Prince’s Legacy, 7 years later

Casey Rain
The Violet Reality
Published in
7 min readApr 20, 2023

Where we are, and what might be next.

Tomorrow, on the 21st April 2023, it will mark seven years since the heartbreaking loss of Prince Rogers Nelson, unquestionably one of the greatest talents the music world has ever known. His legacy looms large, and although it may perhaps always be dominated by his stellar 1980s run of classics, thankfully fans have been treated to some posthumous efforts outside of this era too, with releases such as The Versace Experience and The Truth — both of which were made widely available for the first time and in new formats, including vinyl, over the last few years.

However — over the last several months, there has been a large amount of discussion over the state of his Estate, since it exited probate last year and the reigns were handed over from Comerica Bank to two new corporations — Prince Legacy, LLC, and Prince OAT, LLC. The former is being run by former Prince attorney and businessman Londell McMillan and his business partner, Charles Spicer, while the latter is under the control of independent music publisher Primary Wave, who hold the ownership and rights to several posthumous catalogs, having started out with the Nirvana catalog. It would be remiss of me to not mention the fact that in recent weeks, much speculation has occurred over who exactly is making the decisions, with at least one heir expressing dissatisfaction over the current state of affairs. Posthumous Estate operations are a complex business, with many moving parts, and this is not out of the ordinary. In fact, looking at several posthumous Estates, it’s probably to be expected, but it’s important to know that as fans, we aren’t privy to all information, and the long-term scenario will, in the end, be what’s important — not any instances of short-term infighting.

It’s accurate to state that, from a public and fan perspective, movement has been a little slow since the Estate takeover. Having been treated to multiple releases a year from Comerica, including Super Deluxe Editions of classic albums such as 1999 and Sign O’ The Times, we have yet to see the “New Estate” bear any meaningful fruit — although there has been a steady supply of merchandise since then. This seems set to change, with strong rumors and a handful of leaked photos regarding forthcoming Diamonds & Pearls and Love Symbol album reissues doing the rounds, however we have yet to see an official announcement. With that being said — in previous years we have seen announcements made at the annual Celebration event at Paisley Park, which is again taking place this June, and it seems likely there will be some sort of announcement made to coincide with that again, if not earlier.

Celebration 2023 Promo Image

The two giant elephants in the room, however, are yet to be unveiled, and that’s two projects that are certain to gather a lot of attention. Done right, they might combine the most effective one-two punch of Prince’s posthumous legacy to date. So let’s talk about what those are.

First — the long awaited Netflix documentary series. Having been in production for several years already, we might well assume that the series is close to completion. It seems a pretty safe bet that this is a project that Netflix may be willing to spend a lot of money on marketing, and as a series, can can come closer than any previous effort to really digging deep into the long, rich legacy of Prince’s career, bringing his music and values to a new, and large audience. One casualty of Prince’s respectable fight for artists rights and ownership was that he took a stand against YouTube for many years towards the end of his life. However, he unfortunately did not anticipate YouTube’s dominance for many years as a music discovery engine. The sad side effect of this, plus pulling his music from Spotify, led to an entire generation having little access to his music. Indeed, as a Prince-focused YouTube channel, our own statistics show that Gen Z are not tuning in to Prince related content on YouTube anywhere near as much as other generations. The Netflix documentary may be the perfect moment to try and change the tide on this. Rumors have circulated (and we must stress that these are rumors) that the current Prince Estate is not happy with the deals made under the previous administration, and we must hope that this has not caused serious delays to the Netflix project.

Secondly — although 7 years is an incredibly important milestone when considering Prince’s stance towards numerology, and what that represents in terms of his career, it’s possible that 2024 might be the more important milestone from a mass-market perspective. That’s because 2024 represents the 40th anniversary of Prince’s highest selling album, the strongest commercial cornerstone of his entire catalog — Purple Rain.

Purple Rain fan art by Yann Delon (from Behance)

It’s no secret that the existing Purple Rain Deluxe set released in 2017 missed the mark in a few ways that rankled longterm fans. There were obvious outtake song omissions — a strange choice for the original album to be remastered by Josh Welton, who although a competent producer and songwriter, is not a professional mastering engineer, and scant focus given to the movie, or the surrounding atmosphere that Prince created around the movie with protege acts such as Apollonia 6 and The Time. It would be an unfathomable missed opportunity for this not to be correct on the 40th anniversary of the album and film release. On top of that, with consumer audio companies such as Apple and Sonos putting a lot of development effort and marketing money into Dolby Atmos (Spatial Audio) mixing, it would be an extremely wise choice for the Estate to invest in doing so for a Purple Rain reissue. Our recommendation would be to hire Chris James, Prince’s former engineer, who has seen great success in the last few years delivering Dolby Atmos mixes for the likes of Fleetwood Mac. Seriously — if you have Dolby compatible equipment, check out the Dolby Atmos mixes of Rumours that Chris did, and you’ll be as impressed as we have been.

If it’s possible that these two projects might be timed to benefit from each other — then at that point we could be entering a whole new era of Prince’s posthumous legacy in terms of attention and scale. We’d like to see this also combined with some more limited edition Record Store Day style releases, and some wider availability of Prince concert footage. It would also be great to see the Estate work something out with still touring acts such as The Revolution, The Time and Sheila E, as Prince’s legacy also lives on through the live performances of the acts that he spent so much time mentoring.

Finally, it’s important to consider the fact that the promotion and preservation of Prince’s legacy isn’t just confined to the official activities of the Estate. In this fanbase, we’re blessed with a variety of fantastic organisers, activists and content creators who work tirelessly to spread the detailed knowledge of Prince’s legacy — something we’ve tried our best to do with our YouTube channel, The Violet Reality. We’d like to send a special shoutout to folks like De Angela Duff, whose academic conferences, such as last month’s Triple Threat 40 event in NYC have been a real labor of love for Prince historians. On top of that, fellow content creators such as Michael Dean, Dr Funkenberry, Prince’s Friend, and Funkatopia continue to do incredible work in the space via written, video and audio content.

To any fans (and we acknowledge your position) who have expressed concern about Prince’s legacy, particularly in recent months, my belief is that we shouldn’t focus on the short term, the rumor mill, or too much of what we think should happen. Prince’s legacy is solid and always will be, as long as we’re willing to do the work.

To Prince — It seems fairly obvious at this point that you weren’t overly concerned about the machinations of this physical world or what would happen after you transcended. Perhaps you knew your legacy was set in stone with what you achieved in life, and that you were happy to let the chips fall where they may after you started your journey to the great beyond. As you knew, the music lasts forever, and on this 7th anniversary, all I can say is — Thank U, and Eye Wish U Heaven. I hope you finally found The Dawn.

Peace, and be wild.
Casey Rain 💜

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My name is Casey Rain and I am an award-winning musician, documentarian and writer from the United Kingdom. I have guest-lectured at Universities around the world, including the University of Minnesota, on the music business, documentary production, and the life and career of Prince Rogers Nelson, as well as releasing several records on international major labels with the critically-acclaimed British Asian band Swami. You can follow me on Twitter here.

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Published in The Violet Reality

Music, love and funk brought 2U by The Violet Reality — pop culture junkies, artists, and the world’s leading authorities on Prince. Subscribe on YouTube, email for info! We are not affiliated, sponsored or endorsed by The Prince Estate.

Written by Casey Rain

Things I write: Songs, Blogs, Tweets / Things I make: Music, YouTube Vids / What I love: Prince, Michael Jackson & Video Games / You should: Follow Me! /

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