing works for me but make no mistake, I'm glad I have the set - I'm not stoopid y'know!

BananaCologne said:

Indeed, I have missed that you never have suggested that it SHOULD be a one-disc album (what many others did before) - sorry for that.

I've tried to make a "virtual" 12-disc compilation for myself btw but could not find a track configuration that was really satisfactory for me as I always had to leave out some favourites. Maybe I need a double disc.

Btw, I think that the missing appreciation for "Emancipation" in the fanbase is due to its predecessor - "The Gold Experience". TGE had something that many Prince fans missed - urge and wild roughness. Something that reminded them of the "early Prince". Then Prince came out with "Emancipation" and announced it as the album he was "born to make" (a marketing strategy and a piss-off to WB of course), but the new album was a complete turn-around compared to the angryness on TGE - it was a light, pop-oriented, happy record. Once you let that grow on you, you can enjoy the album a lot.

stephaniebrown said:

you know...i saw that i made the error while making it....i just had to get to the next post. but i'll leave it anyway.

EmancipationLover said:

I agree - very good points, I think the promotional campaign was well-meaning, but poorly actioned - I certainly don't class 'Emancipation' as 'The album he was born to make' by any means.

EmancipationLover said:

and in that staement is where i think alot of ppl get angry at Prince. he simply plays it all but we all want him to be one thing or another or we want to play this or play that, but when he doesn't, it's all hail and brimstone on the guy.

i see that the latest feeling towards him nowadays is to let him follow whatever muse he may have currently. we have been asking him to return to his 80s stylings for a long time but now it looks like many of us are willing to let that go and accept what he gives us. i suppose pretty soon there will be some backlash to 3121.

let's hope not. i didn't really love Musicology but i can live with it for now.

BananaCologne said:

Did you ever work on the Interactive Experience magazine? I don't have it to hand but I seem to remember their review of Emancipation on its release was quite similar.

I can't get 12. 9 is waht i got.

1. Jam of the Year
2. Right Back Here in My arms
3. White Mansion
4. Mr. happy

5. One Kiss at a Time
6. Dreaming about U
7. Joint 2 Joint
8. The Holy River

9. Emancipation

I can't rememeber the name of that one song though, they played it on the Musicology tour "Break it down, I don't want nobody else to hear the sound. This love is not an affair...something something...you goto break it on down..." That song should be on there. I like the Bonnie Raitt cover too.. so 11.

JudasLChrist said:

The song you're talking about is "Shhh" from "The Gold Experience"!
[Edited 1/28/06 10:14am]

asideorderofham said:

Nope.

BananaCologne said:

Fair enough. [snip - luv4u]

asideorderofham said:

1. Somebody's Somebody
2. Right Back Here In My Arms
3. Style
4. Dreamin' About U
5. Joint 2 Joint
6. The Holy River
7. White Mansion
8. Sleep Around
9. Let's Have A Baby
10. My Computer
11. In This Bed eye Scream
12. The Love We Make

I like Damned If I Do

EmancipationLover said:

Very well said...I'm going to use my post to address a few things...this is just how I feel on a few topics relating to "songs people don't like"...it is not meant to be an attack on this or any post, or to take away from the fun that can be had in "making your own album"...

I don't believe an album can be "too long"...it's not like a movie where "filler" can slow the movie down (unless you're REALLY GOOD at editing your own version of the movie)...but with an album, especilly on CD, if YOU don't like a song, you can easily skip it. (Even Lovesexy...if you don't like one of these songs, you can still not-so-easily skip it, or find the European tracked version.) Of course if every album were 3-discs, and priced high accordingly, it may be too expensive; but price being the same, I'd rather have an 80 minute album than a 60 minute album.

For every person that complains that a particular song is crap, there's someone else who loves it...(I agree that you rarely see identical "best of's--for any album.)

Whether or not someone hates a song, I assume his/her life has not been significantly weakened by having listened to it--other than being forced to repeatedly say "That's ( ) minutes I'll never get back"...(Feel free to comment how your least favorite songs have lessened your quality of life.)

For the record, there aren't any Prince songs (or ANY songs) I hate--only songs that don't do it for me. (Sidebar: I've never understood disliking a song because "it's been played a million times"--if I like a song, I like it whether I've heard it 5 or 5000 times...I don't hold the song responsible for being good enough such that people feel the need to play it often...)

If Prince kept releasing CDs of farts (literally speaking, not "so you bought Newpower Soul" figuratively), I'd probably buy them the first couple of times--he's earned that with me. If he kept doing it, I'd say, well, this no longer is for me, and move on. Despite some stuff I don't listen to very often (like "NEWS"--but I'm sure it's somebody's favorite), he hasn't even come close to making me question whether I'm going to listen to any particular new release.

Back to the original "filler" topic, here's my question:

If you had the choice, which would you rather have...an album with 12 songs that you thought were perfect (100% great songs, in your opinion), or that same album with 3 extra songs, but only 1 which you think is great. (13 "great" songs, 2 filler--87% "great"...)

Most people I've asked have said "100% great"...but I'd MUCH rather have the one extra song I really like...simply I'd rather get to hear 13 great songs rather than 12--hence I'd rather have the 80 min. album over the 60 min. (I could make billions of life analogies, but than my post would be waaaay too long, rather than the current too long...though I suppose you could make your own "favorite post" and edit out the filler...)

May you find a flux-capacitor to help you get back the last few minutes of your life you wasted reading this. Thanks.

stephaniebrown said: