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Prince at a "Welcome 2 America" concert in Inglewood 2011: The album for the tour is ten years late
Photo: Kevin Mazur / WireImage / Getty Images
For the first time since his death in 2016, a full album of previously unreleased songs from Prince's estate will be released.
The musician recorded "Welcome 2 America" in 2010; the album was originally planned for release in 2011, but was not released at the time - although Prince even went on a tour with the title.
There was no justification for this.
On July 30th, 2021, “Welcome 2 America” will be released with twelve songs recorded in the Paisley Park studio in Minneapolis;
The recordings were previously stored
in its legendary treasury,
the vault
.
In a release from Prince's estate administrators, the songs documented his "concerns, hopes, and visions for a shifting society that foresaw an era of political division, disinformation, and a renewed fight against discrimination."
The title song has already been made public, a spoken word description of the US situation in the early 2010s, in which Americans let themselves be distracted by the functions of their iPhones, it is about celebrities and their sex tapes, about Google, about the »land of the free, home of the slave ".
According to the New York Times, the other songs announced include the songs “Running Game (Son of a Slave Master)”, “Born 2 Die” and “One Day We Will All B Free”.
The Guardian has announced a deluxe version of the album, which will be accompanied by a 23-piece concert film from the “Welcome 2 America” tour.
So far, two Prince albums have been released posthumously.
On the one hand the acoustic set "Piano and a Microphone" from 1983;
on the other hand »Originals«, a collection of demo recordings of Prince compositions that other artists later recorded and made popular.
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