In 2021, SME/Legacy will distribute Prince’s recordings from 1978-1996. NPG Records and Legacy Recordings have also released a new 37-track compilation album – Anthology 1995-2010.

Releasing fresh recordings at a rapid-fire pace through a variety of distribution strategies, including his own online NPG Music Club, Prince was making some of the most provocative, experimental and soulful music of his career.” “For Prince, 1995-2010 was an unprecedented period of sustained and prolific creativity. These include The Gold Experience, 3121, Emancipation, and Chaos and Disorder. The albums released today cover his works from 1995 to 2010. A statement from SME/Legacy notes that “more than 300 essential Prince songs to the artist’s online-in print catalog.” It would still be another year before Prince would make major waves in the industry with his overwhelmingly well-received breakthrough, Dirty Mind.Today, SME/Legacy has released 23 Prince albums on all major streaming music services. to market him as a mainstream pop artist (“Don’t make me black,” he told the head of A&R at the label, Lenny Waronker), his work was still predominantly considered through the lens of the R&B and disco genres.

Reviews of Prince almost exclusively compared him to other African-American artists, and even though he was explicitly instructing Warner Bros. 11 on the Billboard Hot 100 - but in 1979 Prince was still struggling to break out of the rigid categorizations of the music industry. Those first out-of-town concerts were well-received, and the band was soon enlisted to open for funk superstar Rick James on a three-month tour, giving Prince the opportunity to win over new fans from coast to coast in the spring of 1980.Ĭommercially, Prince performed significantly better than his debut album - the album sold 3 million copies and was certified platinum, and three of its singles climbed the R&B charts, with “I Wanna Be Your Lover” crossing over to No. tour in support of Prince with his new band, which also included guitarist Dez Dickerson and keyboardists Matt “Dr.” Fink and Gayle Chapman, hitting 10 cities between November 1979 and February 1980.

Prince complete discography