Publication: Washington Post [US]
Date: November 24, 1996
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Title: "For the Ex-Prince, `1999' Is Auld Land Syn"
Reviewed By: Mark Jenkins

The Artist Formerly Known as Prince: 'Emancipation'

As its title announces, the ex-Prince's new album marks his "Emancipation" from his lucrative contract with Warner Bros.; he now records for his own NPG label, distributed by EMI. The wantonly prolific singer-songwriter, who changed his name to a psychedelic male/female glyph in 1993, complained that his former label wouldn't release his albums as frequently as he wished. This, apparently, wasn't merely a matter of marketing and artistic control; Warner Bros. owed him an advance for each album it agreed to release, and ex-Prince (reportedly known to his pals as The Artist, short for The Artist Formerly Known as Prince) needed the cash to support his overextended media principality.

Although "Emancipation" is a partial return to form, it's probably too meandering to reinstall ex-Prince at the top of the charts. Running one second short of three hours of music, these three discs contain 36 songs that emphasize '70s-style funk grooves, produced, composed, arranged and (mostly) played by ex-Prince.

There are a few tentative engagements with hip-hop and techno, as well as an excursion into jump jazz ("Courtin' Time"), but little of the new-wave beat or hard-rock guitar that made 1980's "Dirty Mind" a critics' favorite and 1984's "Purple Rain" a crossover sensation. Most curious (or perhaps calculating) are four literal-minded covers: the Delfonics' "La-La Means I Love You," the Stylistics' "Betcha by Golly, Wow!", Bonnie Raitt's "(Eye) Just Want to Make You Love Me," and Joan Osborne's "One of Us."

The latter is actually among the album's few meditations on the divine, usually one of the singer's principal (and most problematic) subjects. Now married to dancer-backup singer Mayte Garcia, and the father of a baby girl, ex-Prince does get a little cosmic about marriage and propagation on such tracks as "The Holy River," "Let's Have a Baby" and "Friend, Lover, Sister, Mother/Wife." "Style," he sings, "is the glow in a pregnant woman's eyes." That's pretty banal, but it's more compelling than the album's two songs about the Internet.

Unsurprisingly, the album's standouts are seldom about anything other than their own delirious rhythms (with a side helping, of course, of eros). "Jam of the Year," "Get Yo Groove On," "We Gets Up," "Sex in the Summer," "Slave," "New World" and "Face Down" are worthy successors to "1999," and that's not a complete inventory of the discs' canny dance tracks. Perhaps if ex-Prince were still signed to a major label, he'd have been forced to edit this set to a propulsive double or an explosive single album. Now that he's emancipated, of course, he's free to explore new realms of narcissism and self-indulgence. "Emancipation" may be an extravagant gesture, but it could have been substantially wilder.