Technically, The Black Album came out (officially) during the time frame you’ve described – late 1994 or early '95, I think. Late to the game, it was the first Prince album I ever bought.
Emancipation got some airplay. He was also on Today around that time, with Mayte, not long after their child died. Usually I wouldn’t put on the TV in the morning but for whatever reason I happened to catch it when Prince was on. Emancipation is the only other album I have from that period and to be honest I can’t remember the last time I listened to it. (It’s probably been longer since I listened to Symbol.) OTOH I played Black Album again just a couple of weeks ago.
Ultimate mixed feelings about this. On the music side, I am worried about hack producers getting their hands on it, and trying to “modernize” it in various ways,changing the arrangements, rather than just mastering and mixing it in a contemporary way.(Lovesexy, one of his existing works, could really use some modern mixing and mastering, bigger bass, lead guitar up in the mix). A real Prince fan should be making decisions about these things. I would love to have a job curating and protecting his material.
There is also the problem of supposed corporate ownership of a lot of his stuff. Since he got back his master recordings from WB, you’d think that the stuff he recorded while under contract would have been his too, the whole thing is a mess. I don’t think his remaining family members are any more qualified to handle his music either. It’s so strange that he fought so hard for complete control, and had no contingency plan for his material after his demise. He’s not around to care anymore, of course, but I think he’d be mortified about what’s going on. Or…, maybe he would be amused.
Yeah i’ve heard of some stories around Prince’s Black Album and he was the one that made the choice to pull it saying that the album was “evil”, though as far as i understand it was during a time Prince was struggling with people taking his music’s message seriously beyond being just a good tune to get down with. He had asked a friend what he thought of the album before it was released and he said it sounded great and that answer cemented his decision to pull it since it was not what he wanted to hear.
Pretty sure said friend talked about it during a Questlove Supreme interview, i can find out who that is if need be, i forget who the guy is.
Currently trying to figure out what interview it is. It was done for his Pandora show, but there might be a transcript or at least i could tell you what episode it is. I’ve got an episode range sort of narrowed down.
Edit: I think it’s the Babyface interview, but it’s a long interview. Very long. I don’t mind relistening to it when i have a free afternoon and will confirm or not.
I’m not sure bluegrass was part of his musical sensibilities but i would not be against the idea of Prince doing some really weird jumps across musical genres.
However, while I own many of his older albums or best ofs, I have nothing after the symbol album. Nor do I recall hearing anything on he radio after that. Did he lose his main stream appeal? Did he get more experimental? If one were to pick up one of the newer albums, which should one try?
Prince started releasing music on his own independent label, NPG records. This started in the mid-90s, a few years before MP3 and iTunes became mainstream, so the major labels still had control over the bulk of music distribution, keeping Prince’s new releases out of the limelight.
There’s also the fact that after Prince was free from Warner Music, he was too eager to put too much music out there. Emancipation could (and probably should) have been 3 separate albums. The Crystal Ball compilation was 3 CDs, with a 4th CD of new acoustic recordings. Prince always wanted to release huge amounts of music at once – Dream Factory was going to be a triple-album, but it was shaved down to the double-album Sign O The Times – and the labels kept stopping him. Had he timed his releases better in the late 90s, he probably would have had much more success with them. That said, it still wouldn’t have gotten him on the radio.
As far as post-Warner releases, Emancipation, The Gold Experience, Musicology, 3121 are all worth a listen. There are scattered gems on Crystal Ball, New Power Soul, The Chocolate Invasion, and his last three albums.
