Prince fans were thrilled last week with the surprise release of the original studio cut of “Nothing Compares 2 U”. That excitement has now turned to euphoria with the announcement from the entertainer’s estate that a new album of previously unreleased material will drop on Sept. 28.
Perhaps even more exciting is the hint that this won’t be the last collection of new material from Prince, either.
“Prince recorded and rehearsed and performed constantly, and he taped everything, so once you think you’ve gotten close [to finding everything], you find new things,” says says Troy Carter, who is overseeing the categorization of Prince’s musical estate. “The vault was just one room and that room ran over into multiple rooms, and this was [mostly] before digitization so you have hard drives, and tapes and things like that. So we’re still in the process, and the fun part of my job is finding new things — every week I’m getting a new call about something special.”
Carter is holding back the details of the album to maintain the surprise, but says the songs are from a specific time period. He says the plans to release an album this year sprang from the excitement surrounding the release of “Compares”.
Prince died of a drug overdose in April 2016. And while there might be more Prince music, movies or other projects to come, don’t expect a flood anytime soon.
“We have a very specific plan around the music, because we don’t want to just dump things into the marketplace and have things out just to have them out,” says Carter. “Prince was very thoughtful in the way he released music and toured, and being able to preserve and protect that is important as well.”