Introduced to the world as something of a one man funk band with a debut that had him writing, producing, and performing as well as playing all of the instruments, the bashful seventeen year old from St. Paul’s became one of few artists to live up to his label as a prodigy. Curiously prolific, Prince released a new album every year and with each came a reinvention of both sound and style. From the subway flasher sleaze of Dirty Mind, the sexual pageantry of Purple Rain, the Beatlesesque “Around the World in the Day”, up to Parade, an album and film project more suited to the French Rivera than the cold plains of Minneapolis, the clean-living recluse spent ten years searching for his identity, and by all accounts briefly discovered it.
In 1987, Prince disbanded The Revolution to embark on what he intended to be his masterpiece, a triple album with the working title of Crystal Ball. Unmoved by the ambition of the project, Warner Brothers was unwilling to release so much material and demanded it be reduced to a double album, eventually titled Sign of the Times. While embraced as classic by both fans and critics, a familiarity with the excluded material reveals an inconsistency of tone and a lack of breathing room that might have made its original conception the only purely successful triple album in music history.
Things then seemed to come undone for the sensitive genius. Spurned by his label, Prince planned his next release with a generic black jacket and without a credit or title to assure low sales. The music was an uncharacteristically angry take on the industry articulated by his devilish alter-ego, Camille. At the last minute, Prince regretted this negativity and had “The Black Album” pulled from release, and then replaced it with its polar opposite: bright and optimistic and steeped in religion, Lovesexy started the search for spiritual redemption that would eventually consume a man who went from one who once dragged music forward to one who would struggle to follow.
That said, his prolific peak provided as much quality and quantity of output as any artist in history, a fact made more incredible in light of the thousand or so unreleased songs reputedly stored in his infamous vault, which fans hope will live 2 see the dawn. As a crash course for the uninitiated, I’ve put together a chronological tour through each of his studio albums, and a selection of my favourite of the unfinished and unreleased songs I’ve collected over the years.
Written, Produced, and Performed by Prince – Album Tracks
Interview Excerpt
Soft and Wet
I Feel For You
Sexy Dancer
Let’s Work
Partyup
When You Were Mine
All The Critics Love U in New York
Computer Blue
Take Me With U
Temptation
Paisley Park
I Wonder U
Sign O’ the Times
Bob George
Alphabet Street
I Wish U Heaven
Vicki Waiting
Joy In Repetition
Money Don’t Matter 2Night
Segue
Papa
Friend, Lover, Sister, Mother, Wife
Beautiful Strange
The Work Pt. 1
Musicology
Black Sweat
Lavaux
Electric Adolescence – Prince – Album Tracks 60 mins/ 320 kbps/
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Written, Produced, and Performed by Prince – Unreleased Tracks
Interview Excerpt
Leaving For New York (Demo)
Turn It Up
Extra Loveable
Possessed
Purple Music
Lisa
G-Spot
Tick Tick Bang (1980 Version)
We Can Funk (Early Version)
Cloreen Bacon Skin feat. Morris Day
Electric Intercourse
Baby, You’re a Trip
All My Dreams
Witness 4 the Prosecution
Sexual Suicide
100MPH
Train
Last Heart
Databank
Movie Star
Nevaeh Ni Ecalp A
Crystal Ball
Old Friends 4 Sale
There’s Others Here With Us
Poem to the Lady in White
Kiss (Acoustic Demo)
Electric Adolescence – Prince – Unreleased Tracks 60 mins/ 320 kbps/
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