| 20Ten is the 35th full-length studio album by Prince. It was initially released on 10 July 2010 (fifteen months after the previous albums Lotusflow3r and MPLSound), included as a covermount with the Belgian newspapers Het Nieuwsblad & de Gentenaar and the British newspaper Daily Mirror (sold in a different edition as the Daily Record in Scotland), following the UK and Ireland distribution model of Planet Earth.
German music magazine Rolling Stone also carried the CD with their issue released on 22 July 2010, as did the French paper Courrier International (which originally had a release planned for 8 July 2010, which was postponed three days before release, likely due to the conflict of schedules with other papers).
Weblog DrFunkenberry.com reported that other European newspapers will distribute the album also, while Warner Bros. will distribute the album in other territories, but this distribution model was not followed. The tracklist was first announced via website MoQuake.com on 25 June 2010.
On 8 October 2010, French radio station Europe 1 played a clip of Rich Friends, which they announced as coming from Prince’s "new album", titled 20Ten Deluxe (which is thought to be a companion piece of the 20Ten album), but no other details are known, and 20Ten Deluxe remains unreleased.
Sessions and compiling
Most of the album was recorded at at Paisley Park Studios, Chanhassen, MN, USA between August 2009 and February 2010. Basic trackings of some songs took place earlier :
- Engineer H.M. Buff has stated that Future Soul Song was first recorded during his time working for Prince, indicating that it was first recorded between 1996 and 2000.
- Compassion is thought to have been recorded in 2006.
Promotion
No singles were released from the album.
Prince toured Europe on the Prince 20TEN Tour at the time of release, but only Act Of God and chants from Everybody Loves Me and Laydown were played live somewhat regularly, indicating that the album may have been considered a promotional tool for the tour, rather than the other way around. Future Soul Song was sometimes played during after shows and both Beginning Endlessly and Sticky Like Glue were done once, in 2010 and 2011, respectively.
The album was not eligible for the charts.
| 
2009: MPLSound ◄
