Anthology: 1995-2010 is the seventh compilation album of Prince’s studio work, and the third official posthumous album release, released with no prior announcement in August 2018 as the first Prince release through a new deal through Sony’s Legacy Recordings covering Prince’s post-Warner Bros. independent output (some of which was originally released as ). As such, this was the first compilation to include material from this era, although a few tracks were included from ’s Warner Bros. releases The Gold Experience and Chaos And Disorder.
Although billed as an anthology from 1995-2010, the tracks Dream Factory and Crucial, released on Crystal Ball in 1998, were recorded in November 1985 and September 1986 respectively. Additionally, many of the tracks originally released on The Gold Experience and Chaos And Disorder (along with Strays Of The World), released on Crystal Ball, were recorded in 1993 or 1994. The "1995-2010" designation refers only to original release dates, therefore.
The 37 tracks come from 20 albums released from 1995-2010, and all are studio tracks with the exception of Empty Room, taken from the C-Note live album, and never released in studio form. All 20 albums were made available for streaming on the same day as the compilation’s release, under the same deal with Sony’s Legacy Recordings (One Nite Alone... Live! and One Nite Alone... The Aftershow: It Ain’t Over were also made available to stream, though they were not represented on this release).
Most albums were represented by only one track on the album. Chaos And Disorder, Emancipation, Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic, Musicology, The Chocolate Invasion and Lotusflow3r were all represented by two songs each, while Crystal Ball, The Rainbow Children and Planet Earth were represented by three songs each. The Gold Experience had a much stronger representation than any other album, with six tracks from the album.
Notably absent was The Most Beautiful Girl In The World, Prince’s first release under the name (also his first release independent of Warner Bros.). It is unclear if this is because rights for the track reside with Warner Bros. or if it is possibly related to an ongoing copyright infringement case involving the song. Also absent was material from Old Friends 4 Sale and the soundtrack album Girl 6, rights for which seem to reside with Warner Bros.
There were no previously-unreleased tracks on the album. The only change from previous releases appeared to be a clean fade-out on Crucial (which was overlapped with An Honest Man on Crystal Ball). Interestingly, Hate U was not, in fact, the album version, but the longer full-length version (without the NPG Operator segue overlaid on the finale), which was released with the erroneous title "Album Version" on the Hate U maxi-single.
Due to the nature of the compilation, none of the 37 tracks had appeared on a previous studio compilation album in any form.
The compilation is available to stream and download in digital form only. It is not known, but not likely a physical release was planned at any point
Promotion
Short internet-only videos were posted by Legacy Recordings to promote the album at the time of release, and a 30-second TV commercial was broadcast in Japan. Digital billboards were also posted in key promotional cities.
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