thekidsgirl said:

The Gold Experience is 10 times better than Emancipation, IMO. Broader range of music and less "syruppy" - some real classics from here (no real outstanding moments on Emancipation)...
























....also, I love "Gold" so much that I named myself after it!

4 some reason I could never get along with the gold exp.
All the tracks seemed so trivial. The album itself over hyped.

I remember "shy" was cool

There some really unpleasant tracks on emancipation, but there are nice ones too, with some very original soundin' ballads. I think I enjoyed the quantity of it.

I'll go 4 Emancipation.

But neither of them take me very far.

Gold

thedribbler said:

I'm on a quest to get the best Prince albums for my own personal collections. A lot of people on my thread have kept saying how much better Gold is than Emancipation, but I'd like to take Prince's opinions into account too. He said that Emancipation is "very joyous" because it was his first album in "freedom". I only heard three songs from Gold, and like 2... love one of those two, "Gold". I feel like Gold was when Prince was getting in touch with his spiritual side because that's the energy that surrounds it. Most likely, it will be an album in my future, but Prince said Emancipation had two things, "it's joyous and it has a little something for everybody."

When it comes to his music, though, I'm still a newbie, cuz I've only heard a handful of songs and have four memorized (Gold, Little Red Corvette, When Doves Cry, 1999). I've got a while to go yet.

Holy cow, they're both so mediocre for him I'll go w/ "Gold"...

DreamyPopRoyalty said:

Interesting take. Some orgers will tell you, and I'll echo their sentiments: Prince himself is the poorest judge of Prince albums.

The Gold Exp is his last great album imo


Emancipation is ok but not that good Would have been better as a single album imo

The gold experience!!! I love that rocky, over-the-top production, and the ironic attitude of the whole album.
It's easily his best album of the 90's (but The LP comes pretty close), there are TRUE classics here: P Control, Endorphinmachine (The Let's go crazy of the 90's), We march, hate you, Billy Jack Bitch, Gold, Dolphin, The most beautiful girl in the world...and there is no filler: songs like Now!, 319, Shy or Shhhh are truly impressive as well.

Emancipation is ok, but many of the tracks are just unlistenable (most of the second disc and half of the third) and the production hasn't aged very well. I think Prince was tryin' too hard to make the SOTT of the 90's.

TGE.

TonyVanDam said:

Well that makes 2 of us.

The Gold Experience... by a long shot.

It just has so much more range and dynamic than Emancipation. Even if
Emancipation had been pared down to the best 12 tracks and released as
a single album it still wouldn't be as good as The Gold Experience.

The Gold Experience sounds real and honest. It's musically and lyrically
diverse and is probably the last truly great cohesive album Prince has
released. It displayed an energy and intenseness that's been sadly missing
from Prince's music pretty much ever since.

Emancipation on the other hand just sounds forced. It's trying too hard to
be upbeat and positive and just comes off as being a bit bland and samey.
It's a 'safe' album. There's very little risk taking, and none of the tracks
really 'go for it'. Too many tracks have the same sound.

If the albums were ice cream, Emancipation would be 3 scoops of vanilla.
Decent quality, but nothing truly exciting or unexpected. On the other
hand, The Gold Experience is like a mixture of all kinds of flavors, some
loud and brash, some more introspective and subtle, but none of them
boring.

BorisFishpaw said:

Sometimes I get a craving for vanilla.

Emancipation is great. Disc 2 is perfect as it is and the other 2 discs have some good songs (i.e. The Love We Make, One of Us, In This Bed I Scream, Damned If I Do).

Having said that TGE is the album that brought me into the fold so to speak. Shh!, I Hate U, EndorphineMachine, and Dolphin are great. Shy, Billy Jack Bitch, Now, and 319 are cool. The rest I can do without.

So I guess if I had to choose I'd go with Emancipation which wins on quantity, because both have quality songs and neither is perfect. The Symbol album is the best album of the 90's easily. Chaos and Disorder is my favorite (of any era) followed closely by the Truth.

I'm now in possession of "The Gold Experience"

so I'll let you know my take on that after I listen to it.

It's used, but it looks very clean except for a few fingerprints... I couldn't believe I found it cuz I knew it wasn't in print anymore... maybe someone returned it cuz they didn't like it all that much. I'm hoping that there's nothing physically wrong with the disc.

Either way, I can't wait to hear what it has to offer.

First, though, I'll listen to my new hits CD to set myself up for it since it covers everything from the 70's to Diamonds & Pearls, b4 the "Gold" era.

DreamyPopRoyalty said:

Hey you got it! You are lucky to have found a copy. I guess it paid off to point you towards the Love4oneanother movie.

Hello All it is me again LOL.....I am not saying that these topics are bad but I could never understand why we must compare releases to others.....music is an evolving experience and in the evolving of music a good musician never releases a CD "twice" and what I mean by that is that you will never get a "Purple Rain" type release from Prince ever again.....nor will you get anything else again.....so to compare these two releases and pick a fav is hard.....because they both had their great qualities to them.


Lets take Gold first just because chronologically it comes first from the two.....IMHO I think the NPG Operator in this disc gets a lil less important as the CD goes one.....but this was a release where he gave us everything we have adored by Prince but yet he evolved it as well.....we got straight forward sex (P Control)....."Vulnerability" (Dolphin)....."Soft Side" (TMBGITW).....and killer guitar (Gold).....thi swas one of my favs when it came out but all his stuff moves to my favs as they come out LOL.....


Emancipation.....this was by far an extreme surprise release for me.....I thought this was a complete "grown up" Prince here on this release we got so much stuff I never thought we would get here.....and let me just say for those of you that think this could have easily been 2 CD's we would have lost a lot no matter what they took away from us here.....this release also almost costed me my job back in the day due to the fact that I was an hour late for work buying this release when it came out .....I thinbk the cover songs on here are great.....the guitar work a phenom (Holy River Solo = WOW!).....and like I said before we get everything a Prince fan wants in a release in this one as well....and then some.....I am surprised these discs still work I played them to death when I got this release I even went out and got a bigger CD player so I could leave themn all in my player at the same time LOL.....Honorable Mentions from these three discs IMHO are.....

Jam Of The Year
Somebody's Somebody
Betcha By Golly Wow (Great Vocal)
I Can't Make You Love Me
White Mansion
Soul Sanctuary (fav. Song from all 3 dsics)
The Holy River
Face Down (warner bros. slap song)
La La La (Means I Love You)
One Of Us

Only to name a few



so in ending this I just thin it is hard to compare releases especially from someone like Prince who is constantly evolving in his music all the time



Draven

UCantHavaDaMango said:

Trust me, when I get around to listening to my CD to make sure its in flawless condition and also to hear Gold once again, I'll be on here as soon as I can to let you know how I liked it. Right now, I'm taking things slow, trying to build up to my small little collection (Very Best of... [I like Thieves in the Temple and Money Don't Matter 2night quite a bit], Purple Rain [thanx to my dad who already had it], The Gold Experience, Musicology [listened to it and am semi-impressed, more on it later] and 3121).


And I'm renting Purple Rain right now, so I'll have that for the next week... love it and glad I finally saw it.

The Gold Experience.

I haven't listened to Emancipation for about 3 years now.

Emancipation was the first Prince album that disapointed me. I think there is some good stuff on there but it doesn't have one truly great song.

Whereas TGE has only one weak song in We March and in Endorphin Machine, SHHH, TMBGITW, Dolphin, 319, Billy Jack Bitch, I hate U and Gold 8 classics.

Gold all the way!!!!!

Thirdeye said:

Yea, The Gold experience was the last great album to these ears 2. As much as

i've enjoyed a lot of the stuff that's come since, TGE reli knocked me out.

Emancipation never grabbed me the same ,even tho I like parts of it very much.

I can't wait to get Emancipation so I can fully compare the two.

Here's a thread giving my review of TGE http://www.housequake.com...adid=82688

It'll take a few listens for me to get the total gist of it... but it's very different from what I'm used to. is very different from Prince in so many ways. The only thing that's the same is the voice.

Right now, though, I'm not quite sure what to think of it as a whole. It's a lot of new music to take in and absorb... but I'll give a list of the songs that I can give opinions on.

Track 1 was overall nasty in terms of the curse words he used, but it really caught my attention in terms of the musical aspect.
Ssh had some great instrumental action going on, so that caught my attention
Dolphin will take a few listens to get that Letterman performance out of my head. The lyrics are very cryptic, though, so it'll make me wonder what he's trying to say. I like the puzzles he puts in his lyrics for me to solve.
TMBGITW was as beautiful as the title suggests, love it, enough said.
Endorphinmachine lost me... I feel like it and a couple of others (We March, Come, Shy) got lost in the shuffle, since it's a lot to take in and I'm not really sure what to think of them at this point.
Eye Hate U was really neat, the whole paradoxal aspect in the lyrics (eye hate U cuz eye love u cuz eye hate U).

And I'm sure everyone knows how much I love "Gold"... after hearing it and Purple Rain close together, though, I can't call "Gold" the "Purple Rain" of the 90's... Purple Rain is so emotional and deep and historical that Gold can't touch it... but it's still my favorite off the album, a great ender for the Gold "experience". The overall feel I get was experimentation, passionate melodies and all kinds of lyrics from Track 1's cursing to the cryptic messages of Eye Hate U and Dolphin.

I'd compare it to the Purple Rain soundtrack, but they're on two different planets as far as I'm concerned, so I really can't.

Emancipation is one of his best no doubt! One great song after another. From What I've listened to from Gold, it just doesn't match up.

I'll give my review of "Gold" before a) the site blocks me from logging in again and also b) while I have it fresh in my mind.

The whole CD is like going through a journey for me... slowly leading me on a leash through a threshold of different music. I'll address them one track at a time.
1) P control- my first time hearing Prince rapping... sure, it's different from what I'm used to, but I adjusted pretty quickly to the rapping as well as the "contents" of the whole thing. Although very risqué, it's kinda catchy (just hope it doesnt get stuck in my head).
2) gives a good transition into 3) Endorphinmachine, but the edge the song had caught me off guard a little, gave me a shock to the system (maybe that's why chose the name)... I don't know what to think of this song yet cuz right now, it creeps me out. Luckily, 4) Ssh helps slow everything down and helps me relax into a somewhat comatose state that I'm in for a while... there were a lot of good instrumental input for this song that I was very impressed with
5) We march, lost me the first time around, but after hearing it, it has a really interesting storyline behind it and I really like where was going with it.
Then my comatose state really takes over into TMBGITW, a very sweet, well played out song and it's definitely one of my fav. romantic anthems of Prince... Dolphin prolongs the comatose state I was in and it really came off as smooth as he was suggesting in the lyrics... I'm getting to like it more with each listen.
Now is also a pretty good track, even with the rapping that went on... the overall theme was good.
319 was one of my least faves on the CD... when I rememeber why, I'll add the info.
Shy was also a pretty good track as well.
Billy Jack made me feel a little sick in all honesty... when he kept throwing in a certain word in a very irritating tone... it's hard to get used to and I doubt that I will.
Eye Hate U is full of all kinds of the stuff I like in any Prince song and the paradoxial nature of it made it one of my faves on the CD as a whole.

As I said initially, the CD was a journey through all kinds of versatility that is capable of. "Gold" wraps everything together in a very nice bow. It's definitely one of my favorites of any Prince song, but my fav. on this disc. It mixes a very catchy, loveable tune with some very deep and cryptic lyrics, one of the things that sets Prince above the rest. I've thought that and Prince were two different people, but I think "Gold" combines the two persona I see back into the Prince I know and "love". I feel like the song is the overall message that "The Gold Experience" carries with it, but it makes it very clear and obvious in song form here. With all of the new and different things offers in this album, it feels good to come back to a vibe that I'm very familiar with, that feels like home.

The overall album has a really nice flow to it. As I was laying in bed from 11:30pm-12:30am this past night, I felt like I dropped into a different world. I forgot where I was lying and all about everything else going on... I was originally feeling a little down because my first listen to the disc made it hard for me to go back to enjoy "Purple Rain"... but after prepping myself with a few hits from the 90's before the era of , the transition was easy and I forgot about the depression I felt. This CD is definitely great for taking me somewhere else and I love the flow that it has, not interrupting my state of mind... although Endorphinmachine kinda screwed things up for me in the beginning, a few more listens might or might not change my mind. But if I take out a couple of tracks from the mix, the overall flow shouldn't be interrupted in my view.

"Gold" really moved me, just like it always has and I finally realized what it means to me and how I feel about the enigma Prince is. It redefines him as the musician whose poetry and guitar has moved me to tears on a few occasions already. He called "Gold" the "Purple Rain" of the 90's. Do I agree? In a word, no... I don't think it is and I'll say why. Because "Purple Rain" is special on its own and overall defines Prince and what his music does for/to me. "Gold" is merely a reminder of Prince's past musical successes and moves me to look forward to his successes in the future.