Ultimate Prince

Jack White went on social media Thursday night to clarify some previous comments he'd made about his plans to re-edit Prince's unreleased Camille album. Back in March, White, along with his Third Man Records co-founder Ben Blackwell, said they had secured the rights to the shelved 1986 album. Even though all of the songs originally intended for the album were released officially in some form - as B-sides, on other Prince LPs and as part of reissues - Camille has never been released as a fully realized album.

One musical genius borrowed from another when Paul McCartney took a page out of Prince’s playbook in 1989. The former Beatle was working on his eighth solo album, Flowers in the Dirt, and felt that one song in particular, “Distractions,” lacked “a certain pizazz.”. “I’d written...

Bonnie Raitt has revealed that her slide guitar sound can be heard in one of Prince's chart-topping hits. “He sampled some of my slide on 'Cream,'” Raitt noted in an interview with Apple Music's Zane Lowe. “I just showed him how I do it. So I got the feeling he said, ‘I don't necessarily have to learn how to do this because I can just sample you.’”

Prince wasn't a huge fan of other artists performing his songs. “Covering the music means that your version doesn’t exist anymore,” he said in 2011. Perhaps one exception to this was Foo Fighters. In 2003, the band reached out to Prince, asking permission for a U.S. release of its cover of "Darling Nikki," which had been released as a B-side to their Australian single "Have It All." The 1984 song was also included in the Foos' set lists.

The mid-'80s wasn't the greatest period of Pat Smear’s career. He’d achieved acclaim for his rhythm guitar work with Los Angeles punk band the Germs, but the group had split in 1981. Later, he’d go on to become a touring member of Nirvana and then a member of Foo Fighters, but in 1985, he was struggling to find work.

Jack White recently recalled some memorable advice Prince once offered him backstage. The two guitarists crossed paths some years ago at a show featuring White's then-wife Karen Elson and her group, the Citizens Band, plus Zoe Kravitz. "The show started and the lights went down and somebody bumped me and...

Rare footage of an 11-year-old Prince has surfaced thanks to the diligent work of some Minneapolis journalists. Reporters at WCCO, a local CBS affiliate, were working on an unrelated news story involving recent educator strikes. As they culled their archive of footage, they honed in on a clip from April...

Prince and the Revolution's Live concert film will receive a vinyl, CD and Blu-ray release for the first time. Prince and The Revolution: Live will arrive on June 3. It's available for preorder on the late artist's website in the aforementioned formats, as well as a collector's edition that includes three 150-gram LPs (purple, red and gold vinyl), two CDs, a Blu-ray video, a 44-page photo book, new liner notes and a poster.

The Supreme Court has decided to review a case focused on whether pop art icon Andy Warhol infringed on a photographer’s copyright by creating silkscreens of Prince. As CNN reports, Warhol Foundation attorneys brought the case to the Court, saying a lower court ruling against the late artist "threatens a sea change" in copyright law.

A new interactive exhibit titled Prince: The Immersive Experience is set to open in Chicago on June 9. Located at the Shops at North Bridge on the Magnificent Mile, the exhibit will feature a partial recreation of Paisley Park's famed Studio A, archival material from various eras of Prince's career such as clothing, guitars and photographs and a special 3-D representation of the iconic Purple Rain album cover.

A vineyard marketing wines under the name Purple Rain responded to a lawsuit launched by Prince's estate with an unusual defense. The matter went legal after Ohio's L'uva Bella Winery was awarded the trademark to the title in 2019. The musician's estate — which is locked in multiple court procedures as a result of his death without a will — claimed "likelihood of confusion" and "false suggestion of a connection" meant the trademark should be canceled.

Prince's long-shelved Camille album is finally headed to your turntable, courtesy of Jack White. White and his Third Man Records co-founder Ben Blackwell have revealed that they obtained the rights to release the 1986 album, on which Prince employs pitch-shifting to perform under the guise of the album's androgynous titular alter-ego. "We're finally going to put it out," Blackwell told Mojo. "Prince's people agreed - almost too easy."

A new book, Prince and Dickens, will inspect the surprising personal and artistic similarities between Prince and one of the most well-known writers of all-time, Charles Dickens. Written by Nick Hornby, a prolific British novelist and screenwriter whose work often includes references to popular music, the short non-fiction book will...

Morris Day's public sparring match with the Prince Estate to use the name Morris Day and the Time has garnered support from a crucial party: Primary Wave, the music industry group that owns a 50 percent stake in the late musician’s estate. Earlier this week, Day released a statement...

Morris Day claims he is no longer allowed to use the name Morris Day and the Time “in any capacity” due to a decision by the Prince Estate -- an accusation the estate has denied. “I’ve given 40 years of my life building up a name and legacy...

Prince’s estate will not be distributed among its owners until a management deal has been agreed between the two parties, a judge ruled this week. The long-running dispute over the value of the artist’s assets was recently settled. However, it didn’t resolve the question of how his legacy – including unreleased music, biopic rights and other potentially marketable assets – should be managed.

A new documentary chronicling the life of Irish singer Sinead O' Connor was denied use of a song that had a tremendous impact on her career: Prince's "Nothing Compares 2 U." O'Connor first recorded the track for her 1990 album I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got. It became one of her most successful hits, debuting at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100. But apart from a few chords, the upcoming documentary film Nothing Compares does not include the song. According to a title card that appears at the end of the film, "The Prince estate denied use of Sinead's recording of 'Nothing Compares 2 U' in this film." There has been no further comment from the estate regarding use of the song.

The six-year legal battle over the value of Prince’s estate was finally settled, with the figure given as $156.4 million. Details were revealed in a court filing on Jan. 14, bringing an early end to the dispute, which was set to return to court in March. Comerica Bank, the estate’s administrator, had registered a value of $82.3 million, while the IRS believed it was worth $163.2 million and also wanted to levy a $6.4 million "accuracy-related penalty.”

The Weeknd’s new album includes a profound hat-tip to Prince, with Jim Carrey adding a spoken word poem featuring a Purple Rain reference. The Carrey-co-written track, “Phantom Regret by Jim,” closes out the Weeknd’s recently issued fifth LP, Dawn FM. You can hear the song below.

Though 2021 marked the five-year anniversary of Prince's death, the iconic musician continued to make posthumous headlines. Issues regarding the late-singer's estate, including the proper valuation of his assets, remained a major topic. So too did Prince's extensive vault of unreleased material, some of which saw the light of day for the first time with the release of Welcome 2 America.