It's very sterile. And there's a LOT of filler.


Saw an article about Hans-Martin Buff being his engineer from about 1996 to 2000(?).

I think the combination of Kirky J producing/programming/whatever and Buff engineering gave everything from that period a kind of hollow, soulless, plastic feel.

Here's what I think:

I love Emancipation, or at least 90% of it.

I think the underlying problem is that its Prince unleashed. Everybody needs an editor, whether you're a journalist, a playwright, a songwriter, a novelist or a musician. You need someone you trust to give you an unbiased opinion. He had Warner Brothers for two decades, not that they had creative control, but they had a little bit of sway, and that may have affected somewhat the content Prince turned in.

After 1996, there was no one to tell him what to do, no one to tell him 3 one-hour albums could be cut down to 2. No one to say, "I don't hear a radio-friendly single." No one to say, "Get rid of the chipmunk voice, no one wants to hear that shit, and it ruins an otherwise great song."

He was used to coloring with only 8 crayons, then all of a sudden he has the big 96 pack, and he feels the need to use every last color.

That's what I think happened, and why he never had a string of hits post-WB. But hey, he was "free."

joelmarable said:

BanishedBrian said:

I agree with the critique of the production and too "clean" comment. For example, it took about 5 minutes after this album came out to find a simple way to make Face Down sound like a completely revitalized song... why couldn't this have been done from the start? Even T was able to improve upon the production with minimal effort.

If he'd kept the NPG in place through the full recording of the album, I think the project would have elevated to another level, but with only Kirky J as the soundingboard (who, with all due respect to him, has never been someone to produce fresh/raw sounding material in the studio), it comes off very plastic and non-organic sounding.

Despite its flaws, I still appreciate that it was released as a 3 CD set, as everything on there is worth hearing. It's just a missed opportunity IMO, as some of these songs could have been elevated to classic levels if Prince had been more challenged by himself or others during the recording sessions.

maybe he wasnt reaching for classic levels.the songs may have just felt good.fpllowing his heart.u make classoc by writing what u feel not aiming for it

I hear you, but the songs that seem most heartfelt (The Love We Make and all the Mayte-related ones) are ones that generally sound pretty good to me. My issue isn't that the songwriting/lyrics lack drive, but that the actual recording sessions feel very autopilot. By contrast, I don't think he was necessarily trying to make a classic with C&D earlier that year, but some of the recording sessions have a drive/energy. I think if he'd just even had that same energy in the studio - maybe Sonny, Tommy, Morris and Michael challenging him (think the Exodus outtake for Acknowledge Me versus the solo version he later released as an example of how they could make a track sound better) - or to the extent it stayed a solo recording, an engineer/producer who'd let him keep it more raw instead of having it sound so clean and polished. I think those simple changes would have elevated things - the song ideas (lyrics, melodies) are already there IMO.

i like courtin time, one of us, slave,new world,style,holy river, his standards are just as high as ever there. ones i could do without? Jam of the year, Emancipation,that hip hop song.

I like all three discs.

1725topp said:

I like all three discs.

i like disk 2 the best, some great songs hidden there. don't know what some peoples issues are with song like courtin time and new world though. New World I thought, though i could be so fucking far off base because i never listen to current music, was an anticipator of the club music that we got later.

I didn't like the sound of the drums. Very plastic and thin. P and Kirky J went ballastic with those loops.

I like all three discs at various times - I have no problem with the 3 set - the more Prince the merrier.......

soladeo1 said:

.

I think the root of the issue is that Emancipation sounds too "clean". There is no grit or passion in the record ....it sounds so clinical and precise and "fussy".

.

Where are the RIPPING and SLASHING rhythm guitar chords? The hint of aural danger and menace

.

Nothing sounds organic and spontaneous, right?

.

. Bingo. You nailed it.

.

I do think "Slave" has the grit that could place it on some past albums, but outside of that the CD set is clean and safe and sanitized. A very professional sounding record. And that's as insulting as I can get when discussing music. Professional. You know who is professional? John Tesh. Kenny G. The Trans-Siberian Orchestra that makes that crap Christmas music. Prince with "Emancipation" became Yanni.

.

This could have been the CD cover of "Emancipation" and no one would know the difference:

.

[img:$uid]http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51VPAH783TL._SY300_.jpg[/img:$uid]

Maybe he was just wanting to do something nice for his wife in between all the live gigs?

Leave Emancipation alooooooone!

AlgeriaTouchshreek said:

Maybe he was just wanting to do something nice for his wife in between all the live gigs?

.

But why make it three discs and three hours long!

Even she was bored with it after the first disc.

Cloreen said:

AlgeriaTouchshreek said:

Maybe he was just wanting to do something nice for his wife in between all the live gigs?

.

But why make it three discs and three hours long!

Even she was bored with it after the first disc.

"ooh, no, um"

(That's my patented Ricky Gervaise impersonation)

They were 60 minutes apiece weren't they?

novabrkr said:

I think it's mostly the drums. Change them to something closer to what they sounded like on TGE and C&D and far fewer people would complain. I've sometimes toyed with the idea of doing minor tweaks like just adding a harder, reverberated snare hit to some songs, upload the stuff to Youtube and see what people's comments would be like.

Interesting point about the rhythm guitar. It might have been interesting to hear TGE / C&D -sounding version of "Damned If I Do", for example.

One of the reasons I dig Prince's production style is that every instrument is usually easily audible and he doesn't rely on a "wall of sound" type of approach. Oh, God, I'm so bored of modern day producers adding all kinds of shit to the choruses to make them sound bigger. Especially when there's not much of a melody present and we're just expected to think everything sounds "epic".

Agree with everything you said here. The sound pallete, in particular the drums, make this album sound like an unpolished diamond. The songs are great for their instruments all having their own ideas (common for Prince), the emotion, rhythm and melody, but they deserved a better coat of paint.

Emancipation is like buying a ferrari in a coat of dark green, when it should have been red.

I find it funny that half the threads on this website are wanting unreleased material to be released, and the other half are about released albums that should have been cut back. Imagine if Emancipation had been two albums -- we'd see countless threads about how "the Human Body" was unjustly left of the album.

Emancipation is a strange one. I remember being incredibly excited buying it on cassette(lol) back in the day and rushing home to play it. I think I paid about 10 quid for it, which for a triple was a bargain. Still, it was mid-nineties and our boy's ebb was at a critical low.

I remember mixed reviews too, ranging from masterwork to folly.

Having listened to it recently, I'm struck by how skilled it is as a songwriters album. There is every genre mixed in as expected and a lot of it is well written, yet there are extremely obvious flaws to it all. Too long. Maybe. Plasticy production values. Yes, indeed. There are too many ballads on the album. None of them, however, bar Soul Sanctuary and Curios Child, are a patch on something like How Come You Don't Call Me Anymore or Open Book to name just two from his golden age. The rest of the ballads are perfectly functional without having any kind of edge. They are perfectly bland.

The 'avant garde' or true Princely material on the Ist and Third( can't remember now) disks are quite disapointing in retrospect for me, bar a few exceptions. Those exceptions are Right Back Here In Your Arms, In This Bed I Scream, The Holy River, Emale and the brilliant My Computer which I think is his most underated track ever. No Kirky J programming 'drums' on that one.

I remeber a review of Damned If I Do from back then which said something along the lines of' he's rocking again, but in a hermetically sealed way'. This sums up the vast majority of Emancipation for me, anyway. This, New Power Soul and Rave are his worst triptych ever in my opinion. He reached a nadir in the late 90s. When The Rainbow Children dropped, it was like we had our old Prince back. I couldn't believe it was the same artist from the previous couple of records.

Also, Emancipation has to have the worst title track on any Prince album. It's absolutely horrendous. If he'd have named the album ' Mr Happy', i'd have never been a member of this website, and thus wouldn't be writing any of this.

Genesia said:

"I remember when I first put on Jam of the Year in the car, my girlfriend said "This sounds like a QVC bumper!"

I knew what she meant. The whole thing is so sterile and generic, as if all the sounds are sampled. The only distinct elements are the guitar flourishes, which are few and far between.

The hitnrun releases are a much more Princely version of this sound.

I still don't know what it is though; maybe it was the stage in life where he was very domestic and happy, but everything is very "safe".

I love handful of songs, but it's the one I listen to the least.

i actually like emancipation's 'plastic' production. the only problem i have is that some of the

tracks are pretty weak or feature less than cool guest raps etc.

the main problem i had back then in getting my head around emancipation was that it was a
really big change in sound. it went from the totally ott rock n funk from /come/exodus/gold/
to this totally different thing.

what would have made the transition better and perhaps livened the 3cd package might have
been including, say 3 tracks that sounded more like the 93/95 era. something that would still
blend with emancipation overall.

now it's just a bit much of the same tones all over those discs. there's variety, sure, but there
is no real switch up on the discs, at least not enough of one imo.

so eventhough i like it as it is, and have learned to like it more than i did when it was released
in 1996 and it was soooo obviously nothing like the whole 93/95 era, i still sometimes wish he
would have put a bit more variety on there soundwise.

if not that, then at least tracks like "slave 2 the system", "journey 2 the center of ur heart",
"feel good", "she gave her angels", "goodbye" and "love (never has 2 say goodbye) could've
replaced the covers and really weak tracks.

whatever, prince thought the best configuration was the one he released. and that's fine. but
it's always nice to play 'what if' with some albums.

it's also nice to FINALLY see "my computer" get some love on this thread.

massively underrated/underappreciated and often shat on. i've never quite
understood why people hate it. i think it's probably the gem of this entire
collection, although there are more really strong tracks on here. but that
one is special. so good.

maplesyrupnjam said:

Emancipation is a strange one. I remember being incredibly excited buying it on cassette(lol) back in the day and rushing home to play it. I think I paid about 10 quid for it, which for a triple was a bargain. Still, it was mid-nineties and our boy's ebb was at a critical low.

I remember mixed reviews too, ranging from masterwork to folly.

Having listened to it recently, I'm struck by how skilled it is as a songwriters album. There is every genre mixed in as expected and a lot of it is well written, yet there are extremely obvious flaws to it all. Too long. Maybe. Plasticy production values. Yes, indeed. There are too many ballads on the album. None of them, however, bar Soul Sanctuary and Curios Child, are a patch on something like How Come You Don't Call Me Anymore or Open Book to name just two from his golden age. The rest of the ballads are perfectly functional without having any kind of edge. They are perfectly bland.

The 'avant garde' or true Princely material on the Ist and Third( can't remember now) disks are quite disapointing in retrospect for me, bar a few exceptions. Those exceptions are Right Back Here In Your Arms, In This Bed I Scream, The Holy River, Emale and the brilliant My Computer which I think is his most underated track ever. No Kirky J programming 'drums' on that one.

I remeber a review of Damned If I Do from back then which said something along the lines of' he's rocking again, but in a hermetically sealed way'. This sums up the vast majority of Emancipation for me, anyway. This, New Power Soul and Rave are his worst triptych ever in my opinion. He reached a nadir in the late 90s. When The Rainbow Children dropped, it was like we had our old Prince back. I couldn't believe it was the same artist from the previous couple of records.

Also, Emancipation has to have the worst title track on any Prince album. It's absolutely horrendous. If he'd have named the album ' Mr Happy', i'd have never been a member of this website, and thus wouldn't be writing any of this.

ya, ok, and for every person who says what you're saying, there is another saying the rainbow children is a travesty. People overthink stuff, i rarely go much past whether i like a song or not, the polish, the whatever, don't matter much to me and there are plenty of good to great songs. everyone got different taste, i remember telling my boy about Joint to Joint and how prince rapped on it and it was funky. He didn't even give it a chance because he was a hip hop purist. People close their minds over silly things. I never even thought about the production until I came here, I really didn't care, like I said, if I like it i like it, if i don't i don't. He did have a good 1/3 undeniable filler on the album though.

AlexHahn said:

I find it funny that half the threads on this website are wanting unreleased material to be released, and the other half are about released albums that should have been cut back. Imagine if Emancipation had been two albums -- we'd see countless threads about how "the Human Body" was unjustly left of the album.

ya, people are practically salivating over the contents of the vault when some of them have been ripping every single thing the man released since SOTT. Makes no sense.

"The Human Body"

"My Computer"

"Face Down"

I could shed a fucking tear right now thinkg about how great those three songs are.

hardwork said:

"The Human Body"

"My Computer"

"Face Down"

I could shed a fucking tear right now thinkg about how great those three songs are.

how about the prophetic "New World" it's going that way, men are super effeminate and woman have an angry edge to their voices.

There seems to be Prince fans who want every Prince album to sound the same, and Prince fans, like me, who are glad that every Prince album doesn't sound the same. I love that Emancipation doesn't sound like Chaos and Disorder, Exodus, Come, or The Gold Experience. If I want to hear Chaos and Disorder, Exodus, Come, or The Gold Experience, I can listen to them. It's like what Prince said in the 1985 Rolling Stone interview: "How cool would it be to play every album back to back and neither album sounds like the other?...Do you know how easy it would have been to begin the first song of Around the World in a Day with the solo from 'Let's Go Crazy' in another key?'" If I want great guitar work I can listen to Chaos and Disorder or The Gold Experience. If I want a more mellow, chill, funk and soul feel, I can listen to Emancipation. I'm thankful that my favorite artist was that talented, had that much musical range, that I could never predict the sound of the next album. Yes, there were always songs that didn't do much for me on most every album, but there were more songs that always moved me because Prince was always trying to take himself somewhere he'd never been, which often took me places I'd never been. I do not like "I Wonder U," but I love Parade. On the other hand, there is very little of Hit & Run: Phase I that I like so I keep the three songs that I like and delete/ignore the rest. Such is the beauty of Emancipation in the Prince catalogue. Prince is a pie chart with varying slices. I seem to like the variety of slices in his pie chart, even if I don't like all the slices. As for passion and urgency, there's not much more passionate and urgent than "In this Bed I Scream." There is not much more soulful than "Let's Have a Baby" or "Friend, Lover, Sister, Mother/Wife." There is not much more insightful and essentially Prince than "The Love We Make."

*

Finally, why would someone want less music from Prince? Less music from Prince means we're asking for a smaller pool of resources from which to find the gems each of us individually love. Again, I don't like seventy percent of Hit and Run: Phase I, but I'm glad to have the three songs that I do like. Of the thirty-six songs of Emancipation, you find what you like, delete the rest from your playlist, and enjoy what you have left. I rarely listen to "Slave," "New World," and "Human Body," but I love the other thirty-three songs. That's not a bad ratio. As such, I've never heard anyone say: "This album didn't sell because it had too many songs on it." Now, I'll agree that Prince tends to choose the not-so-radio-friendly songs for singles, but since I haven't listened to the radio since 1988 I don't know what a radio-friendly song is because most of what's been on the radio since 1988 doesn't move me. So, yes, if hits are important, then Prince could have done a better job releasing promotional singles. But, that point has nothing to do with the amount of songs on an album, especially when, by 1996, Prince had already established that he was too eclectic for radio and for most listeners to appreciate the full spectrum of what he was trying to do/be. Even I can't appreciate what he was trying to do with seventy percent of Hit and Run: Phase I, but I just chalk it up to it's just not my cup of tea. The core problem with Emancipation is that some fans want Prince to be one slice in a pie chart rather than simply choosing to enjoy the one or two slices that appeal to their aesthetic sensibilities and delete or ignore the rest. When an artist produces forty studio albums, we can't possibly think that we'll like every album or even most of the songs on every album. As such, I guess there's nothing wrong with Emancipation other than it doesn't appeal to some folks aesthetic tastes. But, that's not a problem; that's just a reality, an inevitable act, of one man releasing so much music. None of us will like all of it, and our dislike of it doesn't mean that it's poorly done. It just means that some things are not for everyone. Yet, with so much music to love, why waste time lamenting what we don't like rather than spending time enjoying what we do like. If April 21. 2016. didn't teach us anything else, it should have taught us that life is too short to focus on the negative. We should focus on the things that we love, especially when our focus on the negative is about subjective aesthetic musical tastes.

ya, it's a tightrope act, lots of springsteen fans talk about his fake ocki accent and how he needs new material, but personally, i really don't like when he brings in the hip hop beats or even his tries at beach boys stuff.

Well you got your wish and angered the Prince Gods. After reading this I thought I would listen to my cassettes but Volume 3 broke. So now I have a 2 volume set.

I do have it ripped so I can still listen and I will admit I listened to Volume I a lot more than Vol. III

One thing I love about Prince is that everything does not sound the same. I love that he kept experimenting and trying something new. I did not always like it but it kept me interested.

Askani said:

It's very sterile. And there's a LOT of filler.


Saw an article about Hans-Martin Buff being his engineer from about 1996 to 2000(?).

I think the combination of Kirky J producing/programming/whatever and Buff engineering gave everything from that period a kind of hollow, soulless, plastic feel.

The thing is, you ask 100 fans for their cutdown 1 or 2 CD tracklist, and you will get 100 different combinations. Which means it is perfect as a 3 CD set.

Another stupid thread...EMANCIPATION is great as it is.

You don't like some tracks from it ? Well, just skip it. It's about one century that you can skip one song on a record...

It's a weird one for me because I found it weak upon release, it's not one I play a lot. YET when I bother to listen to the tracks I like, I really do enjoy them. So I dunno, it's definitely in the weaker camp for me in terms of his entire output, but there's a happiness & joy that comes through on that one that's kind of irresistable, even with the sadness that followed the time period/loomed during the release.