Prince was one of the world's most talented artists – and also a really prolific songwriter who left a secret archive believed to contain thousands of unheard recordings.
Whenever a musical icon dies, the understandable convention is to look squarely backwards. Grief is formalised in obituaries. Back catalogues are hastily appraised, then reappraised. Above all, there’s a sense of reluctant finality: show’s over, folks, nothing more to see here. Prince Rogers Nelson – the man known best as Prince but also, variously, as The Artist Formerly Known as Prince, and simply an unpronounceable glyph – never was much for convention.
When he died in April 2016, aged 57, of an accidental overdose at Paisley Park, his Minnesota home, together with a sense of loss fans experienced a peculiar feeling of anticipation. As music legend had it, Prince kept a vault deep in the bowels of Paisley Park containing hundreds of hours of unreleased recordings and other material. The hope was that it might now be opened.Subscribe to News24 for just R75 per month to read all our investigative and in-depth journalism. You can cancel any time.