The albums Prince thought were too weird to release: “Really erotic”
Prince was one of the few artists who seemed to have too much talent for one human’s body. He could not hold down the fort for every facet of his music behind that small of a physique, but even if he could play every genre he got his hands on, he could spit out that material faster than most people could keep up with, which explains why his discography is among the largest in music history. But apparently, what we’re listening to is only a fraction of the kind of music that ‘The Purple One’ has behind the scenes.
Then again, the work that Prince has made that’s on the public record is more than enough for any other musician’s lifetime. His insane run of albums from Prince to roughly Batman is one of the most unrivalled runs of classics in anyone’s discography, and after sampling all the greatest pop songs of the 1980s, a track like ‘Purple Rain’ will always send someone to a higher plane of existence the first time they hear it.
But while Prince’s blockbuster album and movie might be what he’s most remembered for today, the accurate indicator of what he could do was Sign O’ The Times. There are pieces of his musical identity across every song on Purple Rain, but given how many twists and turns his double album experience goes on, it’s clear that he was operating at the peak of his powers when it came to funk, rock, soul, and everything in between.
Even in his later years, Prince always remained consistent when it came to his records as well. There are pieces that didn’t hit the same with his audience, like The Rainbow Children, but listening to anything off of Musicology, it wasn’t like he was ever straining to find inspiration. He wanted to use the gift God gave him in whatever way he could, but that didn’t mean keeping parts of his music at bay.
“You’d find some amazing jazz work, you’d find the best, most heady tracks that The Revolution recorded, the ones that we thought were too far gone back in the 1980s.”
Prince
When talking about pieces in his vault, Prince said that there were entire albums that were a bit too eclectic for the mainstream, saying, “You’d find some amazing jazz work, you’d find the best, most heady tracks that The Revolution recorded, the ones that we thought were too far gone back in the 1980s. You’d find the more psychedelic rock version of The Time. You’d find the really erotic Prince, and you’d find the future.”
But the fact that there was that much stuff still in the vaults is staggering, looking back at what The Revolution made in their prime. Albums like Around the World in a Day were already flirting with something that was more psychedelic, so there’s a good chance that some songs would go back into his vault and stay there despite having the potential to be one of the greatest songs he ever made.
And that’s also discounting the mammoth albums that he released in the 1990s. Projects like Emancipation and Crystal Ball were already some of the most condensed versions of Prince’s work, rounding out to three hours a piece, and yet some of them still don’t hold a candle to what he was talking about here. And considering this is the same person who wrote songs like ‘International Lover’ and named songs ‘Come’ and ‘Cream’, there’s no telling what that “really erotic” version of him would have sounded like.
What he said is also barely scratching the surface, considering that director Kevin Smith talked about working with him during the Rainbow Children album rollout and hearing songs that would eventually go into his vault back then. Prince was one of the most prolific artists in the world, capable of making absolute brilliance, but for as many classics as he has under his belt, we still might be seeing an incomplete number of masterpieces.
