From the contractual dispute in which his name changed to an unpronounceable symbol to the studio effort he gave away for free via a conservative British newspaper, musical genius Prince made a number of career moves that sent the record industry (and no doubt his team of accountants) into the depths of despair. But even by the Purple One’s disruptive standards, withdrawing a new album just days before its release, as he did in 1987, appeared to be a truly baffling act of self-sabotage—even more so when you learn exactly why it didn’t hit shelves.
A Return To His Roots
Prince’s 1987 untitled 10th LP—known as The Black Album due to its monochromatic front cover and lack of both title and artist name—was intended to prove that he hadn’t entirely abandoned his cultural roots: After blockbuster albums such as Purple Rain and Sign o’ the Times, the superstar was accused by some of deliberately courting a white pop audience.
That’s why the majority of The Black Album’s eight tracks are firmly grounded in the sounds of distinctly Black music, whether it’s the James Brown-esque jazz-funk instrumental “2 N*** United 4 West Compton,” the missing link between Mary Poppins and Funkadelic that is “Superfunkycalifragisexy,” or the groove-laden “Cindy C,” a lascivious come-on to the supermodel Ms. Crawford only someone as sexually magnetic as Prince could get away with.
Accompanied by the likes of backing vocalist Sheila E (whose birthday party inspired three tracks) and saxophonist Eric Leeds (who provides the only other songwriting contribution on album closer “Rockhard in a Funky Place”) Minneapolis’s finest still found the time to get a little weird, too. “Dead On It” is a bizarre hip-hop parody that takes aim at rappers’ inability to hold a tune; recorded at a time when Eric B & Rakim and Public Enemy were revolutionizing the music world, this is, ironically, Prince at his most off-key.
Then there’s “Bob George” in which he assumes the identity of a gun-wielding domestic abuser who suspects his girlfriend of having an affair with the titular character (whose name apparently came from former manager Bob Cavallo and one of Prince’s fiercest critics, Nelson George). “That skinny motherfucker with the high voice,” sings an unrecognizable pitch-shifted Prince in a meta self-own amid squalling guitars, robotic beats, and gunfire shots.
Hitting the Self-Destruct Button
While always intriguing, The Black Album didn’t quite hit the same heights as Prince’s earlier ‘80s classics. Esteemed critic Robert Christgau, who managed to source a copy from an industry insider, said that “at its weirdest” it was “an unpleasant impersonation of a dumbfuck B-boy that’s no lost masterpiece.” But it wasn’t quality control that prompted its maker to hit the self-destruct button shortly before its scheduled December 8, 1987 release.
Indeed, it was a spiritual epiphany experienced during a nightmarish trip on MDMA that caused Prince to reevaluate what he’d just committed to record—and conclude it was a work of pure evil (which he would later say had been channeled through a devilish entity named Spooky Electric). The star demanded that his label, Warner Bros., withdraw each and every single copy in existence.
“I was very angry a lot of the time back then,” Prince explained to Rolling Stone three years later. “And that was reflected in that album. I suddenly realized that we can die at any moment, and we’d be judged by the last thing we left behind. I didn’t want that angry, bitter thing to be the last thing. I learned from that album, but I don’t want to go back.”
Of course, at the time, half a million copies of The Black Album were on the verge of being shipped from loading docks to retail outlets. But proving just how seriously Prince had invested in his demonic theory, he agreed to take the financial hit himself, using his own royalties to pay for their destruction. Luckily, what sounded like a gargantuan task on paper proved to be relatively straight-forward.
“It was a top security release,” ex-Warner Bros executive vice president Jeff Gold later told the BBC. “There was no single, there was no video, there was no announcement. Nobody knew it was coming. So because of that, there was a lot of security around it in the pressing plants. So when Prince decided it could not come out, it was relatively easy for the people at Warner Bros. to say, ‘Alright, destroy every one.’”
Inevitably, the LP did find its way onto the bootleg market. But just in case the message still hadn’t gotten across, the music video for “Alphabet Street,” the lead single from Prince’s less malevolent 1988 follow-up Lovesexy, contained the warning, “Don’t buy The Black Album, I’m sorry.” Yet Prince’s attitude toward the record did appear to soften over time.
He performed both “Bob George” (where he’d pretend to get shot), “Superfunkycalifragisexy,” and “When 2 R in Love,” on the 1988–’89 Lovesexy tour, with the latter ballad also getting a new life on the Lovesexy album. And then he reluctantly agreed to an official limited release edition on November 22, 1994; Warner also offered free copies to the first 1000 people who mailed their counterfeit versions back in return. Despite its “lost classic” status, however, The Black Album only peaked on the Billboard 200 at a lowly No. 47.
Like much of Prince’s material, the LP—which was also called “The Funk Bible”—remained unavailable to stream in the early Spotify age (the majority, however, is now available). It did eventually show up, though, on Tidal in 2016 to commemorate what would have been the star’s 58th birthday; just two months earlier, he’d tragically died from an opioid overdose.
A Collector’s Item
Prince’s untimely passing was inevitably capitalized on by those who’d been lucky enough to get their hands on his “evil” album before he’d yanked the project. Soon after, a promotional version of The Black Album fetched $15,000 online. A year later, one of five original copies discovered by chance in two Warner Bros. mailers went for nearly three times that amount at auction. And then in 2018, another first edition, also on vinyl, stored away by a crafty pressing plant employee broke the Discogs all-time record when it was snapped up for a cool $27,500.
Remarkably, The Black Album wasn’t the first Prince LP to get such treatment. For reasons unknown, the Purple One also canceled 1986’s Camille, a funk LP recorded under the guise of the titular feminine alter-ego, weeks before its scheduled release. And although the majority of its eight tracks were quickly repurposed elsewhere, including “Rockhard in a Funky Place,” the original remains in-demand: In 2016, a rare pressing sold for $58,787.
Yet thanks to its mysterious backstory, The Black Album remains the ultimate enigma in Prince’s vast back catalog. “He loved that album, but it seemed dark to him,” backing vocalist Cat Glover later told Wax Poetics about the moment he decided to leave it in the vault. “Something hit him that night that made him change—an enlightenment, a higher power.” Whether the record originated from evil or not, it undoubtedly provided one of the most colorful chapters in Prince’s deep mythology.
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