Spice has released Emancipated, her second studio album and her first as an independent artist, on Friday, August 26, 2022. The nine-track set comes through Stealth Music Group and her own Spice Official ENT, under licence to UnitedMasters, streaming listings show, a little over a year after 10, her Grammy-nominated debut for VP Records.
All nine tracks are in the JamaicansMusic library, sourced from Spice’s official YouTube channel: press Play all above to hear the album while you read, open the Emancipated album page, or jump to the track-by-track player below.
The title is literal. Spice announced the album from the Sumfest stage in July, moments after Joe Bogdanovich crowned her Queen of Dancehall, and told the crowd she was now free of her label deal. She had wanted it out on Emancipation Day. “I wanted this project to come out on the first of August which is actually Emancipation Day… so I had to push back from August first,” she told DancehallMag. An August 19 date slipped by a week to today. “You know I’m an August baby, my birthday just passed, I’m celebrating Emancipated so I just really wanted to have an August project.”
‘Celebrating me’
There are no guest features, a deliberate contrast with 10. “I personally feel like I’m celebrating me, so I wanted it to be about me,” Spice said. “I’m also the producer for most of the songs. If you notice, it’s Spice Official Ent. Production, so, I just wanted to do a project that celebrates me and that’s really why I wasn’t big on trying to do collabs for this project.” Shaggy, Shane Hoosong, Costi, Corte Ellis, Rico Santana and Jermaine “JB The Artist” Baker co-produced four of the songs, DancehallMag reports; Spice says she narrowed 20 or 30 songs down to nine.
“If I had to summarize this album I would probably summarize it by saying it’s gonna take you to a happy place,” she said. “It’s a burst of energy. Very versatile.” The first single, “Clap Clap,” came out on July 22; “Tape Measure” also has a video.
Tracklist
Each title links to the song page in our library, where you can play it, queue it and find the official upload.
Update, September 6: Emancipated sold the equivalent of 1,500 units in the United States in its first week — 700 in pure sales and 1.1 million audio and video streams, per Luminate figures reported by DancehallMag — a slightly stronger opening than 10 (1,447 units). It debuts at No. 7 on Billboard’s Reggae Albums chart dated September 10.
“They stuck with me for the past 10 years battling to be free,” Spice said of her fans, “and now that I’m free I just wanna say thank you to them and now it’s time to celebrate this Emancipated project, together.”
Listen and dig deeper
- Play the full album on the Emancipated album page — the official audio uploads from the Spice Official channel’s album playlist, with the “Clap Clap” and “Tape Measure” music videos as the library versions of those two songs.
- Browse the Spice artist profile in the JamaicansMusic library.
- Related: Spice crowned Queen of Dancehall at Sumfest 2022. From our archive: “Why Spice is winning in Dancehall” (2018).
Sources: DancehallMag — “Queen Of Dancehall Spice: The ‘Emancipated’ Interview” (Dani Mallick, Aug 24, 2022); Spotify — Emancipated (tracklist, credits, release date); DancehallMag — “Spice’s ‘Emancipated’ First Week Album Sales Are In” (Sept 6, 2022); DancehallMag — “Spice Shares Deluxe Edition Of ‘Emancipated’ Album” (Sept 14, 2023). A deluxe edition with three Shaggy-produced additions followed in September 2023 and is not included in the library album.
Editor’s note: This story is part of an archive backfill covering Jamaican music news from 2022 to 2026. It is dated to the events it reports.