Somewhere inside Paisley Park, there are thousands of recordings the world has never heard. For ten years, the question of who gets to decide what becomes of them has proved nearly as complicated as the music itself. The Prince Estate announced Thursday the release of “Timeless,” a 10-track collection of previously unreleased vault recordings arriving August 28 via Sony’s Legacy Recordings, the estate’s distribution partner since a landmark deal in 2018 that moved 35 catalog titles to the label.
The album spans from 1977, when Prince was an unknown teenage prodigy in Minneapolis, through 2016, the year of his death. It is, the estate says, the first release ever curated to represent every major era of his career in a single collection.
That framing matters. For an estate that has spent much of the last decade embroiled in inheritance disputes, IRS valuations, internal civil wars among heirs, and a scorched-earth battle over a suppressed Netflix documentary, “Timeless” is as much a statement of intent as it is a musical event.
Prince died on April 21, 2016, without a will. That single fact set in motion one of the most protracted and expensive inheritance battles in entertainment history. More than 45 people initially came forward claiming to be rightful heirs. Six years of litigation drained tens of millions in legal fees before the estate’s value was finally settled, at approximately $156.4 million, following a negotiated agreement with the IRS in January 2022.
The estate was ultimately split evenly between two holding companies: Primary Wave, which controls an entity called Prince Oat Holdings LLC, and Prince Legacy LLC, owned by a consortium of heirs alongside former Prince advisers L. Londell McMillan and Charles Spicer Jr. Both sides pledged to honor Prince’s legacy. The peace was short-lived.
In January 2024, McMillan and Spicer filed a new lawsuit in Delaware court, alleging that family members, including half-sister Sharon Nelson, whom the two had previously represented, had attempted to oust them from Prince Legacy LLC and seize control of the entity managing roughly 50 percent of Prince’s catalog. A Delaware judge declined to dismiss the suit, meaning another chapter of litigation now runs parallel to the estate’s official release activity.
Nothing illustrated the estate’s instinct toward control more vividly than the fate of Oscar-winning filmmaker Ezra Edelman’s nine-hour documentary, which Netflix scrapped in February 2025 following intense pressure from Prince’s representatives. Edelman, who won his Academy Award for “O.J.: Made in America,” had spent five years on the project and was given extraordinary access to Prince’s archives. The resulting film reportedly included testimonies from former girlfriends alleging physical and emotional abuse, accounts that the estate claimed were factually inaccurate and “sensationalized.”
Netflix and the estate released a joint statement confirming the mutual agreement not to release the film. The estate celebrated on social media with the phrase “the vault has been freed.” Edelman did not share that enthusiasm. Speaking on a podcast, he was direct about what he believed was at stake: “It’s a joke. I can’t get past this, the short-sightedness of a group of people whose interest is their own bottom line.”
Edelman also argued that the estate’s lawyer told him the film would “do generational harm to Prince” and deter younger fans from loving him. The estate is now free to develop a sanctioned replacement documentary. None has yet been announced.
Against that backdrop, Timeless is a careful move. The estate had embarked on an ambitious reissue program in the late 2010s, releasing massive deluxe editions of records like “Sign O’ the Times” and “1999,” as well as the unreleased studio album “Welcome 2 America” in 2021 and the “Diamonds and Pearls” super deluxe set in 2023. That output had slowed noticeably, making today’s announcement the most significant vault release in several years.
Unlike the earlier deep-dive box sets, “Timeless” takes a panoramic approach. The earliest track, “I Am You,” dates to 1977. The closing track, a live recording of “How Come You Don’t Call Me Anymore?,” comes from 2016. Between them sit recordings from 1981, 1985, 1989, 1991, 1995, 2003, 2007, and 2012, a skeletal but sweeping self-portrait drawn from the vault’s vastness.
The estate offered a preview in April with “With This Tear,” a November 1991 Paisley Park recording on which Prince played, sang, produced, arranged, and performed every instrument himself. Today it released “Stone,” an unheard 1995 recording written by Sandra St. Victor, Tom Hammer, and Jules Van Even.
The announcement is timed to Prince Celebration 2026, the annual gathering at Paisley Park and venues across Minneapolis, which this year carries added weight as the tenth anniversary of his passing. Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey officially proclaimed June 1–7 “Prince Celebration Week,” and the city’s skyline will be illuminated in purple on June 6, the eve of what would have been his birthday. A special event on June 5 at The Armory will feature appearances from the NPG, and Revolution members Bobby Z and Lisa Coleman.
Timeless — Full Tracklist
- I Am You – 1977
- Tick Tick Bang – 1981
- Heaven – 1985
- I Wonder – 1989
- With This Tear – 1991
- Stone – 1995
- Calabama – 2003
- The Guilty Ones – 2007
- Bestest Friend – 2012
- How Come You Don’t Call Me Anymore? (Live) – 2016
The album will be released in a D2C-exclusive limited-edition Purple Marble Vinyl, standard black vinyl, and CD formats. It is available for pre-order now.
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