In and Of Itself, It’s Historic

July 14, 2021 3:11 PM

‘Welcome 2 America’: The Oral History of Prince’s Lost Album [Rolling Stone; archive]
posted by chavenet (21 comments total)

I'm pretty certain that the title cut, "Welcome 2 America" was shelved because it's too similar to People Make The World Go Round by The Stylistics. I'll have to read up on this whole release the estate is putting out, but you can just hear Prince riffing on the earlier song and then getting it out of his system and putting the tape in the vault.
posted by Catblack at 5:07 PM on July 14, 2021 [2 favorites]

No, Welcome 2 America was an entire album, and also he did a "Welcome 2" tour, with Welcome 2 America, Welcome 2 Europe, and other legs of the tour. They rehearsed the album, recorded it, rehearsed the new songs for performance, and when they started rehearsing for the tour, none of the new songs were on the set lists and the album was never released.

I've been saving stuff up for a post about this so...

Prince’s ‘Welcome 2 America,’ an Unreleased Album, Is Due Out in July [NYT from a while back]

How a Previously Unreleased Album Could Impact Prince's Legacy [segment from WNYC's The Takeaway]

Welcome 2 America

Born 2 Die
posted by hippybear at 7:05 PM on July 14, 2021 [4 favorites]

Weirdly, Prince DID release an album in 2010, called 20Ten. It was a giveaway with various newspapers and magazines in Europe. I have it in my iTunes library. I don't remember any song off it although I've apparently listened to it several times.

I hope this new-to-us album has stuff I will remember on it.
posted by hippybear at 8:18 PM on July 14, 2021 [1 favorite]

I'm pretty certain that the title cut, "Welcome 2 America" was shelved because it's too similar to People Make The World Go Round yt by The Stylistics.

P-Funk (Wants To Get Funked Up) from Parliament seems to be a deliberate quote, really.
posted by hippybear at 9:20 PM on July 14, 2021 [2 favorites]

Heaps of fun anecdotes in the article - - thanx OP! I especially liked this one:

[Jason] Agel: One morning, they call the hotel where I was staying, which is, like, next to a Target parking lot in suburban Minnesota. They said someone would come get me. I wait out front of the hotel, and here comes this Cadillac sports car with an emblem on the hubcaps. It pulls up, blasting funk music, and then Prince steps out of the car. He’s wearing a jacket with patches of mirrors all over it. He’s fully done up as if he’s going to the VMAs. It was pretty amazing, like a complete Prince stereotype in front of me in real life.

We drove around for a while. He was like a Minnesota tour guide, telling me what summer was like and how beautiful it would be in October. We stopped at Caribou Coffee, which is their Starbucks, and the person behind the counter was very nervous, like, “Oh, my God, Prince is here.” We got our coffee and then went to the studio.

posted by fairmettle at 3:19 AM on July 15, 2021 [2 favorites]

I realize that releasing the stuff from the vault one piece at a time over many years will a) lead to each piece getting more serious consideration and b) provide a steadier income to the family/heirs/team Prince left behind. But wow, I wish they'd just dump it all at once and let us go hogwild.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 6:03 AM on July 15, 2021 [1 favorite]

The Prince estate should let great artists hang in the vault for a day each and curate a release from what they find. I would love to hear what say, Questlove or Janel Monae or H.E.R. would pull out of the stacks from there.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 6:07 AM on July 15, 2021 [11 favorites]

Indeed. It's difficult to overstate how prolific Prince's writings are. I've seen people cite thousands of unreleased songs. So the published work is only a small percentage of the entirety. Of course, Prince may have been pruning away the dead branches to let the good branches bloom, but the sheer volume suggests there must be some real hidden bangers in there.
posted by adept256 at 9:12 AM on July 15, 2021 [1 favorite]

Janelle Monáe – Make Me Feel is a Prince song.
posted by adept256 at 9:14 AM on July 15, 2021 [3 favorites]

Janelle Monáe – Make Me Feel is a Prince song

According to Wikipedia, Prince had some kind of contribution in terms of "creating sounds" for the album but the song was written by Monae and her team.

OTOH if you meant it's a Prince song in spirit, then definitely I agree.
posted by xigxag at 12:01 PM on July 15, 2021 [1 favorite]

It's difficult to overstate how prolific Prince's writings are. I've seen people cite thousands of unreleased songs.

Here's some anecdata for you:

I went to high school with someone who managed one of the remaining world-class recording studios in NYC from the 90s until he died a couple of years ago.

He told me once that there was a time when Prince was sending them multitrack tapes for mixdown on a weekly basis - he was too busy recording to waste time mixing them all, so he farmed the work out. This went on for nearly a year.

He also told me that he understood that his was not the only studio with this arrangement.
posted by aerosolkid at 12:55 PM on July 15, 2021 [2 favorites]

I have the Super Deluxe edition of Sign O' The Times, and it is beyond amazing. Most of the unreleased tracks (63 of them!) are every bit as good as the stuff that was released in 1987. Prince originally gave Warner Brothers a triple album called Crystal Ball, but the execs insisted he cut it down to a double record. They should have taken the triple.
posted by vibrotronica at 2:23 PM on July 15, 2021 [3 favorites]

I live in Minneapolis so of course this is getting heavy play on The Current. Personally, I see why Prince chose to not release it.
posted by misterpatrick at 3:04 PM on July 15, 2021

I absolutely love Prince, but I think most people would agree that 2010 was not his peak era. I am managing my expectations. If it has a few terrific songs, I'll be glad of it.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 4:23 PM on July 15, 2021

Prince originally gave Warner Brothers a triple album called Crystal Ball, but the execs insisted he cut it down to a double record.

You can recreate the Crystal Ball album in its entirety. All the tracks from it have been officially released at some point or other. Whether in the form they would have been in on that album or not remains up for debate.

I'm not sure whether the triple album would have really worked, to be honest. SOTT is already considered to be "too long and weird" by casual Prince fans. I would have welcomed it entirely at the time like I did SOTT as a double album. But I'm not sure CB would have really had much legs if it had been released as intended.
posted by hippybear at 8:06 PM on July 15, 2021

I think most people would agree that 2010 was not his peak era

I don't have more Prince albums than I do have, but I have several of his from the 2000s -- Musicology is probably my favorite of that batch, but I also have Planet Earth, 20Ten, 3121... None of them, sadly, are albums that lure me back.

The reviews for his last album during his life, HITnRUN Phase Two, which I didn't even know existed until yesterday, were really good according to Wikipedia. I just downloaded it and will enjoy it later this evening.

I don't know what to expect from Welcome 2 America. The oral history leads me to believe it was recorded with a new ensemble assembled for the project (am I wrong in interpreting that?), and I like what they did on the two tracks I've heard. The backup singers he has working for him sound great, and I like the vibe. I'm quite interested in hearing it on its release.
posted by hippybear at 8:22 PM on July 16, 2021

I'm enjoying it immensely.
posted by hippybear at 8:04 PM on July 30, 2021

Okay, so... it's Prince with a very specific backing group -- drummer, bassist, three backup singers, and Prince doing most of everything else. It's more immediately engaging than most of his output in the mid-2000s. It's way political, but in a "we need to wake up to save the world" sort of politics.

I've listened to it twice now, and I do recommend it if you are into Prince and you want a good album from him. It's not jammin' and funky, but it's a great, repeat-listenable album with a specific set of people backing him which gives it a distinct, yet still Prince, sound.
posted by hippybear at 9:22 PM on July 30, 2021 [1 favorite]

That comment sounds like I'm damning it with faint praise. I'm not!

I just don't want anyone expecting something like this on the album.
posted by hippybear at 10:20 PM on July 30, 2021

To me, the album is being oversold a bit.

Yes, it's by far better than just about all of what he officially released in that era. Yes, the political bent aged well. Yes, the band is funky, as opposed to the slick but inert jazz funk Prince was churning out in surrounding albums. Yes, there are songs you will want to hear again.

But it doesn't play like Prince rediscovered his muse. That is wildly over the top and I am flabbergasted how many outlets have taken that stance.

It sounds like Prince gave lukewarm effort to a more interesting record than the ones he was otherwise phoning in, and the latitude he gave his band helped them step the thing up into mild enjoyability. There are players and singers here putting in some real energy, even if Prince himself... mostly does not.

There is little to no urgency here. The restless, itchy, coloring-outside-the-lines Prince is nowhere to be seen here. And the political stuff mostly only is able to apply now because it's so damn vague.

I'd give it a C- for a Prince album but with the caveat that it does outshine the clanging D's and F's that mostly surround it chronologically. And of course, the reality is, C- for Prince would be pretty good for most people.

TL;DR: not a lost gem, just a less skippable late career piece.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 12:35 PM on August 6, 2021

The official Prince podcast has some episodes about the album, three out of tour released so far. Interesting listening, if one is so inclined.
posted by hippybear at 9:52 AM on August 8, 2021