Publication: Now [Can]
Date: November 21-27, 1996
Section:
Page Number(s):
Length:
Title: "Emancipation Offers No Salvation"
Reviewed By: Tim Perlich

- Emancipation (NPG/EMI) : Rating - N (out of NNNNN)

To get some idea of just how low 's stock has sunk, Rolling Stone magazine was granted a ridiculously rare one-on-one interview with the Artist Formerly Known As Prince in the inner sanctum of his Paisley Park recording studio complex for the current issue, yet decided to put Eddie Vedder's brooding mug on the cover for a frivolous investigative muckrake.

Apparently unfazed by the relatively poor sales performance of the incessantly dull The Gold Experience (Warner) album, seems to have convince himself that the only way to end the slump and to stop further shrinkage of his withering profile is to triple up on his bet by releasing the mammoth 36-track, three-disc Emancipation (NPG/EMI) package. But instead of a three-fold improvement over his recent lack-lustre Warner releases, it's three times as torturious.

Those who thought the dead-assed jams that littered The Gold Experience were a sign that was stockpiling all his best material for release once the obligations of his Warner contract had been fulfilled are in for an enormous disappointment.

The horribly dated synth grooves and rudimentary beatbox percussion on which bases many of Emancipation's tracks make it difficult to distinguish whether they were recorded in 1981 or over a weekend last month and, in any case, they're certainly not representative of his finest work.

If is really as financially secure as he lets on (he's posing with a sporty new BMW on the inner sleeve), you'd think he could afford to hire a real string section rather than relying on the plastic-sounding synth presets that consistently cheapen his attempts at grandeur.

Throughout Emancipation's wide expanse, padded out with filler tracks typically involving little more than a repeated tag-line over a generic mid-tempo waddle, seems less concerned with maintaining a high standard of songwriting than with superficial details like ensuring each 12-tune disc has a total running time as close to 60 minutes as possible.

Typical themes of getting off spiritually and sexually are addressed but take a back seat to 's fascination with his new mate Mayte, the expected arrival of his first child and the way the Internet is changing courtship rituals.

When he's not wrenching 70s sweet soul favourites like the Stylistics' Betcha By Golly Wow and the Delfonics' La, La, La (Means I Love You) to mushy effect, he's grinning googoo-eyed through sappy paeans to parenthood like Let's Have A Baby and Sex In The Summer.

The Holy River, in spite of its cliched religious imagery, is one of the album's few redeeming moments, probably because it so obviously recalls the groove of Little Red Corvette.

The closest gets to experimental, other than the bizarre electroswing shmaltz of Courtin' Time and the guitar-pumped stab at the annoying Joan Osborne hit One Of Us, is The Human Body. What could be 's first attemp at a techno-inspired track unfortunately devolves into a Hammer-time version of Hot Butter's Popcorn. A bigger artistic failure would be hard to conceive.

PICTURE CAPTION: Though free of his Warner binds, is still enslaved by his limited vision on the three-disc Emancipation.

Selected Discography :
* 1996 Emancipation (NPG/EMI)
* 1995 The Gold Experience (Warner); Exodus (NPG)
* 1994 Come (Warner); The Black Album (Warner)
* 1992 (Warner)
* 1991 Diamonds And Pearls (Warner)
* 1988 Lovesexy (Warner)
* 1987 Sign O' The Times (Warner)
* 1985 Around The World In A Day (Warner)
* 1984 Purple Rain (Warner)
* 1982 1999 (Warner)
* 1981 Controversy (Warner)
* 1980 Dirty Mind (Warner)
* 1979 Prince (Warner)
* 1978 For You (Warner)