minneapolisgenius said:

Don't know, I don't like it either.

It sounds like a bad gospel song by Michael Bolton, soulless without real spirit, yuk.

I dont wanna hear no badtalk about Holy River

OK, I've been looking at this thread for a day or 2 whilst resisting the urge to shout Wow! RD you listened to Emancipation all at once you poor unlucky soul, but the urge has finally beaten me.

What a truly awful 3 hours it must have been. Surely you must have got pissed off with boredom before the end..surely?

dewmass said:

3 hours of tedium and bewilderment. Ive never done it and never will. I have no desire to wipe off 3 hrs of my life in order to have completeness over this album. Ive listened to all tracks individually, and around 50% of them suck. Prince clearly knew this as hes spread them evenly over the discs, so you rarely get 2 or 3 good songs in a row. I still dont understand how he thought this album was going to relaunch his career. Its a mess. No cohesion, and no fluency, and dont even get me started on the production...its the worst of all prince albums.

CrozzaUK said:

worst production? wouldnt say that, most of it is very good i think? what do u mean exactly?

u know whats good about Emancipation? his voice, i mean the singing is great!

familygroove said:

I mean that its the most over-produced album he's done. Nothing sounds spontaneous. The drum machines, the guitar solos, all the god-awful synths. The whole album just seems contrived, like hes sat down before hand and drawn up a master plan, and then followed it to the dot. We'll have an uptempo song here, a ballad here, a rock song here, and a jam here. Ill sing these lyrics in this song, and well have a guitar solo in this one. It doesnt sound like a prince album to my ears, it just feels wrong in so many ways. It sounds like a 3 disc version of Rave Un2... but with less good songs on it.

dewmass said:

lol..never got pissed..remember I said I was cleaning to it. The house was spotless when finished. Backyard too

Yeah the production is kond of lackluster for Prince. I thought everybody knew that lol. Its too polished imho.

rdhull said:

You have Kirky J. to thank for that.

.

rdhull said:

Yeah man lol I remember you rambling about that :p

I think the louzy thang about it is Prince is trying to be a coockie cutter in some moments in the LP. But overall, I could live with it despite its flaws!

Harlepolis said:

Emancipation is plastic soul

rdhull said:

There it is! Plastic is the word. It seems despite his best efforts some good songs happened to sneak in there.
Seriously, though, from Soul Sanctuary to Holy River is great. Every other part has at most three listenable songs strung together. I think he had a good double album worth of stuff. If it were trimmed we'd be talking about it like it were Sign O' The Times II. Remember SOTT isn't the best production either but the songs are so strong-- one after the other. When all is said and done, though, I'm glad he released it all. If I want it reconfigured I'll do it myself.

About 1/3 of Emancipation is great which is still a full album of great songs. I didn't know this album was disliked this much.

(swiped from my post at the NPGMC)

The major impediment to my enjoyment of Emancipation was its overproduction and the slickness, neatness, and almost plastic feel to the production esp. the beats and rhythm programming. That style of production works for some of the tracks on there, but much of the edge to Prince's sound gets clipped or smoothed over too much; and often it's that quirky edge that is usually the hook for me--that not-of-the-genre-of-the-moment sound that he throws in.

I remember reading an article where P was previewing the album to a reporter and P was quoted as saying something like "R. Kelly, take THAT!" And indeed much of the album's r&b tracks sound like a response to the rise of R Kelly's own plastic sound.

Unfortunately that run-of-the-mill sound makes it easy to overlook many of the songs on Emancipation, which were conceptually, lyrically, and melodically some of Prince's best songwriting--very focused, very tight, and very thoughtful.

I often hear people say he needed an editor, but they all disagree as to what tracks they would include on a single or double disc.

My favorite tracks are:

Jam of the Year (performed live set this song free)
Somebody's Somebody (the "studio live" remix brought this one to life too)
Get Yo Groove On (again deserving a live band sound)
White Mansion
I Can't Make U Love Me (this and "One of Us" were the better covers in my opinion)
In This Bed I Scream (for the guitar work mostly... in need of a live rhythm section tho)

Sex in the Summer
One Kiss at a Time
Soul Sanctuary
Curious Child
Dreamin' About U
Joint 2 Joint
The Holy River
Let's Have a Baby
Saviour (the interplay between his voice and guitar is top notch here)
Friend, Lover, Sister, Mother, Wife
(*As you can see disc 2 is by far my favorite)

Face Down
One of us
The Love We Make