Though he wouldn’t pick up his name until he got his publishing back, this record really does represent Prince’s freedom. Freedom from his label, freedom from the hitmaking game, freedom from limitations: one hundred eighty minutes of music, an unprecedented issue. The man’s output is such that every six months could’ve seen the equivalent of Sandinista!, a notion that he might still view as tragic. He didn’t take his freedom for granted, pushing the record on Letterman, Oprah, Today, The Rosie O’Donnell Show, and The Chris Rock Show; on November 12, he played a set at Paisley Park that was broadcast live on MTV, BET, and VH1. Bill Bellamy and Phish were there.

Even for three CDs, the record feels casual, not careless. The indulgence is primarily found in the running time, not in stylistic exploration or indulgent linking tracks. As this and subsequent releases proved, an emancipated Prince was a relaxed Prince, free to frolic in the groove, even to take on others’ hits. (There are four covers. The best is his squelchy version of the Delfonics’ “La-La (Means I Love You)” — the song’s best jump-off until Ghostface. Second place goes to “I Can’t Make U Love Me,” which veers into comedy when Prince refers to his “bedroom slash church.”) You can distill a fine one-disc set from this mash, but the point is to drink from the juice of Prince’s mind-grapes. Being loosed didn’t mean more freakiness — Warner Bros. pressed up enough nastiness for 2,000 Live Crews — it meant connection (to his audience, to whatever muse had him at the moment) on his terms.

So it’s not exactly true that Prince freed himself from the hitmaking game, of course. There were no more executives to send him back for a single, but that also meant standing by his own picks. He didn’t send out perhaps the strongest pop cut on the record: “In This Bed I Scream,” a wry, bass-led number with one of his best synth hooks and a wounded guitar outro that fulfills the title by itself. Leadoff track “Jam Of The Year” was released as a live version, and he borrowed the title for a world tour, but on record it’s prime funk, with an unforgettable falsetto hook and some startling house-style vocals from Rosie Gaines. “Sleep Around” goes is a full-band dance number, slamming and gliding, the kind of visionary disco that works in any era. Emancipation offers his strongest funkwork in some time. His beef with rap was long settled; his dips into a hip-hop mode — the occasional obvious or ham-fisted sample drop aside — come, on the whole, quite natural.

Perhaps the biggest sign of the times is the second disc, devoted to his new wife Mayte Garcia. Warner Bros. might’ve moved the strongest cuts onto a single disc, or made the whole set a standalone, or forced him to make it a limited-edition wedding favor. Under the NPG regime, it’s its own program, a complete course of pillow funk, synth-draped slow jams, and acoustic-led, martially girded odes to his unborn child. It’s intimacy without the ick, personal without being inscrutable. Prince’s ballads never impressed critics like his uptempo style-melders: their loss. The existential, cinematic “Saviour” and the snapping, love-stoned “One Kiss At A Time” are among his most classic cuts. Every one’s not a winner, of course. He gives a couple of instantly-dated hails to the Internet Age (you can hear more from the fake dialup effects than guest vocalist Kate Bush on “My Computer”); “Jam Of The Year” speaks more to his new reality than the explicitly behind-the-scenes stuff, like “Emancipation.” And the drumming (partly Prince, partly Kirk Johnson) doesn’t have the facility of a Michael B., who’s only on three cuts.