I AGREE! Great post.

EMANCIPATION is Amazing.

emancipation is easily hes best 90's album, and my favourite prince abum ever

Bitter sweet, but oh so satisfying. I'm an eclectic nut and I have always loved this album not just for what it meant to him personaaly and professionally, but for the shear volume of it. I love Joint 2 Joint and still think he actually unofficially proposed at the end....I know there is also some sadness in retrospectwhen you hear certain songs, but I always remember the spirit this album was made in. It's a marvelous show case for him and all his talents.

forget it ...i dont like the new changes here ...you have to always be afraid or paste your message in case you get a blank...

I actually play songs from Emancipation more than other albums right now.


It's a great album. Sure, I didn't care for it at first, but it certainly grew on me. I don't like 6 songs out of the album, but that leaves 30 that I like.

Yeah, but there're too many songs that rub me up the wrong way. It's just not consistent. The first disk I almost never play. I love teh second disk, but there are some super-klunkers there, and the thirs starts off as a GREAT album and then loses it. I don't know - it was the lack of consistency, and mainly the disappointment from his grnad opus that killed it for me (and others, I think). I must say, that I listened to it A LOT when it came out, and claime dit was great, and it's gone down gradually over the years.

The decade thing is true - I don't think Ilistened to PR between 1988 and 2002!!!
And in the mid-80s the early albums sounded dated, although I seriously dug them by the early 90s. Now GB and Symbol and even TGE sound dated. However, of all these I would only put GB in a bag with Emancipation, in that critics and fans went wild over it at the time and then cooled (maybe Symbol too). The point is, it's not just that I've put it aside (hey, I barely listen to SOTT these days), but that I grew to DISlike it overall becuase of too many songs I don't like - like I can't stand Take Me With U, but it never made me turn off the entire album.

Word! I LOVE this record! It's ALWAYS held a special place in my heart. I was lucky enough to see the record release show in Chicago after seeing the Oprah taping that morning.

"In This Bed I Scream", "Joint 2 Joint", "My Computer", "The Love We Make"...These songs are BRILLIANT! Really, I can only think of two stinkers: "Damned If I Do" and "White Mansion". Otherwise, this is a PERFECT collection of music.

Good one Skywalker...I think Emancipation is brilliant and it's still in my top faves. Some of the best songs of his career are on this album as well as my favorite Prince love songs.

Somebody's Somebody
One Kiss At A Time
Soul Sanctuary
Emale
Curious Child
Dreamin About U
The Holy River
Saviour
Friend, Lover, Sister, Mother, Wife
Face Down
The Human Body
The Love We Make

This is beautiful music and the lyrics are outstanding. As Skywalker mentioned, even the covers are very well done. Eye Can't Make You Love Me is better than the original and I was pleasantly surprised at the time that Prince recorded One Of Us...one of my favorite songs.

There's more than enough here to make me call this one of Prince's best efforts and it's sad that he seldom plays anything from Emancipation. The surrounding circumstances in hindsight are bittersweet but Emancipation still represents an important time in his life and career that I have a special appreciation for.

I love Emancipation!

ADN THEY SEY I SMOEK CRAK!

I don't like the whole thing, but my whittled down version of it gets listened to a lot.

Agreed~~fantastic album.

Love it

Out of three discs, I only listen to three songs.

Great post Skywalker!

I particularly agree with point 2. As I didn't get into Prince until the late 1990s, I distinctly remember loving this album and thinking Purple Rain sounded really dated. Nowdays it's somewhat the other way around . The minimalist/slick production on Emancipation was (at the time) a fresh approach to what he had been doing c.1991-1995.

"White Mansion" is up there as one of this greatest songs ever IMO.

babynoz said:

I feel u skywalker… Excellent Post!

babynoz I like u and skywalker's song choices. Prince put together a great collection of songs on this cd and 2 bad it gets dumped on by a lot of people. Believe it or not, I brought 2 Emancipation cassettes at the .99 cent store last year. I have one in my car and the other I will not open. Prince has made and continues 2 make some of the most beautiful music/songs in the world.

Anything with Face Down on it gets my approval!

OK then....

Joint 2 Joint has always been hideously over-rated. I think about the songs on the album that always seem to be vilified (Courtin' Time and We Gets Up for example), which are far more enjoyable than most of the saggy tedium of Disc 2 (Dreamin' About U excluded). Actually Disc 2 itself holds some decent songs on their own, but all stuck together, it's the audio equivalent of that all-consuming, opressive lathargy one gets after Xmas dinner, stuffed to the gills on carbohydrates and forced sentiment.

Much like Joint 2 Joint, another track, that I remember at the time, was hailed as Prince's re-inventive genius being as on form as ever, but in reality was Prince's mid-career boredom getting a shame-faced handjob from his 'kid in a candystore' approach to studio time was The Human Body. Which, even then showed Prince's jarringly obvious lack of understanding of dance (i.e. Techno/House) music. And was the closest we've come to Prince actually giving us a record of fart and burp noises, as is often joked.

The title track is as anti-climactic and deflated as anything could possibly be. What were you expecting from a 3 disc opus afloat a dizzying media circus of hype, and a promise of the Vault doors being flung wide open with all the majestic jewels sneakily tucked away from the big bad Record Company all these years?.... Why, yes, you were right to expect an anodyne cake-walk of a title track, that sounds like the demo version of a rejected B-side from the Batman LP.

To re-address the balance of sneering criticism - what do I like about Emancipation? Well, the rare vulnerability of Big White Mansion would be stunning live and acoustic, Dreamin' About U is lustfully hypnotic, We Gets Up is an extended portion short of being a great Lovesexy B-Side. On an album bloated with pastel-coloured, greeting card sentiment-flavoured soda saccharin, One Kiss At A Time manages to keep it's head above water. Sleep Around was the great dance single that never was (although as with almost all the album, the Michael Jackson, mannequin-like production keeps it from being truly great) and New World is the best track on the album.

See, it's not all bad, despite my over-fondness for one too many disparaging adjectives.


.
[Edited 8/10/07 2:24am]

Disc two stands to me as a testement to love. Not just Prince's love for Mayte but for love in general. I think anyone who has ever truly been in love can feel that song cycle in their soul. I remember my eyes welling up with tears somewhere on that second disc because I realized we/I had never really heard that depth of love in Prince's music. His heart was incredibly naked. I feel sorry for those folks that just saw it as saccerine and corny. It says so much about their own heart.

Lothan said:

just out of curiosity,what are those three songs?

Agreed. Very very good album.

Underated in my opinion. Possibly because it's 3 discs long and people can't be bothered to dedicate that sort of time to new music.

I've been guilty the above in the past. (Not with Prince albums I hasten to add.)

SoulAlive said:

I Can't Make U Love Me, Dreamin About U and The Human Body.

I may take it out and give it another spin because I hated most of Crystal Ball when I first heard it, now I love it. Except that Animal Mess.

tricky99 said:

Lothan said:

Listen to "Emale" again...that's my favorite song on the album

it's so hypnotic!

I disagree. I suppose if you dislike the song you are bound to see it otherwise, but this song deserves every good thing that is said about it.





To be fair, when Prince takes on another genre it rarely sounds like a how everyone else does it. It always has Prince spin on it. Example: "Delirious" was rockabilly, but not really--it was Prince's take on that sound.You can claim that Prince had a lack of understanding of techno music, but that's like claiming he didn't understand new wave because he didn't do it like everyone else did. Basically, you are claiming that you know what went on in Prince's brain based only on what you hear--very presumptuous.




You were expecting something different. Who is to blame for that?



Interesting. What about that song do you like so much?




I love adjectives--disparaging or not, you use them well.

SoulAlive said:

That's one of the ones i know I really don't like.

Lothan said:

SoulAlive said:

I'm sorry.

NouveauDance said:

I agree with you about "Joint 2 Joint".I don't like that song either

And the title track sounds like a lazy throwaway groove.


Other songs I don't like: "Style","Face Down","La Da Da",and the four remakes.