Prince album of unreleased material coming in September
LOS ANGELES: An album of unreleased songs recorded by the late Prince shall be released in September.
Last week, two days before the second anniversary of Prince’s death, his estate released a bounty of new stuff celebrating his work and his relationship with his fans: Not only the previously unreleased — and largely unheard — original version of “Nothing Compares 2 U” and an accompanying video of remarkable rehearsal footage, but also two new websites, one of them a deep dive into his discography including rare photos, videos and loads of information; the other a site where fans can share their remembrances called “Prince2me”.
It was a strong first salvo of “mind blowing” material to come from the new caretakers of the artist’s estate, led by entertainment adviser Troy Carter and his company Atom Factory. Carter is also global head of creator services for Spotify.
Prince was fiercely protective of his music and kept a large percentage of it — even some of his most popular videos and songs for which he didn’t feel he was properly compensated — locked away in his much-vaunted “Vault”. In the year since Carter took charge, the musical archives have been transported to a climate- controlled Iron Mountain facility in Los Angeles, where they’re being archived, restored and in some cases prepared for release.
On Sept 28, Carter said there will be an album of previously unreleased material.
The two new websites seem designed for two different kinds of fan experiences: “Prince2me” is more emotional, where the Discography seems more for music nerds.
Commenting on this, Carter said: “Yes, that was very intentional. I think the old way of doing websites was “let’s put everything on one platform,” and those platforms can become very complicated for fans to navigate. Now, between for example Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat, there are multiple products, they’re not all jammed into one platform, and that was the thinking behind it: How do you extrapolate different features for different fan sets? We hired a company called Base Design to work with us on some ideas for the web platform and one of them was the Discography, where you can go down a rabbit hole for a couple of hours, and also “Prince2me”, which is a platform for fans to express themselves.”
On what to expect next, Carter said: “First and foremost, it was about organising the vault and finding out what music exists, what footage exists, photos, personal notes, letters. Prince basically saved everything, so there are decades of music and video and artefacts, but it takes long time to go through each one of those and research the historical context: where is this from, who did he collaborate with, where was it recorded, what year, was it the final version?”