After all these years its collected dust outside a few outstanding numbers like Right Back Here In My Arms, Somebody Somebody, Soul Sanctuary and a few others.

I stumbled upon it again yesterday as Curius Child crossed my mind so I had to give it a listen. This is one of those tracks that instantly takes me back to that time...so I listened to a few other tracks I always skipped and instantly was taken by the production (I know many say over produced) and Princes voice truly sounding free and in love.

Even though as a package Emancipation was (and is) truly a bloated pig with too many filler tracks and some tracks that go on way way too long its an enlightning trip...even Joint 2 Joint is cool

[Edited 2/6/15 18:13pm]

thedoorkeeper said:

Wrong forum

Moving to P:M&M

IMO Emancipation is 3 albums smashed together.

There is about a discs worth of Prince pop/rnb. There is a disc of ballads, and the remaining an NPG album of sorts.

One of his few albums that just passed me by, I never knew where to start with it...

Emancipation was actually the first album by Prince I didn´t like every track on.

There are tracks on it I hate.

That said, there are some solid tracks on it, curious child is one of them and beautiful.

I dont think there is filler on that album. I think it is among his best work ever and proved that only he could pull off a triple album of this consistent quality.

I don't see too many of the tracks as "filler" either. He could have easily chosen some leftover tracks from the earlier sessions to fill up the space on the 3CDs if needed. "The Plan" seems a bit redundant there, as it's supposedly just a "teaser" for the Kamasutra release. Perhaps some of the tracks go on a bit too long when they don't have enough of a live sound to them to work as "jams".

I don't need to develop a "new appreciation" for the album myself. It's pretty clear to me that people who call it "crap" just didn't give it much time. It's not comparable to his most cohesive masterpieces and artistic statements like SOTT, but if you like the music on albums such as Graffiti Bridge and 3121 then why wouldn't you like most of the stuff on Emancipation? I don't think the stuff on it is that different from what's on those albums.

At that point in the 90s it was also really nice to hear him making uplifting, happy-sounding music again. Songs like "Get Yo Groove On" or "We Gets Up" might not be masterpieces, but they're certainly closer in spirit what Prince's classic era was about than, say, "Pheromone" or "Billy Jack Bitch".

First album that really disappointed me. It contained more skips than a bag of Skips.