Prince hasn’t quite finished lending his creativity to the world.
More than three years after his death, the singer’s unfinished memoir The Beautiful Ones will come out on October 29.
The book “is the deeply personal account of how Prince Rogers Nelson became the Prince we know,” publisher Random House said in a statement to the Associated Press.
It is “the real-time story of a kid absorbing the world around him and creating a persona, an artistic vision, and a life, before the hits and the fame that would come to define him”.
It will be issued in partnership with his estate.
The Prince Estate is thrilled to announce that on October 29, 2019, @RandomHouse will be publishing THE BEAUTIFUL ONES by Prince, the American artistic visionary—singer, songwriter, musician, producer, actor and filmmaker. Available for preorder now. https://t.co/gEqMEdYoEa pic.twitter.com/RJtK9fowH8
— Prince (@prince) April 22, 2019
Just weeks before his sudden death at age 57 of an accidental opioid overdose in April 2016, Prince revealed he was working on the memoir.
But all he had submitted when he died at his Minnesota home Paisley Park was around 50 handwritten pages, literary agent Esther Newberg said last year.
To fill out the artist’s thoughts on his life and 40-year career, The Beautiful Ones will feature rare photos, scrapbooks and handwritten lyric sheets provided by his estate, including the handwritten original treatment for his iconic movie and album Purple Rain.
The 288-page book is named for one of that album’s most famous tracks and will have an introduction by The New Yorker contributor Dan Piepenbring, who Prince had chosen as a collaborator.
With six months still to go before the memoir is on bookshelves, here’s five totally Prince moments you may have forgotten as a taster of what may be to come.
Prince and Beyonce rock the Grammys
She was a new solo singer, he was a long-time star, and together they rocked the 2004 Grammys with Purple Rain, Baby I’m a Star, Crazy in Love and Let’s Go Crazy. In 2011 Beyonce admitted she was “terrified” to work with Prince and said, “Truth be told, the word ‘icon’ only scratches the surface of what Prince was and what he remains to me”.
The love symbol
“I am yours now, and you are mine, and together we’ll love through all space and time.”
—Prince, "Seven" pic.twitter.com/iv6ZcZlzno
— Prince (@prince) April 10, 2019
From 1993 to 2001, Prince adopted an unpronounceable symbol (created from the symbols for male and female gender) as his stage name because his given name had been trademarked by Warner Bros. One-liners about “the artist formerly known as Prince” followed him the rest of his life, but the symbol is still pivotal to his Instagram identity.
The Black Album disaster
According to Rolling Stone, “There’s virtually no vinyl record in history more sought after by collectors than a genuine copy of Prince’s Black Album.” About 500,000 copies were pressed in late 1987, but the singer declared the work “evil” and ordered every copy be destroyed. Only three American copies from the original 1987 vinyl pressing have surfaced in the past 30 years. Last year a former worker at a Toronto record pressing plant, who saved a copy, sold it for $38,570.
Hoops!
Music wasn't the only thing @prnlegacy was passionate about. He also had a lifelong love of basketball, which was cultivated at an early age when he played on the team at Bryant Junior High in south Minneapolis. pic.twitter.com/uJdQpqtVCq
— Prince (@prince) March 21, 2019
His school basketball coach Richard Robinson called Prince (right, front row) an “excellent ball handler” and in 2004, a skit on Dave Chappelle’s show featured comedian Charlie Murphy reliving an impromptu game he played with Prince and his band in the 1980s. Prince (also a gun roller skater) dominated, then made pancakes. Prince later used a photo of Chappelle dressed as him on the cover of his single Breakfast Can Wait.
His part in Madonna’s fame
True fans of both stars know Prince duetted with Madonna on Love Song from 1989’s Like A Prayer album. But he also contributed a largely-unheralded, vital part of the album’s namesake single: The crazy jangling guitar that opens Like A Prayer before a door slams is Prince.
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