Publication: The Globe & Mail [UK]
Date: November 28, 1996
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Title: "Emancipation receives ***1/2 on 4"
Reviewed By: Staff

Faced with any triple CD package, the instinctive critical response is to look for the filler and then complain that there's a pretty good single CD hiding under all that flab. The Artist Formerly Known as Prince ( now going by just The Artist), who went to war with his last record company because they wouldn't release his music as fast as he could record it, may have slipped a dud or two into Emancipation, but even at three hours, this release is consistently ( if somewhat exhausting) interesting. Working largely as a one-man band, our pal Mr. Squiggle zips from funk to jazz to hip hop, tosses in covers of songs by the Stylistics, the Delfonics and Joan Osborne, muses about sex, love and his computer, and writes some of the creamiest, loveliest ballads of his career to his wife Mayte and their child. Sure, it's an intimidating package, and sure, he's getting stranger all the time- your guess is as good as mine as to why he had to make each disc exactly one hour long- but the proof is in the grooves and each spin seems to reveal new strengths, new twists an new treats.