In early 1995, Prince, then known as “umph!”…or rather, an unpronnounceable glyph which merged the male & female sex symbols into one single…..thingy, announced to his most hardcore fans through a letter of explanation regarding the whole name change situation, that once he was finally free from his contract with Warner Brothers, he would be issuing a mammoth triple disc album, comprising of thirty-six big songs titled “Emancipation”. Being that I was only 13 years of age at the time, I had, understandably quite a huge dilemma just trying to say that bloody word, let alone any concept of what it actually meant. Thanks to the Oxford Dictionary, however, I was immediately informed that the word was pronounced “E-man-ci-pay-shun,” and that it usually referred to the freeing of the black slaves in America, but essentially it was just a fancier way of saying “Freedom.” In fact, Prince himself dubbed the album as “Three hours of love, sex and liberty,” which is exactly what all of the adverts used to say. Prince had even said that the whole time he was putting it together, he was more or less challenging himself to do three separate sixty minute discs. Some may say that that was Prince enslaving himself, but even so it’s still a hell of a lot of Prince music to digest when you look at the full picture. All the hardcore fans thought they’d died & gone to Paisley heaven (except for the haters on alt.music.prince that is). Prince also said that this was the album that he was born to make, as he always wanted to issue a triple disc set, but his evil ex-bosses emphatically forbade him to do so. Being that this album is so very long (just like my reviews are), I think I’m gonna give it to you one disc at a time. Let’s get stuck into this review! And please, let me apologize in advance for all of the forthcoming corny Prince references, lol. I was just havin fun, I guess. So, let’s begin with Disc One:
Jam of the year: “The album eye was born 2 make” kicks off with a rather laidback type of jazz/funk groove, complete with former backup singer Roise Gaines adding her trademark powerhouse vocals to the track. Personally I was expecting to hear something a little musically harder than this, but still it didn’t stop me from gettin’ my groove on. Basically all he’s saying here is that he wants to throw a massive party. Only difference is that now he’s committed to his woman (ie: Mayte Garcia), whom he constantly refers to as his “new Puerto Rican score” throughout this song. So there’s no funny business goin’ on anymore….or so it seems. Unfortunately that marriage eventually fizzled out, but hey that’s life.
Right back here in my arms: It looked like he was really loving himself some hip hop when he was recording “Emancipation,” as he refers to this particular song in the credits as an illegal cigarette – excuse me, a “joint,” which he says was the first one written & recorded for the album. Lyrically he’s pretty much saying that he’s sick & tired of his lover always writing him letters, because he prefers her physical prescence more than anything else in the world. He also states (again in the liner notes) that no chorus was intentional, which….is something that I don’t recall His Royal Purpleness ever doing in the past. It’s a great track, which also appeared on the “B-Side” of the “Betcha By Golly Wow” single.
Somebody’s Somebody: The sound of (purple?) rain falling on Princey’s window pane conjures an image of an incredibly sad & lonely Roger Nelson. The lyrics in the song illustrate this point even further. All he wants to do, is very simply, find a woman whom he will love & vice versa….but he’s going to continue on that search for happiness. The way he tells us what time it is, is exactly what you would expect from Prince. Ironically there is also a reference to one of the songs he wrote with The Time in the credits, “Gigolos Get Lonely Too,” or “2″ as Prince says. When the album came out, I knew exactly what he was referring to…..I’d just never heard the song before. Although “Somebody’s Somebody” is great, it is the Livestudio Mix that is far more superior. That particular version can be found on the “Holy River” CD single….which I think is probably out of print right now, being that EMI Records America went broke in 1997. Interestingly, this song was co-written with Brenda Lee Eager & Hiliard Wilson, who, by the looks of things are longtime veterans in the music biz.
Get Yo’ Groove On: Here’s another party song that features a much more mature Prince taking the lead vocals. Case in point, he tells his lady friend that they’ll “party all night long” while making “a bet 2 see who’ll keep their clothes on.” Rather extreme lyric from the man who once ponced around in his black bikini undies & trenchcoat while singing about banging his own sister. Prince name drops an artist by the name of D’Angelo in this song, which was somebody that he admired quite a lot back in the day, most notably due to his somewhat Prince-inspired lead vocals. There’s some dialogue going on in this tune as well, obviously that was done in order to give us the impression that we’re literally in a nightclub where some kind of wild & crazy party is going on. Of course he could not resist throwing in a reference to changing his name – he was doing that quite a lot when he was using that funny lookin’ thang as his moniker. Speaking of funny, “Get your groove on” concludes with a rather humorous piece of dialogue between a nightclub bouncer and a patron who hollers, “It don’t take Stevie Wonder to see if I got on the right clothes – I need to get up in this club!! …fuck yourself!” I guess he regrets using that little soundbite now, cause he’s since stopped using such language in his music. On another note, if we pull out the credits (once again) we’ll see that, underneath this song title, there is actually a quote from the then-unreleased Prince song, “Poom Poom,” which is a tune that he sort of alludes to here as well.
Courtin’ Time: This song pretty much cements the fact that Prince was in an unbelievably joyous type of mood after he was finally free from his contract with Warner Brothers, as the whole mood of the song is reminiscent of one of those old jazz songs from back in the ’50s….possibly even earlier than that. The keyword here is definitely jazz though, cause that’s preceisely where was going musically. Personally I always interpreted it as being a song about dating a woman & just generally trying to make her happy. You can tell he was enjoying himself when he was laying it down.
Betcha By Golly Wow: If you go back & take a really long, close look at Prince’s career, beginning with the first couple of albums, you’ll notice that he’s always had a very strong love for all things doo wop. So why not do a cover of one of his favourite R&B songs of all time? He was free from his label at this point, which meant that now he was finally permitted to do whatever it was that he wanted to do with his music. That also meant jackin’ songs from other people, but we’ll get into that one later on in the review. Anyhow, Prince always used to say how pretty this song’s melody was while he was promoting this album in interviews. He’s even made that very same statement in the credits, along with “manyacherryburst,” which completely went over my then great big thick 14 year old head. Of course now I know what that horny little fella was on about! (Put some spaces in between that word and you’ll know what I mean) Anyhow, I think he’s done a marvellous job with this song, but apparently his former rival Rick James was laughin’ his ass off when he first heard it. Guess he was just doing his job of hating on Prince. Then again, the pure soul heads would probably side with him. “Betcha By Golly Wow” was “Emancipation’’s” lead single, which he actually gave away for free belive it or not! That’s why I have 2 copies of the thing in my collection. Fantatsic way to promote the album though. He later re-issued it in a digi pack with a free poster. Needless to say I left that one sitting in the ‘wrecka stow.’ But it’s all good cuz I bought the poster separately from the NPG Music Club several years later & got it laminated, so all was not lost.
We Gets Up: Back in 1999 (funnily enough), Prince’s former record label released an album called “The Vault…..Old Friends 4 Sale,” and on that album, there was a song by the name of “Sarah,” which was all about a (possibly) fictitious girl who Prince very clearly had a massive hardon for. Three years prior to this album’s release, he took the melody from that very same song & completely changed it up, instead giving it lyrics about his ‘crew,’ the New Power Generation, who were “coming to wreck shop in your neighbourhood.” I guess that just meant that they were ready to go all kinds of wild, being that they were completely free. This song also featured an electronic drum kit & mostly electronic instruments, as opposed to live drums & horns….. which is where the disgruntled fans came into play. Personally I think it’s quite a decent song. Maybe not as good as what they’d originally laid down, but still listenable…..although I always thought he was screaming “Watch yo dick!!” in the intro. Apparently he’s really saying, “What you think will happen.”
White Mansion: Okay, now….this song was definitely a very different type of song for him to be doing. It was almost like a snapshot of a day in his life, or even a journal entry. He sings about being in New York, checking out some girl, seeing a certain “John K” (presumably the late JFK Jr, who hired him to sing “Forever in my life” at his wedding) and just being left feeling all kinds of blue…. like his old buddy, Miles Davis. The reason why it sounds so unlike Prince is especially because of the way in which he ends the song with the question of: “Hoochies, they all wanna do me…but am I really happy?” Looks like he was definitely on the road to all kinds of maturity when he was puttin’ this set together. Sexual maturity was seemingly one of those maturities that he was experiencing, cause usually he would be all over that girlie – and we would know it too, cause he would be braggin’ all about it in his song.
Damned If Eye Do: When Prince was working on this album, there was an article on Rolling Stone’s old website (which I still have a print out of by the way!) saying that this particular song featured Prince’s “ballsy rock guitar.” I remember hearing it for the first time & going, “Ballsy? Nah. There’s definitely some guitar on it, but…nah it’s not really like that at all.” I still kinda feel like that deep down inside. Apart from that, it’s just a very melodious rock/pop tune, which was very clearly influenced by Carlos Santana, seeing as how there’s a very Latin inspired break down combined with some Spanish dialogue. Also, I think his guitar playing on this cut was very much inspired by Santana. Mind you, he always cited Carlos as one of his biggest influences, so that makes sense.
Eye Can’t Make U Love Me: Re-make number two from Prince. This time he’s doing a cover of an early nineties song, originally recorded by Bonnie Raitt. I wouldn’t exactly call myself a big fan of Ms Raitt’s, so obviously this was the first time I’d ever heard “I Can’t Make You Love Me” in any form. I also recall reading somebody else’s comment on the old Usenet newgroup about how Prince had pretty much missed the point when he re-made the tune. Now that the internet has grown so much with the advent of such sites as YouTube & Wikipedia, I can see precisely what they were saying. Apparently this song was written after the original songwriter had read an article in the newspaper about how a drunk driver shot his girlfriend. He alledgedly informed the judge, “I’ve learnt that I can’t make her love me if she don’t.” Hence, the creation of this little ditty right here. Prince decided to sex it up a litle bit, which I suppose is cool, cause that was just how he decided to put his own personal stamp on it. Not to mention the fact that every single person in the universe interprets things differently. Evidently Prince always heard the song as being some kind of sexy dribbly ballad where Bonnie was trying to seduce her man, who didn’t really seem to express very much interest in her….either that or he’s permanately a “horny pony,” as he once sang. Another one of my favourite artists, George Michael also did a remake of the song, and he released it around the same time as Prince did….except his version was every bit as boring & dreary as the original.
Mr Happy: Essentially this is just a sped up & slightly tweaked version of the “Big City Remix” of a song of the NPG’s called “The Good Life,” which featured Prince on the lead vocals, as opposed to bassist Sonny Thompson or rapper Tony Mosley. That was something that I just realized as I was going back & listening to the songs on this album for the first time in several years. The reason why I went back & listened to the “Big City Remix,” was because he’d obviously used the same samples, specifically of Ice Cube saying “Microphone check,” which was lifted from a song of his called “When I get to heaven,” which went uncredited in the liner notes. Also there’s that other sample of him hollering, “bought a house next to Prince!!!,” which is practically inauidble on this cut. For those who are playing at home, Mr O’Shea Jackson originally used that line in a song of his called “What Can I Do,” off the “Lethal Injection” album in 1993. Prince loved that line too much, cause he used it again on Larry Graham’s album “GCS2000.” Although he’s used the remix of “What Can I Do,” as opposed to the original song. Anyways, on the lyrics side of things it’s not really all that much of a song….it’s more or less Prince just kinda goofin’ off & trying to flirt with a few girlies that just so happen to be in the room with him. He even busts a rhyme at one point. Oh dear….and so does another fella called Scrap D, who also appeared on Prince’s “final” Warner Brothers album “Chaos & Disorder.” Scrap also makes a reference to Mr Nelson’s song “I Hate U,” which, again P obviously dug, cuz he’s singin’ it with him. I must say, I don’t think that this is very much of a song these days. Sidenote: I used to think Scrap D sounded a bit like O’Shea when I was a teen….not so much now though.
In This Bed Eye Scream: We all knew that Prince would come around & redeem himself with some classic Princely funk. Although this song really began right at the end of the previous track, with samples of his guitar feeding back. It seemed kind of like he’d gone back to that whole minimalistic approach here on this song, but only for a second. Lyrically, this song kind of has a double meaning: on the one hand, it could be about a couple who have had a very heated argument, and the man in the realtionship is suffering as a result. He can’t stop thinking about this person in his sleep & feels the girl’s pain a thousand times more than she does. Hence, he keeps waking up in a cold sweat screaming his lungs out. In the liner notes, however, Mr Princey was up to his old tricks, cryptically dedicating it to his former bandmates Wendy & Lisa. “Bed I Scream” (also the name of his former internet messenger) was dedicated to Wendy’s twin sister Susannah Melvoin as well. He was allegedly romantically involved with her in the mid ’80s. So basically it was his own little way of trying to reach back out to them & apologizing for all the hell that he’d put them through. “What was so cryptic about his message?,” I hear you ask. The answer? It was written backwards. And in unbelievably small print. Exactly the same way he used to do things back in the ’80s. Another thing that appeared in the credits was a drawing of a funny lookin’ “endorphinbed.” It’s typical Prince then.
Verdict: I have an old interview with Prince from around the time he was promoting “Emancipation”, and in it he was saying how “this album is all about happiness and being free.” Well, not really. Because while there may be a few flashes of happiness in some of the songs on this disc, there are also times where he’s very sad & sullen. Elsewhere he’s remorseful and amorous. That’s not to say it doesn’t make for interesting listening – and what Prince album doesn’t? Overall it’s quite a good first offering. Stay tuned for Disc 2!
