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Prince estate announces unreleased album, ‘Welcome 2 America’, due in July

The album from the vault, recorded in 2010, ‘documents Prince’s concerns, hopes, and visions for a shifting society, presciently foreshadowing an era of political division, disinformation, and a renewed fight for racial justice’

Rachel Brodsky
Los Angeles
Thursday 08 April 2021 18:38 BST
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The Prince estate has announced plans to release a never-before-heard album from a collection of unreleased music.

The 12-track album, titled Welcome 2 America, was recorded in 2010 and will be released on 30 July via Legacy Recordings.

Prince's enigmatic and prescient statement album #Welcome2America will be released July 30, 2021, by The Prince Estate and @SonyLegacyRecs," the Prince Twitter account wrote in a statement. “The Deluxe Edition includes the previously unreleased studio album and a full 2011 Prince concert at @TheForum on Blu-ray.”

“Recorded in 2010 before the Welcome 2 America Tour, the studio album #Welcome2America documents Prince’s concerns, hopes, and visions for a shifting society, presciently foreshadowing an era of political division, disinformation, and a renewed fight for racial justice.”

“’The world is fraught with misin4mation. George Orwell's vision of the future is here. We need 2 remain steadfast in faith in the trying times ahead,’ Prince told @EbonyMag in 2010, around the time he was recording #Welcome2America,” the statement continues.

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The album features tracks with titles such as “Running Game (Son of a Slave Master)”, “Stand Up and B Strong”, “Same Page, Different Book”, and “One Day We Will All Be Free”.

Prince died of an accidental fentanyl overdose at his Paisley Park estate in suburban Minneapolis in April 2016 at the age of 57. Shortly after his death, a vault filled with unreleased songs was been drilled open by the company responsible for his estate.

The late singer was the only person who knew the code to the vault, which reportedly contained enough of his music to release a new album every single year for the next century, forcing the company temporarily responsible for his estate, Bremer Trust, to break into it.

According to the singer’s former recording engineer Susan Rodgers, who worked with the star during the 1980s, the vault was almost full when she left in 1987, with songs in there that pre-date his legendary Purple Rain album.

There are thought to be thousands of unreleased tracks in there, with Ms Rodgers telling ABC’s Good Morning America: “We could put out more work in a month than most people could do in a year or more.”

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