released Emancipation on November 19, 1996.

.

.

• Disc 1:

1. Jam Of The Year (6:09)
2. Right Back Here In My Arms (4:33)
3. Somebody's Somebody (4:43) 1
4. Get Yo Groove On (6:31)
5. Courtin' Time (2:46)
6. Betcha By Golly Wow! (3:30) 2
7. We Gets Up (4:17)
8. White Mansion (4:47)
9. Damned If Do (5:20)
10. Can't Make U Love Me (6:37) 3
11. Mr. Happy (4:46) 4
12. In This Bed Scream (5:40)

• Disc 2:

1. Sex In The Summer (5:56)
2. One Kiss At A Time (4:40)
3. Soul Sanctuary (4:41) 5
4. Emale (3:37)
5. Curious Child (2:57)
6. Dreamin' About U (3:52)
7. Joint 2 Joint (7:51)
8. The Holy River (6:55)
9. Let's Have A Baby (4:07)
10. Saviour (5:48)
11. The Plan (1:46)
12. Friend, Lover, Sister, Mother/Wife (7:37)

• Disc 3:

1. Slave (4:51)
2. New World (3:42)
3. The Human Body (5:41)
4. Face Down (3:16)
5. La, La, La Means Love U (3:58) 6
6. Style (6:40) 7
7. Sleep Around (7:41) 8
8. Da, Da, Da (5:15)
9. My Computer (4:36)
10. One Of Us (5:19) 9
11. The Love We Make (4:38)
12. Emancipation (4:12)

(Image and track listing source: PrinceVault.com)

Happy anniversary! Not sure it aged that well, but still some beauties are on this album...My personal top 10:

1. Somebody's Somebody
2. Sleep Around
3. In This Bed i Scream
4. The Holy River
5. One Kiss At The time
6. The Love We Make
7. Dreamin about U
8. Face Down
9. Joint 2 Joint
10. Sex In the Summer

Love the entire album and the booklet. But my fave is Disc II

How personnal those birthdays can get...

.

To me, it's the 21st anniversary of that day when I when to the wrecka store on my way to my sudent's job, purchased the precious package, did my 3 hours of phone surveys, rushed back home and played the 3 CD's twice in a row, loving the whole record on first listen.

.

It was 21 years ago, and I still remember that day very clearly, those were dark times in my life and the record lifted me up a bit. My GF and a friend who were living at my place at the time had to listen to the record in a loop for days (or nights, more accurately, since we would usually go to bed at dawn and wake-up in the mid-afternoon) They liked Prince but after a week or so they just were so fed-up

.

I still remember that day very clearly and at the same time it semms like many, many lifetimes away... Crazy thing is I'd just turned 20 a few days earlier, and now it's been 21 years. I've spend more time on Earth since that day than I had before that day

It can drink! j/k Love most of it . All of it really, except 4 Friend, Lover, no melody

skipped school that day. got on a train, walked half an hour to get to the recordstore,
traveled back home, and just sat there listening to it all the entire day.

i both loved it back then, and felt disappointed. and although for different reasons at
differnt times, that basic sentiment remains, in regards to this album.

some great material here though.

someone should start a 'what's your 1 disc emancipation?' j/k

forget the one disc version, i'd love a 6 disc or more version 'from the vault'
in the future. all the demo versions of these songs, so far as there are any.
different mixes from possible different sonic directions in the early stages of
this project. plus outtakes (the ones we've heard on crystal ball and then
the few bootlegs are all good songs imo, especially 'love' and 'journey' are
really beautiful).

so yes, too many songs for the general public as it is, but give me !!MORE!!

luv4u said:

Love the entire album and the booklet. But my fave is Disc II

One of my favorite albums. I truly love the variety of style/genre on this album.

Happy Birthday Emancipation

Went to the wrecka sto and picked this set up on my lunch the day it was released. Had to wait to get home from work to play it. I was (and still am) astounded by the sheer joy that leaps off of the songs on this album. You can hear it in Prince's voice in every song here- he's saying 'I'm FREE!!!! I'm FREE!!!!'. There are so many great songs to listen to. Fav is Soul Sanctuary. Nothing else comes close to that song on this set, nothing. I could listen to it for days if I had to. Yes, I even like Face Down!

[Edited 11/19/17 15:11pm]

luv4u said:

Love the entire album and the booklet. But my fave is Disc II

Each disk definitely has its own personality and feel.

I've found that disk 1 on shuffle sounds great in almost any configuration, even if it starts with a ballad. Disk 3 is sort of the same way.

Disk 2 stands out as the most unique of the three disks. With a variant of styles from the hip-hop/urban inspired, sexually charged "Joint 2 Joint", so the spiritual "The Holy River", and the string of intimate ballads in the first third of the album keep it interesting. It reminds me of the mish-mosh-in-a-good-way of Controversy or Sign "O" The Times. Something for almost everyone on that record.

I do think the disks suffer from two things:

1) the flatter production. There is a lot of drum machine on it, but it's not as reverby or open as Prince used to make a drum machine sound just a decade prior.

2), the songs are long in a bad way. We know Prince can work the fuck out of 7-minutes on a song. But I believe he extended some of the songs for the sake of the gimmick of 60-minutes-per-disk. Some of the tag endings like "Damned If I Do" work great and add a fun element to it. Yet songs like "Jam Of The Year", "Get Yo Groove On", or "Sleep Around" seem to just rattle on and on and on and on and on for the sake of extending the disk to hit 60-minutes.

Actually, if you trimmed that stuff back down, took out "The Plan" - you'd have a really great 2-disk set. It could have been "Prince's first double album in a decade!". Hell, even the peach and orange and black color schemes would have echoed each other, and bookended an era.

I took the liberty of editing some of those songs down. Not all of them, but I did cut down a few on disk 1, a couple on disk 2 and 3, and they just flow so much better.

In general though, I love the set. It has way more pluses than minuses. The artwork, the performances on TV, etc.

TrivialPursuit said:

luv4u said:

Love the entire album and the booklet. But my fave is Disc II

Each disk definitely has its own personality and feel.

I've found that disk 1 on shuffle sounds great in almost any configuration, even if it starts with a ballad. Disk 3 is sort of the same way.

Disk 2 stands out as the most unique of the three disks. With a variant of styles from the hip-hop/urban inspired, sexually charged "Joint 2 Joint", so the spiritual "The Holy River", and the string of intimate ballads in the first third of the album keep it interesting. It reminds me of the mish-mosh-in-a-good-way of Controversy or Sign "O" The Times. Something for almost everyone on that record.

I do think the disks suffer from two things:

1) the flatter production. There is a lot of drum machine on it, but it's not as reverby or open as Prince used to make a drum machine sound just a decade prior.

2), the songs are long in a bad way. We know Prince can work the fuck out of 7-minutes on a song. But I believe he extended some of the songs for the sake of the gimmick of 60-minutes-per-disk. Some of the tag endings like "Damned If I Do" work great and add a fun element to it. Yet songs like "Jam Of The Year", "Get Yo Groove On", or "Sleep Around" seem to just rattle on and on and on and on and on for the sake of extending the disk to hit 60-minutes.

Actually, if you trimmed that stuff back down, took out "The Plan" - you'd have a really great 2-disk set. It could have been "Prince's first double album in a decade!". Hell, even the peach and orange and black color schemes would have echoed each other, and bookended an era.

I took the liberty of editing some of those songs down. Not all of them, but I did cut down a few on disk 1, a couple on disk 2 and 3, and they just flow so much better.

In general though, I love the set. It has way more pluses than minuses. The artwork, the performances on TV, etc.

TP, I agree with you about songs dragging on unnecessarily.

.

I think that Emancipation stands out for being such a PERSONAL record. He bares his soul to a greater extent than he does on other recordings. He gave more interviews during the Emancipation era of 1996 and 1997 (and during the Musicology era) than any other points of his career. Maybe he felt more secure because he was married during both of these periods, but the volume of interviews and appearances speaks for itself.

It is hard not to associate the album with the tragedy of Prince's private life around that time, not to mention the name change, the record company beef, the "slave" thing, the new-found religious zeal. It all detracted somewhat from the music, and in some ways he never really recovered from this slump, creatively.

However I definitely agree there's a great album in there, spread across the three CDs. True, the album artwork sucks, and it is all a bit over-produced, synthy and digital sounding, inert and flat like a lot of his 90s stuff. Even so... I love it, and I think we'll find ourselves re-evaluating Emancipation in the future. There's a pretty special record buried in there, if you listen for it.

I remember stopping off at a really crummy wrecka-stow on my way to work, and spent ages trying to convince the staff to sell me the album early. They'd all received a fax earlier that day saying to wait until launch day. I hung in there and walked away with the album a couple days before launch feeling so chuffed with myself.

dippydippywaveofmydo said:

A single disc version would have been a commercial success. Some amazing songs on there but 3 discs was way too much for the general public etc. Hard to pick a single discs worth but here goes 1- Right Back Here In My Arms 2- Betcha By Golly Wow! 3- The Holy River 4- Somebody’s Somebody 5- Get Yo Groove On 6- We Gets Up 7- Soul Sanctuary 8- Damned If I Do 9- The Love We Make 10- Emancipation

This is a pretty good list. I would add Sex in the Summer because of the baby's heartbeat. I feel like SITS is important in his catalogue because he was so excited about fatherhood. The new marriage, new artistic freedom, and new baby...these were the three biggest happenings in his life in 1996.

Have you noticed that the beginning of All The Things She Said by T.A.T.U is the same as the one from Sex In The Summer?

214 said:

214 said:

Have you noticed that the beginning of All The Things She Said by T.A.T.U is the same as the one from Sex In The Summer?

It's a sample from Funkadelic's "Good Old Music", albeit at a different speed.

erik319 said:

It's like a huge selection box of chocolates. Some of them are nice and enjoyable, some of them are delicious, but a lot are quite sickly & all taste the same.

Nice similarity. I agree.

It contains many great tunes, but as a whole it is somewhat difficult to listen, not so much for the lenght but simply for the repetitive production.

In my book it is probably the P album that aged less well.
At the moment of the release it was a treat, but years later it is the one I return the less.

I remember buying it on release day from Woolworths (UK orgers will remember these good old days) and listening to it on my Sony Disc-man on the way home.

.

I was quite disappointed after loving everything from Symbol up to C&D with the NPG sound of Michael/Sonny and now there was this plastic production. The tracks they are on (Betcha By Golly Wow, Saviour and One Of Us) just sound so much better to me.

.

Of course there is a few gems on it but I often wonder how different/better the likes of Jam Of The Year and the title track itself would sound if he carried on with the NPG 94/95 sound and production.

[Edited 11/22/17 2:42am]

luv4u said:

Love the entire album and the booklet. But my fave is Disc II

I can't quite remember which art director was to held responsible for such visual atrocities,
but my guess is Prince holding a mouse in one hand and "Photoshop 4 Dummies" in the other.

Looks aside, it's a great magnum opus, and yet another artistic self-reinvention from SKipper.
It has a lot of gems, and the "plastic sound" accusations are unfair.
Prince was going for a new sound that would still be his and his only.
You may like it or not, but the Man definitely knew what Style meant.

bonatoc said:

luv4u said:

Love the entire album and the booklet. But my fave is Disc II

I can't quite remember which art director was to held responsible for such visual atrocities,
but my guess is Prince holding a mouse in one hand and "Photoshop 4 Dummies" in the other.

Looks aside, it's a great magnum opus, and yet another artistic self-reinvention from SKipper.
It has a lot of gems, and the "plastic sound" accusations are unfair.
Prince was going for a new sound that would still be his and his only.
You may like it or not, but the Man definitely knew what Style meant.

Style is hailin a cab, then u know givin them the finger when pass yo ass

I've gone back and forth on Emancipation. This shall be my final opinion:


It's not particularly good.

This fact is partly due to (duh!) the too-long length of the record. But it's also due to the fact that about about 26 songs on the album are not very memorable or good.

Retrospectively, here are the 10 tracks I would salvage for Emancipation:

1. Jam of the Year

2. Somebody's Somebody

3. White Mansion

4. Damned if I Do

5. In This Bed I Scream

6. Sex in the Summer

7. Soul Sanctuary

8. The Holy River

9. My Computer

10. The Love We Make


Mix up the track-order any way you want, but those 10 tracks (though themselves a bit overlong) would have made for a very nice, tight album. It still wouldn't have been super-great, because the production is awful and the style a blatant steal from then-contemporary "R&B" pop-tarts, but at least it would have been a very well-received, memorable, fairly successful record. It would have aged a lot better and be remembered fondly today.

[Edited 11/21/17 20:55pm]