“I didn’t always give the record companies the best song,” Prince said in 2014, in his final Rolling Stone interview. “There are songs in the vault that no one’s ever heard. There are several vaults; it’s not just one vault… So much gets recorded that you don’t have time to compile everything. In the future you could put all the best stuff from one particular time period together and then you can release it.”
The posthumous Prince album Timeless, out now, takes the opposite approach, compiling previously unreleased tracks that span each decade of Prince’s career. Highlights include the funky 1977 home recording “I Am You,” the 1981 original version of the relentless banger “Tick Tick Bang,” which he later handed off to the Time, “With This Tear,” a piano ballad he wrote for Celine Dion in 1991, “Calabama,” a 2003 party jam from the Musicology sessions, and the 2007 guitar showcase “The Guilty Ones.” The biggest surprise is the ambitious, soaring “Bestest Friend,” recorded in September 2012, which fans had no idea existed.
Prince died on April 21, 2016, without a will. After years of legal battles, a Minnesota judge signed off in 2022 on a split of the estate between publishing powerhouse Primary Wave and Prince Legacy LLC — a business formed by Prince’s three oldest heirs together with two music-biz veterans, attorney L. Londell McMillan and producer Charles Spicer Jr. Initially, the estate busied itself with releasing expanded versions of albums from Purple Rain to Diamonds and Pearls, with outtakes from the vault included. There was also the demo collection Originals and Welcome 2 America, a finished, previously unreleased 2010 album, which dropped in 2021. But Timeless is the first release of unheard recordings since 2023, and fans grew restless in the interim, circulating petitions and open letters asking for more from Prince’s storied vaults.
In 2017, director Ezra Edelman, who won an Oscar for O.J.: Made in America, began working on a Prince documentary for Netflix. The nine-hour cut he delivered painted a complex portrait of Prince that included allegations of abuse, as chronicled in a detailed New York Times Magazine report. In the face of objections from the estate, Netflix shelved the movie last year, over Edelman’s intense protests.
McMillan, who was Prince’s lawyer for more than a decade, jumped on a Zoom with Rolling Stone to discuss Timeless, his reasoning behind the Netflix decision, the estate’s future plans, and much more.
Let’s start with this release. The fans are very impatient for stuff from the vault, and now you’ve got something for them. Tell me about narrowing down what you had — how you got to “This is the album we’re releasing right now.”
Let me just start by saying this. I think the fans are very patient. I think there are a few very loud ones. And I think that those few loud ones are, I guess, in concert with one or two major journalists — they promote this notion that they’re so overly impatient when there have been many who have been quite patient and appreciative. So I do wanna say that. Because I’m outside. I’m not hiding. I deal with the fans. I’m at the events, I’m on social. I’m engaged. The truth tells a different story than what sometimes people think is happening, right?
And when we talk about there’s been almost 200 previously unreleased sound recordings that’s been put out since he passed, people start scratching their head and they go, “What do you mean? Where? How? What?” And we start to go, “Wait a minute. Did you open your box set and listen to the unreleased material?” And then many of them have said, “No.” It’s sitting on their coffee table.
So I’m very appreciative of those who understand and have been somewhat patient. We’re very excited, but we’re gonna do it at a pace that is indicative of what Prince and his estate deserves. When you release almost 200 unreleased sound recordings, it’s a massive number. It’s a massive number.
And now [the rest] has to be curated in a way with some thoughtfulness and planning. So one of the reasons why we’re making a separate project of just this unreleased material is to pull it out of those box sets so that it doesn’t get shrouded and clouded and hidden by the released material and people forget that music was on there, right? Part of it is that there were some miscalculations previously and that had led to people not understanding that “Wow, they’ve already put out a considerable amount of music.” And now it has to be actually marketed and set out in a way that can be consumed, absorbed, appreciated, focused upon.
And our rhythm of releases are not now necessarily tied to just milestone anniversary events, right? We’re gonna create a pattern that’s more in sync with how Prince did, what he wanted to do, which was whenever he felt was best. With that said, obviously his passing at 10 years somewhat gave us this sense of we should contextualize Prince in the way that we think is best, and what’s the best way to contextualize Prince? The best way to contextualize him is through his music.
And so for 10 years, we gave them 10 unreleased music tracks across five decades, which has never been done before. Prince never even did compilation albums. And we also are ready to release more music later this year and the top of next year and other recordings that we’re working on.
How many tracks did you choose from to narrow down for this album?
We must have listened to about maybe 35, 40 tracks that were serious contenders. And of course there’s quite a bit of music that’s already digitized in our database, and there’s a large amount that’s still yet to be digitized and listened to across the breadth of all of the recording devices. So I would say there may have been maybe double that [which narrowed down to] 35 to 40 serious contenders.
So you first chose 35 finalists, out of about twice that — about 70. What was that universe of 70 you were picking from? Is that just what’s ready to be listened to?
Yeah. They were broken down based on just the timeframes, because we wanted to span each decade, right? They were also broken down based on songs that we felt we didn’t want to compete with other projects that we’ve got in the works. Because there are other projects that are happening, so there are unreleased recordings. Some of those may be more apropos for those releases that we’ve got coming out. For example, we got a 3121 project coming out, right? And so they’re gonna be unreleased recordings that are for that project.
To take an even bigger step back: How many songs have been digitized so far?
So I think we’re about little over 50 percent done, [based on] what we know, because there’s so many disks and so many physical assets. It’s an unknown. We’re not starting with one large number that we all were aware of. There was no one who was with Prince from the beginning to the end of his career. There was no indexing and cataloging in a professional archival way throughout this vault process. In many ways, we’re finding as we go, we’re putting these things together, we’re hiring archivists, we’re trying to gather them all. We’re uncovering as we go. And so I can’t give you an exact number because no one can.
I understand the number that needs to be digitized is unknowable. But I’d assume you know how many you have digitized already — or you don’t want to say?
It’s not as if I have a specific number of sound recordings versus live concert footage versus — I could just tell you that there are tens of thousands of assets, and they’re all not one thing. The assets range from sound recording, concert footage, of all types, all sizes, all formats, photographs. And we’re talking probably hundreds of thousands.
And so… in addition to picking the right songs, you have to pick not just the songs that we have and we can listen to, but also the songs that we have in various formats that we can mix and master so that we can make sure that they’re in the most digitally equipped formats that people consume music today, right? We gotta make sure that we’ve got all of the stems so that we can edit it properly. There’s a lot of music, but not all of it has all of the components that we would want to sonically be able to present. We have to find those pieces, right? Everything is just not in one fixed format.
So you may not have the multitracks for everything. Though now there are digital tools to extract the multitracks from a non-multitrack recording.
We also have to be careful how we use and integrate any kind of tools that are not gonna be authentic to Prince.
In 2014, Prince told me about four full, unreleased albums in the vault — a couple Revolution albums, two Time albums, one Vanity 6. Have you found all that stuff?
When you say found it, we physically have it all. Have we had a chance [for] everyone to look through and listen and go through every single thing? Absolutely not. Let me also say we don’t send an army of people in the vault. The vault is protected like a fortress. We don’t just send everyone. To some [people’s] chagrin, we haven’t thrown everybody in the vault. So have we heard every single thing in the vault yet? Absolutely not. I don’t know if anyone will ever hear every single thing at one time. But we have heard some of those products that you mentioned.
What, if anything, have you learned from the success the Michael Jackson estate has had recently — the Broadway show leading into the film, and the massive surge of interest in Michael? What can the Prince estate learn from that?
What we learned is that great artists and great compositions will stand the test of time. We’re a different type of estate. We don’t sell assets. We preserve them and curate them and present them. He wasn’t a music buyer or seller. Prince was a music creator and producer. I represented both Michael Jackson and Prince, and I love them both. I represented Michael and I preserved his assets when he was gonna lose them to the banks and the private equity investors, as well as he was gonna lose Neverland. So I understand his business and his business model very well.
The musical obviously was not something that was a totally original idea. Numerous major artists have had Broadway musicals, right? And we have ours that we’re excited about that’s coming to Broadway next year in March and April. But I think with Michael, the estate did a great job in protecting his legacy from so many different types of allegations and claims and preserving the purest form of his legacy, which is his great talent.
And [maybe] they learned that from us, actually, given what we did with Netflix prior to them putting out the film, and how we dealt with protecting Prince’s legacy from allegations without any kind of substantiation. [Editor’s note: Edelman’s film drew on more than 70 interviews, according to the “New York Times Magazine.” In the film, ex-girlfriend Jill Jones reportedly accused Prince of repeatedly punching her in 1984. Edelman has stood by the accuracy of his work.]
So I think we are aligned in really just great storytelling, authenticity, focusing on the main thing, which is the music and the talent and the legacy. I think that Michael’s nephew was brilliant in his portrayal of Michael, and so of course it had tremendous box office success. But we’ve put out more music than the Michael Jackson estate in the same period of time, and we’ll continue to put out more music because Prince has more music to give.
Tell me about the musical on Broadway. Lin-Manuel Miranda and his dad have signed on as producers, and it’s being pretty reworked from what people saw in Minneapolis, correct?
The truth of the matter is that Lin and his dad were involved even in Minneapolis. A lot of people don’t know that. And the musical still has many of the core players with the exception of the director and the writer. We’re gonna focus more on the music, and [producer] Orin Wolf and his team, they’re doing a fantastic job.
But I do wanna say this because those who were involved originally, I think they did a terrific job, and their work should be respected, and there’ll still be elements of their work in this project. We wanted to refine the production so that we could shorten it a bit and bring more live musicality to the stage, because that’s what Prince was about. And that’s why I had the production company engage two musicians that played with Prince, Bobby Z and Morris Hayes. I led their involvement in the project so we can have that music authenticity. But [music supervisor Jason Michael Webb] has done a phenomenal job in his creation and oversight of Prince’s music for the musical.
We, I think, have just gone away from a little bit of the adaptative stories that weren’t a part of the Purple Rain story and brought it back to Prince’s story, more so than the adaptations that folks saw in Minneapolis. It was very important for us to go through that process so that we could see what worked, what didn’t work, what we will keep, what won’t be kept. And I learned quite a bit from my partners in the process. I was a little concerned, but I trusted in the process. And the process revealed exactly what we needed to do.
There was a jukebox musical in discussion with Ryan Coogler perhaps as a producer. What’s the status of that?
That’s in production still, and we’re excited to be working with Ryan and his wonderful wife Zinzi and Universal Studios with Donna Langley and Ryan Jones over at Universal.
So it’s more like Mamma Mia!: a story that isn’t about Prince, but using Prince’s songs. Is that the idea?
That’s correct. ABBA and stuff like that.
And a biopic — especially given Michael, everyone wants to know. Any status or update on that?
There have been biopics in discussion for years… You’ll know when the press release comes out, my friend.
But that’s something you’re eyeing, and in progress on?
I’ve always thought that a biopic should precede a huge documentary in the first place. So while many people have theories on why I shut down the Netflix project, most of those theories are inaccurate or false. We were always looking at the right type of film and biopic for Prince because he was the original movie-maker musician. Purple Rain — it was fictional, but it was loosely based on some of his stories of his real life. And of course, we were going to look at doing something that would cover a portion of his life, another portion of his life, right? Again, when people compare Michael to Prince, let’s keep in mind that Michael’s estate started in 2009. And by the way, it still hasn’t formally closed, to my knowledge. Prince’s estate started in 2016 and is formally closed.
There was a seven-year advance of working on various different projects, which we all as music lovers are now very thrilled to see come to fruition. But if you look at the pacing and the timing and the amount of releases, I think people really have gotten this thing twisted. They’re not really paying attention to timing, and they’re not paying attention to the volume of releases. And then if you’re looking at how much money things are generating, they’re not paying attention to [the fact that] Prince hasn’t sold anything. We don’t sell assets. We are curating assets. That’s a big difference.
So in other words, for a movie you don’t sell the rights — you collaborate with a studio. That’s what you’re saying?
Yeah, I’m saying, when you look at how much estates generate, if you sell your recordings or you sell your songs or you sell your catalog, you’re gonna generate more income than if you’re just licensing your catalog. In terms of the movie, I’m not sure exactly how they structured their deal on the movie, but by all measures, the movie was just a phenomenal success. We haven’t put out a movie yet, and I’m very elated that there’s gonna be a Michael II. But I think people were so thrilled to see a movie with Michael that didn’t have such salacious kind of allegations and it focused on the music, and great acting.
But for us, we are also trying to service and share Prince’s music with those core fans that really just have not just a musical connection, they also have just a spiritual connection to Prince, as well as make sure that we don’t just throw things out and sonically lose the generations of the future. Because the musical production and the sonics have to be in sync with how they hear music today. The frequency of production has to work properly when you’re putting out music, and that’s very important that we don’t just turn over the vault catalog and put it out there.
There’s already a lot of music that’s already been out there released and bootlegged and out there by many different players out there. So now for us, what’s gonna make it special is how we curate it and how we present it now and into the future. So for the more obstreperous ones, we’ll just keep doing what we need to do. But keep in mind, he’s got a very insatiable audience, and I’d rather it be that way than not. They say it’s a good problem to have.
I wanted to ask about the Parade reissue. Is that going to be a major thing with a bunch of unreleased stuff, or a smaller-scale thing?
Yeah. Parade is coming and it’s gonna be a bigger project. But that project has to be and will be not just with music. It’s gonna have another number of components. That record is phenomenal. That project is phenomenal. It has to be an overall campaign. Parade is a campaign. We’re not just rushing to a 40th anniversary. We’re gonna do it when it’s the right time, and the right time is very soon.
What’s the overall plan to make sure Prince connects with younger generations, is reintroduced to younger audiences, and keeps and increases the status he’s had?
Yeah, my perspective would be to engage a multi-generational community across music, social, experiential, and other forms of engagement. We can’t expect young people to embrace Prince with older people pushing it down to them. They have to discover it. They have to enjoy it. They have to embrace it and be the ambassadors for his music.
In order to do that, we have to serve it to them in the ways they consume it and in the sonics that they appreciate. Otherwise, you’re gonna lose them in the first two bars. A great song can get lost in an outdated production of a generation. So we’re gonna also at some point have a conversation around what type of music artists and ambassadors for future generations should lead that conversation. But it can’t necessarily be old people talking to young people.
I just want to be clear — you’re talking about perhaps releasing some remixes, with new production?
I’m not being specific and prescriptive on what we’re doing, other than saying we have currently younger people sourcing and sharing thoughts on how they want to best hear, discover, learn, and stream, promote, market Prince. So it’s a challenge of a lifetime and I don’t know many legacy artists that has ever gotten it right.
And so while people want to be sometimes critical, young people are not buying big box sets with huge amounts of unreleased material. So if we’re gonna get young people, you’re gonna have to make the music more accessible. A 10-track CD of music covering his whole generation, and they can hear it, allows us a better conversation with young people than a 60-song box set that costs $125.
Young people aren’t really big buyers of box sets, in general.
No one talks about that. They just keep talking about what they’re talking about. And you know what, Brian? I really think some of these people are intent on just trying to be Prince music provocateurs, right? They’re just trying to provoke. And others are in mourning. And then others are very appreciative. And so if anything in your article, I want you to quote from me is how much we appreciate those who have continued to support and continue to show so much love to Prince through his music, through the museum, through his Prince celebrations, through the concert footage we put out, through the merchandising that we put out. People have invested and spent a lot of money to keep Prince’s legacy alive, and I’m truly grateful.
We’d be remiss if we didn’t mention how big the “Purple Rain” moment was in Stranger Things, and how many new fans that made. Are you or anyone actively pursuing opportunities like that? The impact of that was pretty undeniable.
Yeah, we have a team of people that are constantly looking at opportunities and projects internally on both of our teams, as well as our music publisher, Universal Music Publishing, which is obviously one of the largest music publishing administrators in the world. We’re all connected, and they do a fine job as well.
So yeah, we definitely are interested. But let me tell you this, one of the reasons why they came to us is because we’re very selective and exclusive in what we do, right? Many people wanna just flood the market. But I can tell you for sure, if we were flooding the market with Prince everywhere, I’m not so sure people would’ve come to us, because it wouldn’t have been so special. So while we go out there and we do what we think is best for people to hear the music, we also have to stay in the tradition of Prince, which was — he was very exclusive and selective even with the volume of music he created. That’s why he had a vault, because he didn’t just throw everything out.
I’m personally looking forward to hearing more of the live stuff.
The live music? Oh, we got a lot of that. That’s coming too. So we’re curating that with live concerts to be a complement to it. And that was the other thing too. As much music as we put out before we closed out the Netflix deal, you didn’t see a lot of videos to support the music because there were restrictions. But now we’re working on putting those things together. We’re putting these packages together. And to those who are unappeasable, just hang tight. We just got a lot more to go.
