It's hard to believe that it's been 15 years since the "Emancipation" album. What are your thoughts on the album all these years later? Does it sound better, worse, the same? Could Prince have released Emancipation in 2011 to a warm reception?

SeventeenDayze said:

It's hard to believe that it's been 15 years since the "Emancipation" album. What are your thoughts on the album all these years later? Does it sound better, worse, the same? Could Prince have released Emancipation in 2011 to a warm reception?

I suddenly fell old.....

Love this album.

The last great P album IMO.

Preference for discs 2 and 3.

For me it's got worse. I could probably say I liked at least a half of it at the time, and certainly knew the album well - but I think it sounds really uninspired today, too few ideas stretched over too many discs - it's got very little texture or vitality. The only tracks that spring to mind to revisit are New World and Courtin' Time.

It suffers from that horrible loudness a topic that was recently revisited in the Vault OF4S thread, which completely turns me off a lot of records from that time period.

[Edited 5/7/11 9:10am]

I think its now got Classic status, its one of my fav albums and it doesn't sound at all dated, he could have come up with it this year and it would still sound fresh.

I appreciate it more now than at the time.

Disc 2 is especially spiritual and sensual with heartfelt and complex melodies.

[Edited 5/7/11 9:38am]

[Edited 5/7/11 9:39am]

Play it after Lotusflowershite and you'll see how second rate P's music has become.

It sounds the same now as it did then, overblown, plastic and average.

Still better than 20Arse though.

eireboy34 said:

Play it after Lotusflowershite and you'll see how second rate P's music has become.

Really? For me I'd switch those around.

NouveauDance said:

eireboy34 said:

Play it after Lotusflowershite and you'll see how second rate P's music has become.

Really? For me I'd switch those around.

Ditto.

I love this album. Maybe if he narrowed down the songs to 2 CDs instead of 3 it might've gotten better reaction because I've seen fans complaining about "filler" songs...but I even love the remake versions like La La means I love you, Betcha by golly wow, One of us..etc. I just love how joyful he sounds in all those love songs in the album

A few great songs on there... BUT a lot of garbage.... Definitely not my favorite.

It always kind of sucked. It's not as bad as Come or NPS, but not even close to TGE.

NouveauDance said:

eireboy34 said:

Play it after Lotusflowershite and you'll see how second rate P's music has become.

Really? For me I'd switch those around.

OK, I'll admit this is possible if you are Helen Keller!

Most (if not all) of the songwriting is top-shelf, and the vocal deliveries are great. I think I will listen to it tonight . . . "plastic" production notwithstanding, it's a fine album.

Sidenote: aside from Pearl Jam, Radiohead and NIN, I don't listen to much from the mid-to-late 90s. What a horrible time for music.

Some horrible songs on it ( I find Courtin Time, Damned If I Do, We Gets Up unlistenable and Jam of the Year boring) but, other than that, there are some really great songs on it.

I like Dreamin About U, Right Back Here In My Arms, Soul Sanctuary, The Love We Make, Somebody´s Somebody, White Mansion and I also like the cover versions of Betcha By Golly Wow and La la la la means I love you ( but I do think that they were really unnecessary, but tight nevertheless). The rest is so so , hit and miss, and I still think the album could have been much better if he´d recorded all songs with the old NPG and not just one or two.

[Edited 5/7/11 16:37pm]

15 years on and I still have pretty much the same opinion of Emancipation that I did when it came out... Kinda bland and samey.

It was the point where the fire kinda went out, and he never quite got it back (there's been moments, but nowhere near the consistency pre-Emancipation).

[Edited 5/7/11 16:37pm]

Could have been a killer single disc, and even an outstanding double.

Love this album, it's probably in my top five. If anything I think it's too short. It would have been awesome if Prince had released a four disc set with each disc being 75 minutes each for a total of five hours of music. I think that would have been an achievement that no other band/artist ever would have come close to matching. I know that for most fans that's the last thing that they want from Prince but I like the little guy when he is at his most ambitious.

With thirty-six songs of course there are some that I like more than others but I have no problem listening to each disc without skipping any songs. Because I loved Emancipation so much I was bitterly disappointed by albums like Newpower Soul, Rave Un2 the Joy Fantastic and the NPGMC material. His "freedom" started out fantastically but it didn't take long for him to start his slide into mediocrity.

I never understood the criticism about the production of the album. It sounded great then and it sounds great now.

Militant said:

Could have been a killer single disc, and even an outstanding double.

Even that wouldn't help IMO. Even if you edited it down to a single disc of the best tracks, it still doesn't come close to his previous album The Gold Experience in terms of Songwriting, fire and musical range. There's more ideas and diversity in The Gold Experience's 12 songs than Emancipation's 36, which is what makes it feel like such a missed opportunity.

Emancipation isn't a bad album, it's just an OK one. Which compared to Prince's previous output is disappointing. It's also the point when he seemed to stop trying to push the musical envelope and create something new and different. Instead of setting trends, he just seemed to follow them and blend in with the crowd.

BorisFishpaw said:

Militant said:

Could have been a killer single disc, and even an outstanding double.

Even that wouldn't help IMO. Even if you edited it down to a single disc of the best tracks, it still doesn't come close to his previous album The Gold Experience in terms of Songwriting, fire and musical range. There's more ideas and diversity in The Gold Experience's 12 songs than Emancipation's 36, which is what makes it feel like such a missed opportunity.

Emancipation isn't a bad album, it's just an OK one. Which compared to Prince's previous output is disappointing. It's also the point when he seemed to stop trying to push the musical envelope and create something new and different. Instead of setting trends, he just seemed to follow them and blend in with the crowd.

I'm listening to the album now, probably the first time in 2-3 years (aside from the odd single track).

A few of your comments are dead on:

• There's no "fire" - everything seems to be on auto-pilot

• He's not pushing the envelope

• He's following trends on this one (and, sadly, most of the albums that follow this too)

I think the songwriting is actually better than The Gold Experience for most of the album, but a lot of the songs drone on and end up sounding the same. To me, this is Prince's "mellow R&B album".

I think I loved:

Right Back Here in My Arms

We Gets Up

White Mansion

Damned if I Do

All the Remakes on Disc 1

Joint 2 Joint

Courtin Time

Sex in the Summer

Curious Child

Dream About U

Saviour

The Plan

FLSMW

Face Down

Sleep Around (one of the best!)

New World

Human Body

La,la,la remake

The Love We Make

Why does everyone hate We Gets Up so much? LOL

SeventeenDayze said:

Why does everyone hate We Gets Up so much? LOL

I like it. It's just a fun, goofy song.

15years??? good grief, I'm a complete failure

[Edited 5/7/11 19:17pm]

emesem said:

15years??? good grief, I'm a complete failure

[Edited 5/7/11 19:17pm]

Hahah, failure? Come on I really remember this like it was yesterday---I was in high school when this came out and was so stoked that Prince went independent and whatnot. I love him, it's like he's written the soundtrack to my whole life....from pre-school to right now and all in-between!

these are the only good songs IMO:

1. Jam of the year

2. Right Back here in my arms

3. Somebody's Somebody

4. Courtin Time

5. I cant make you love me

6. Sex in the Summer

7. Soul Sanctuary

8. The Holy River

9. Dremin About U

10. Curious Child

11. Style

12. Sleep Around

13. Emancipation

And a few other decent ones. The rest is filler. It would have worked far better as a single disc

TheDigitalGardener said:

SeventeenDayze said:

I think I loved:

Right Back Here in My Arms

We Gets Up

White Mansion

Damned if I Do

All the Remakes on Disc 1

Joint 2 Joint

Courtin Time

Sex in the Summer

Curious Child

Dream About U

Saviour

The Plan

FLSMW

Face Down

Sleep Around (one of the best!)

New World

Human Body

La,la,la remake

The Love We Make

Why does everyone hate We Gets Up so much? LOL

HOLY CRAP, I forgot to add "Somebody's Somebody" which I think is my fav on the whole freakin album, LOL!

I still listen to the entire album now and then. I can really also see this as the turning point where the old Prince was really dead and this milder Prince took his place. The fire just isn't in this one; those last bits of raw 1980s energy that were here and there on The Gold Experience just don't appear at all on Emancipation. And no amount of editing can fix that. A one or two disc Emancipation would still have been an adult contemporary affair that might please Prince fans, but it would never excite anyone.

I remember when Prince was promoting this album. He performed "Face down" unedited on the Chris Rock show on HBO. This was the first time we had seen a mainstream act on television uncut and the raw language of the song took it to a strange place. I thought it was an odd choice. A few weeks prior he was on Oprah and she dedicated 2 shows to the release of the album. His performance on the daytime show was in obvious contrast. I guess he was trying to show it had something for everyone. I think it would have been perfect as a 2 disc release. There is some filler. Were there any b/sides from this period? I don't remember.

I don't love Emancipation like I do with the classics (1978-1995),

I still LIKE Emancipation though, after all those listenings over the years it has grown for me.

I rate Emancipation a good album, but still not a classic like The Gold Experience, or those 1980's Prince albums.

Like most Prince fans I have a problem with the plastic sterile sound on Emancipation.

It could have been a very much better album with a more rough production, (damn Kirky).

Imo: 8/10 to Emancipation

Good album. Not every track on it suffers from the softer production style. "The Holy River", for example, sounds just great the way it is. However, it was his first album that had a considerable number of R&B ballads on it and it made the overall package sound a bit dull. We didn't really call that stuff "R&B" back then though - we called it "MOR".

It's still got some edginess and wackiness on it: "Joint 2 Joint", "Face Down", "In This Bed I Scream", "New World". I thought "My Computer" reflected the times pretty well and it sounded beautiful when the internet had just become a worldwide phenomenon. "The Love We Make" is a pretty good "sequel" to "Purple Rain".

As pointed out previously, it could have been easily turned into a 2CD release without even having to take too many tracks out of it. You can put 75-80 minutes of music on a single CD and many of the songs on those three CDs have all kinds of additional intros, outros and sound effects taking up the space.

The cover art on it was inexcusably terrible for such an expensive release. I won't defend that.