Prince - The Black Album

I have been so psyched about sharing this, and I couldn't wait until December, so here it is! Consider this a preview of the Christmas Present I keep mentioning. While I've posted Prince's Black Album before, this is a very different occasion, a rather special one as far as I am aware. This version of the album is from an official 1994 German vinyl pressing. The 1994 pressings are understandably more common than original 1987 versions, but it is said that the same masters for the 1987 vinyl and CD pressings of The Black Album were used in 1994, so the quality should be the same. Apart from US promos, Germany was the only country that had vinyl copies of The Black Album issued for retail, so this may be the first time an official retail version of the album on vinyl has been ripped and shared in lossless form online! Now of course I note that this "may be the first time" because it's not like I'm all knowing or something, but I can't find any other record of this having happened before so there is a good chance this might actually be the first. With that said, I've labored over this rip to manually declick it as best as I possibly could, and I think I've done a great job, but I mailed this and some of my My Bloody Valentine vinyl to PBthal so an even better rip might be online in the near future! For now though, here is the 16 Bit version of my rip in FLAC and V0 MP3. Trey will be posting the 24 Bit version on that private site soon.

Just in case you're not familiar with The Black Album, after 1987's Sign O' The Times, Prince wanted to issue another album that same year, and not a side project. This one would have no mention of the artist featured on the sleeve leaving the cover completely black. The record itself only listed the names of the songs, no other info apart from small legal text and a release code. The album itself was mostly recorded during and before the Crystal Ball/Sign O' The Times sessions began apart from a few tracks recorded for Sheila E.'s birthday party. Warner Bros. thought it was a great idea and started pressing copies. All was going according to plan until the week before it's release in December, when Prince was at a club and met Ingrid Chavez. They started talking, felt a connection and went back to Paisley Park where Prince apparently took ecstasy. He must have had a bad trip as claimed he saw the word GOD appear in the stars and was convinced The Black Album was evil. He called Warners in a panic, telling them they had to cancel the album and destroy all the copies, which amazingly enough they did. They did a thorough job but copies got out and The Black Album became one of the most bootlegged albums of all time. Prince swore he would never release the album but in 1994, while trying to negotiate the end of his contract with Warners, an agreement was made that The Black Album would finally see a limited release, supposedly in exchange for a one million dollar check.

The story of The Black Album being pulled from release is what is usually remembered the most, but the music is fascinating too. Some see it as the most negative thing Prince ever did, with songs like Bob George, where he lowered the pitch of his voice to a monsterous growl and threatened to kill a woman, Superfunkycalifragisexy, a funk workout about S&M somehow involving a drink made from squirrel meat, or Cindy C, an ode to the model Cindy Crawford in which Prince tries to get her naked. Others think it's the wildest and most daring thing he ever did, managing to remain funky as hell and intensely shocking at the same time. Some see it as terribly dated, with Dead On It, an anti-rapper scribe, as a sign of Prince's disconnectedness from reality. I just think it's a product of the time and place Prince was in his life, although I also think it's the last consistently good album he ever recorded. The Black Album is strange, funky, catchy and unforgettable. The unforgettable part is important because even if you don't like it you won't forget about it. It's essential Prince and one of the few albums of it's kind, something unafraid to be dark and nasty. It would have shocked many people if it had come out as originally planned, and it would probably be widely acknowledged as dated now, but there is no denying that Prince was in prime form.

If you want more information about the vinyl pressings of The Black Album, TheBlackAlbum.info is a great site with details regarding every official issue of the album and several bootleg versions. The wikipedia reference also has a lot of great information for you to peruse. Finally, the album is most certainly out of print and will probably not see reissue, at least not anytime in the remote future. Warner Bros. supposedly tried to strike a deal to do a deluxe reissue of Prince's catalog which would have featured lots of unreleased material, but the purple one wanted a lot of money. I've heard rumors that the he wanted was around twenty million, which wouldn't surprise me. So it returns to the bootleg nature in which it will forever live in infamy. Infamy is a nice place to rest your laurels, although I certainly don't think Prince would be satisfied with anything other than being number one, and that's just never going to happen again.


Prince - The Black Album (1994 German Vinyl Rip)

Side 1 FLAC

Side 2 FLAC

V0 MP3

01 Le Grind
02 Cindy C
03 Dead On It
04 When 2 R In Love
05 Bob George
06 Superfunkycalifragisexy
07 2 Nigs United 4 West Compton
08 Rock Hard In A Funky Place