Imagine walking into a Target back in the spring
of 2009. You're just there to buy toothpaste.
Right. Or maybe a new coffee maker. Yeah, exactly.
Just running errands. And as you pass the electronics
section, you stumble across a brand new three
-disc album by one of the greatest musical geniuses
of all time. Just sitting right there on the
shelf. Just sitting there. And the wildest part.
It is selling for less than the price of a decent
deli sandwich, like under 12 bucks. Which is
just, I mean, it's insane to think about now.
It really is. That is exactly the chaotic, brilliant
trap that Prince set for the music industry.
And today, you are about to see exactly how he
pulled it off. Yeah, and the context of 2009
makes that image even more jarring. At that time,
the music industry was absolutely terrified.
Oh, completely panicking. Right. CD sales were
in this terminal freefall. iTunes was cannibalizing
full albums by selling like 99 cent singles.
And the global economy was still reeling from
a massive recession. The 2008 crash was still
very fresh. Exactly. Most artists were just clinging
to whatever traditional marketing still worked.
They weren't taking massive risks. Well, welcome
to this deep dive. Today, our mission is to explore
exactly how a musical genius navigates that shifting,
panicked landscape. We are looking at a comprehensive
overview of a single day in music history, March
24, 2009. Such a huge day. Huge. And we're going
to break down the sheer, staggering ambition
of Prince's triple album project, Litus Full
of the Roar. What's fascinating here is the timing
of this massive drop. You have to remember, 2009
marked the 25th anniversary of his career -defining
masterpiece. Purple Rain. Wow, 25 years. Yeah.
And for almost any other artist on earth, a 25th
anniversary is a time for a comfortable victory
lap. You put out a remastered edition, you book
a global stadium nostalgia tour, and you just
coast. You cash the check. Exactly. But not prints.
No. OK, let's unpack this. Because dropping three
entire albums on a single Tuesday isn't just
ambitious. Logistically, it's incredibly difficult
to pull off. Oh, it's a nightmare for a distributor.
Right. And he wasn't just dropping B -sides either.
He released a physical three disc set containing
his 33rd studio album, which is the title track
of the project, Lotus Flow 3R. Then, in the exact
same package, you get his 34th studio album,
MPL Sound. Two full albums right there. And if
that wasn't enough to digest, the third disc
is Elixir, which served as the debut studio album
for his protege, Bria Valente. He completely
refused to be creatively boxed in by his own
legacy. Instead of looking backward at Purple
Rain, he delivered this complex, incredibly dense,
multi -genre experiment. It was just a massive
statement to the industry and to his fans that
he was still pushing forward. So he has this
massive product ready to go, but before we can
even begin to understand how Prince sold this
grand experiment to the world, we really need
to understand what exactly he was selling and
how he built it. Let's get into the sounds. First
you have the Lotus Flow 3 album itself. The vibes
here are very... like acid rock, psychedelic
soul, and it even includes a cover of Tommy James
and the Shondles Crimson and Clover. Which is
a classic. It is, but Prince, being Prince, he
interpolates the Trog's Wild Thing right into
the middle of it. Love that part. Right. And
for those who might not know, interpolating basically
means he took the recognizable melody of Wild
Thing and wove it seamlessly into the actual
structure of his cover song. Yeah, it creates
this brilliant, unexpected mashup of rock history,
but it's completely put through the Prince filter.
Totally. Then you swap discs and put an MPL sound,
and suddenly you are in a completely different
sonic world. It's like Whiplash, but in a good
way. Yeah, it's funk, it's R &B, electronica,
hip -hop, new wave. Right. He recorded this one
in Chanhassen, Minnesota, and it has this incredibly
experimental pop feel. He even brings in Q -tip
to feature on a track called Chocolate Box. such
a great track. And finally you have the third
piece of the puzzle, Bria Valente's debut, Elixir,
co -written by Prince but completely sung by
her. Right, pivoting again into pop, R &B, and
smooth jazz. It's just so much variety. It really
is. It is less like a standard album release
and more like... a cinematic anthology you have
three distinct directors or in this case personas
operating under one massive sonic umbrella but
you know as i was reading through the sources
i noticed something fascinating about how he
built this massive track list oh the vault yes
the vault he didn't just lock himself in the
studio and write 30 new songs from scratch in
2009 he was opening up his legendary vault and
recycling he really was like look at the track
list for mpl sound the song you're gonna see
me is actually a remake of a track from his 2002
album One Night Alone. And the recycling goes
even deeper than remakes. Oh, tell me about it.
The track Kept Woman on Brie Valenti's album
was originally from an entirely different unreleased
2006 project. Wait, really? Yeah. He had worked
on an album called Milk and Honey with a different
artist named Tamar. That album never officially
came out, but it leaked online. So Prince simply
lifted the track and repurposed it for Valenti.
That is wild. And he was also pulling from his
own defunct website. Oh, the digital graveyard.
Yeah. The track, Feel Better, Feel Good, Feel
Wonderful, was posted on his old NPG music club
site as a demo way back in 2006. And Here I Come
was on another dead site, 302 .1 .com, in 2007.
You never let anything go to waste. Exactly.
It makes me think of his creative process like
a master chef. Oh, I like that. Great. Like a
truly great chef never throws away premium ingredients.
If a dish doesn't quite work out or if a restaurant
concept closes down, those ingredients go back
into the pantry. Right. They just sit there until
the chef finds the perfect new recipe to remix
them into. That is a highly accurate way to view
his workflow, especially considering how protective
he was of his masters. But I have to be honest
and push back a little here. OK, let's hear it.
Because calling a 2002 demo a brand new release
feels, I don't know, A bit like false advertising
to the average consumer. I can see how you'd
think that. Doesn't reusing years old demos or
pulling a track from Elite 2006 Project dilute
the impact of this massive 2009 comeback? Right.
Like, if I buy a new album, I expect new music?
That is a totally fair reaction for a standard
artist. But it really speaks to how Prince fundamentally
viewed his own body of work. How so? Well, for
him... The vault wasn't a museum where old songs
went to gather dust. It was a living, breathing
ecosystem. Time just wasn't linear for Prince's
music. Time wasn't linear. Right. The groove
he laid down in 2002 could be the exact, precise,
missing puzzle piece he needed for a funk album
in 2009. OK. So the age of the track didn't matter,
only how it fit the current vibe. Precisely.
And his track lists were incredibly fluid, changing
up to the very last minute. Oh, right. The digital
changes. Yeah. Take that crimson and clover cover
we just talked about. Yeah. If you bought the
physical CD at a store, it was sitting right
there at track three. Yeah. But if you bought
the digital edition of the album online, that
song was completely gone. Just vanished. Gone.
It was replaced by a 2006 outtake called The
Morning After. He treated the track list as a
modular living thing. OK, so he has this massive
recycled multi -genre vault of music ready to
go. But having the product is only half the battle.
Oh, for sure. You have to sell it. Exactly. How
do you actually get millions of people to care
about a dense three -disc experimental album
in 2009? Well, you build a mythology around it,
and then you completely take over late night
television. The muses for this era are vital
to that mythology. Right. He wasn't just writing
abstract love songs. He was pulling from his
highly exclusive real -world Hollywood interactions
and putting them directly onto the record. The
specifics are wild. You have a track on MPL Sound
called Valentina, which was explicitly written
for the actress Salma Hayek's daughter. Such
a specific reference. Yeah. Then you have Better
With Time, an ode to the actress Kristen Scott
Thomas, who co -starred with Prince in the 1986
film Under the Cherry Moon. Right. And then there's
a song just titled with a dollar sign, which
was reportedly about the most popular girl in
the whole wide world. By naming these elite Hollywood
figures, he is creating this high society mythos.
He is inviting the listener into his ultra exclusive
private life. It makes the audience feel like
insiders. And to push that insider feeling to
the masses, he embarks on this unprecedented
media blitz. He goes on The Tonight Show with
Jay Leno. A classic promotional stop. But he
doesn't just play a single song in Wave of Goodnight.
He performs three nights in a row, March 25th,
26th, and 27th. Which is huge. And then he comes
back for a fourth appearance in May just to help
close out Leno's first run as host. He also does
The Ellen DeGeneres Show. He flies over to France
and performs four songs on the massive talk show
Le Grand Journal. It was a total sustained hijacking
of traditional broadcast television right at
a time when late night TV still drove massive
cultural conversations. But here's where it gets
really interesting. Amidst all of this typical
flashy late -night promotion, he and Bria Valente
sit down for a two -part interview on the Tavis
Smiley Show. Oh, this interview. Yeah. And during
this interview, Prince, a man whose entire public
persona for decades was built on absolute impenetrable
mystery, makes this profoundly personal revelation.
He really shocked people here. He tells the world
on national television that he was born epileptic
and used to suffer from seizures as a child.
a stunning, almost jarring moment of vulnerability
from someone so guarded. So why do this now?
Like, why mix intensely private medical history
with the promotion of a funky triple album? If
we connect this to the bigger picture, you are
watching a masterclass in narrative control.
Narrative control. Yeah. Prince historically
loathed the standard PR machine. But here, he
effectively weaponized it. He used these high
profile mainstream platforms to deliver a profoundly
intimate moment. By dropping his guard. Right.
By sharing something as terrifying and personal
as childhood epilepsy, he cuts entirely through
the noise of standard album promotion. It stops
you in your tracks. You aren't just hearing a
sales pitch anymore. Exactly the point. It builds
a deeper, vulnerable connection with his audience.
Right at the exact moment, he is asking them
to follow him into this dense experimental three
-album journey. Wow. He's sending a subconscious
message, you know, like, I'm opening up my musical
vault and to prove it, I'm opening up my personal
history too. Which perfectly transitions us into
the absolute paradox of his release strategy.
Oh, the distribution. Let's get into it. He goes
on all these massive mainstream TV shows to promote
the album to literally everyone. But the way
he allowed people to actually purchase the music
was a trap. It was so brilliant. He promoted
it to the masses but made buying it highly, highly
specific. The dual strategy here is one of the
most fascinating business moves of the decade.
Let's look at the physical release first. In
the United States, if you saw prints on Jay Leno
and decided you wanted the CD, you could not
just walk into your local independent record
store. Nope. You couldn't go to Best Buy. It
was a physical release sold exclusively at Target.
Exclusively. And the price for this massive three
disc set. $11 .98. Less than 12 bucks. They were
heavily exported to Europe later, but in the
U .S. it was Target or nothing. But then you
look at the digital side of the release and it
is a complete 180 degree turn. He creates this
absolute digital walled garden. The total shift.
First, in December 2008, he launches a site called
mplsound .com, just to tease some instrumentals.
But then a month later, he shuts that down entirely
and replaces it with lotuslow3r .com. Right,
which officially opened its digital doors on
March 24th at exactly 7 .07 p .m. Pacific time.
Very specific timing. Very Prince. And this was
not just a promotional website. It was a fully
interactive, monetized digital experience. This
is where the money comes in. Fans could pay a
$77 annual fee to become founding members, which
was a lot of money for a website back then. Keep
in mind this is 2009. $77 for a website subscription
was unheard of. And what did that get you? You
could download all three albums. You got a founding
member t -shirt. You got the ability to buy advanced
concert tickets, including VIP access to those
Tonight Show performances. Which is huge for
super fans. And you got access to exclusive streaming
video, including legendary footage of Prince
covering Radiohead's creep at the 2008 Coachella
Festival. He built a premium fan portal years
before the infrastructure for that sort of thing
was normalized. So. What does this all mean?
When I look at this, I see him charging $77 a
year for this exclusive digital club, which feels
exactly like a modern day VIP Patreon or an exclusive
creator subscription. Completely. But at the
exact same time, he is practically giving away
the physical CDs at a big box store like Target
for the price of a cheap lunch. It's quite the
contrast. Was he actively trying to kill the
traditional independent record store, or was
he just trying to bypass the traditional music
industry altogether? Well, he wasn't necessarily
trying to kill the record store. I mean, the
recession and digital piracy were already doing
that. True. He was trying to maximize his reach
while maximizing his absolute control. He effectively
bifurcated his audience. Bifurcated? Yeah, he
played the mass market retail game and the nooch
direct -to -fan digital game simultaneously.
By partnering with Target, he ensured that his
physical music was front and center in a place
where millions of everyday people were already
doing their essential shopping. Right. The person
buying toothpaste sees a $12 Prince triple album
and thinks, why not? It's a total impulse buyer.
Exactly. But the $77 digital subscription...
That was a psychological play for the super fans.
The diehards. Right. That bypassed the traditional
industry entirely, allowing him to monetize his
most dedicated followers directly. He kept a
much larger share of the profits and controlled
exactly how they experienced his art online,
free from record label interference. It's the
ultimate high -low strategy. The big box store
impulse buy and the elite digital club. It's
genius. But of course, Every grand experiment
has to face the ultimate test. The numbers and
the critics. Did this massive, unconventional
rollout actually work? Commercially, it was a
staggering statement. The album debuted at number
two on the U .S. Billboard 200 chart. It sold
one hundred and sixty eight thousand copies in
its first week alone, which is incredible for
a Target exclusive. And it had incredible legs
by 2012, according to SoundScan, which is the
industry's official sales tracking system. It
had sold over five hundred forty three thousand
seven hundred units, selling almost one hundred
and 70 ,000 physical copies in a single week,
exclusively at a single retailer during a massive
economic recession, is a flex of pure star power.
It made Lotus Flow 3 his fourth consecutive top
three album in the United States. But I have
to push back on the genius of this strategy.
Always that. Because it debuted at number two.
it missed the number one spot on the Billboard
200 by a mere 3 ,000 copies. He was beaten by
Keith Urban's album Defying Gravity. Think about
how agonizing that is as an artist. It's like
missing out on a massive promotion at work by
a fraction of a percent. Right. If Prince hadn't
restricted physical sales exclusively to Target,
if you could have bought this at Best Buy or
Amazon or local indie shops, wouldn't he have
easily grabbed those extra three thousand sales
and secured that number one spot? Did his own
innovative business model actually trip him up
at the finish line? This raises an important
question about what winning actually meant to
Prince at this stage in his career. OK, that's
fair. Yes. Mathematically, widening the distribution
would have almost certainly secured the number
one spot. But what is the tradeoff? What was
it? The tradeoff is between apps absolute chart
dominance, and total artistic and financial control.
Ah, because if he went wide, he would have had
to share the pie with a major distributor. Exactly.
By doing the direct target exclusive, Prince
likely negotiated an incredibly favorable financial
split, and more importantly, he retained complete
ownership of the master recordings and the rollout.
The masters were everything to him. Everything.
So missing number one by a fraction is agonizing
for chart watchers and music journalists. But
for Prince, as a listener, you have to realize
that winning the charts wasn't his goal anymore.
Right. The control he wielded over his own art
was likely worth far more to him than the vanity
of the top spot. He chose absolute independence
over the gold medal. I love that. What about
the critics though? Did they get what he was
trying to do with these three discs? It was a
bit of a mixed bag. which is to be expected when
you drop three hours of genre -hopping music
on reviewers all at once. Yeah, that's a lot
of homework for a critic. Looking at the Metacritic
scores, the reception for Prince's two albums,
Lotus Flow Third and MPL Sound, was generally
mixed to positive. Right. They landed aggregate
scores of 61 and 62 out of 100. Respectable,
if not universally hailed as his next Purple
Rain. But Bria Valente's album, Elixir, really
struggled. It landed a dismal aggregate score
of 49 out of 100. And that critical divide highlights
a very real, very harsh dynamic in the music
industry. The immense shadow a legend casts over
new talent. It's tough. It is. Prince was genuinely
trying to use his massive platform to launch
Valenti, physically attaching her debut to his
own highly anticipated comeback. But when you
put a debut artist in a literal box next to Prince,
reviewers are inevitably going to compare the
two. It is an almost impossible standard for
any new artist to meet. You're asking critics
to evaluate a smooth R &B debut against a psychedelic
rock album from one of the greatest guitarists
to ever live. Yeah, that's not exactly a fair
fight. No. The critical reception heavily reflected
that struggle to stand out within the overpowering
context of the Lotus Low 30 year package. You
get the biggest promotional boost in the world,
but you also get the brightest, harshest spotlight.
So as we wrap up this deep dive, we are looking
at the Lotus Lowe 3 -year era as this absolutely
fascinating collision of ideas. It really is.
You have a legendary artist digging deep into
his vault, remixing his own history without caring
about linear time. You have wild genre hopping
from acid rock to electro funk. You have intimate,
deeply personal medical revelations dropped in
the middle of slick late night television blitzes.
Yes. And you have this completely chaotic yet
brilliant distribution model. $12 at a big box
store for the masses and $77 on a walled garden
internet site for the diehards. It really encapsulates
Prince's relentless uncompromising drive to control
his art and his narrative. It absolutely does
and I want to leave you with a final thought
tomorrow over building on everything we've explored
today. Okay, lay it on us. Think about how you
consume music right now. We live in an era where
massive pop stars rely heavily on exclusive retail
variants at stores like Target to drive their
physical sales and game the system. Which happens
all the time now. All the time. At the exact
same time, independent artists and creators use
direct -to -fan subscription models, charging
a premium for exclusive digital access, behind
-the -scenes videos and early ticket sales. Which
is exactly what we just spent the last 15 minutes
talking about. Exactly. Prince was willing to
charge $77 a year for direct access to his digital
universe and simultaneously bundled three albums
for $12 at a big box store way back in the recession
of 2009. How much of our modern music consumption
was actually blueprinted by Prince's chaotic
experiment? We treat these tiered access strategies
and exclusive retail drops as modern, cutting
-edge innovations, but he was laying the tracks
over a decade ago. He wasn't just surviving the
shifting landscape of 2009, he was drawing the
map that everyone else is still using today.
Thank you so much for joining us on this deep
dive. Keep exploring, keep questioning the media
you consume, and we will catch you next time.