Five years after Prince’s death, the artist’s estate has announced that it is releasing songs from his previously unreleased album, Welcome 2 America.
“Recorded in 2010 before the ‘Welcome 2 America Tour,’ the studio album #Welcome2America documents Prince’s concerns, hopes, and visions for a shifting society, presciently foreshadowing an era of political division, disinformation, and a renewed fight for racial justice,” the Prince Estate and Sony’s Legacy Recordings said in a statement.
The LP’s title track, “Welcome 2 America,” was released on Thursday as part of the album announcement.
Prince’s enigmatic and prescient statement album #Welcome2America will be released July 30, 2021, by The Prince Estate and @SonyLegacyRecs. The Deluxe Edition includes the previously unreleased studio album and a full 2011 Prince concert at @TheForum on Blu-ray. pic.twitter.com/Zrxr51bqfL
— Prince (@prince) April 8, 2021
“Throughout the powerful song, Prince delivers a searing, spoken-word soliloquy set to music about golden parachutes, the superficial nature of social media, reality TV-fuelled celebrity culture, and corporate monopolies in the music industry, ultimately concluding that America is the ‘Land of the free / home of the slave,'” the estate shared in a press release.
“The world is fraught with misin4mation. George Orwell’s vision of the future is here. We need 2 remain steadfast in faith in the trying times ahead,” Prince told @EbonyMag in 2010, around the time he was recording #Welcome2America.
— Prince (@prince) April 8, 2021
Shortly after Prince completed the Welcome 2 America album, he embarked on a tour of the same name.
He concluded the tour, which included multiple performances in several U.S. cities, with the historic “21 Nite Stand” at The Forum in Inglewood, California.
The deluxe edition of Welcome 2 America will include a never-before-released full concert video of Prince’s April 28, 2011 show at The Forum as well as the complete studio vault album on both CD and black vinyl (accompanied with a hi-resolution digital download), Variety reported.
Welcome 2 America drops July 30.
