Prince / Emancipation by Mike Cardman NPG Rock and roll gets its pathos from its pathology. It's the most romantic of art forms, and so it simply ought not to be made by mature or happy people. Savvy Bob Dylan knows this, and that is why he has been busy painting pretty pictures instead of making meaningful music. Sting knows this, but he's a genre scavenger who doesn't care for the essence of what he plunders, and that is why (ever since he found the Tantric center of his Chi nature and started sounding like some Steven Seagal movie about a noble Zen private eye) he has been busy writing gorgeous gospel-tinged flamenco-country rock tunes in 7/8 instead of making meaningful music. Prince apparently does not know this, and that is why he has subjected his faithful fans to a new triple album, Emancipation, about his new-found wedded bliss, earning himself the same hearty "fuck off!" that happy couples and well-adjusted people inspire. The root of the problem is that Prince is gettin' some. Of course, he's always been gettin' some, but it used to be some of the run-of-the-mill anxiety-provoking, doubt-inducing sort, the kind that could inspire the best song about insatiable desire ever written,"If I Was Your Girlfriend." Now he's gettin' some of the soul-satisfying variety, the kind that inspires pleasant but unresonant songs like "Sex In The Summer" or "Sister/Lover/Wife/Mother" (also the title of a song by Mr. Big, which strikes me as disturbingly appropriate). As for how it sounds, Emancipation is just what you'd expect from post-name change Prince: impeccably produced and arranged, adroitly performed, and often tacky. It's Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis with even more glossy sheen. It's New Jack Swing, minus the swing ("New Jack," I suppose). No, no...what it really is, is Prince without his active yogurt cultures. C'mon, buddy! Start sublimating again. Please.

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