I know the Crystal Ball album is perfect example. Ive heard that Freaks on this side was made in 96,Black sweat had to be made in 2004 cuz it was played live during the Musicology Tour,Colonized mind is from 2006,are there any more songs that were actually a few years or more older than when it was officially released?
[Edited 10/9/09 12:17pm]

Crystal Ball was meant to be a compilation album to partly clean up the bootleg market. So to say that's old before it was released is a bit of an un-argument.

Um..like most of his catalog, especially in the 80's, and early 90's. A lot of Graffiti Bridge is old material. (Tick Tick Bang, We Can Funk, Can't Stop, etc etc). Raspberry Beret and Baby I'm A Star dates well before they were released. Purple Rain and Parade were probably two of the more "fresh" and up to date albums, written in the moment. ATWIAD was written on the PR tour for the most part.

In reality, everything is old before it's released. Nothing is written just days before it comes out. Everything is at least a few months old, if not more. But Prince is notorious for pulling out old stuff and reusing it, even sometimes sampling his own music.

Rave un2 the joy fantastic.

It's alot of songs like that bcuz Prince records alot and he records fast. When one album has just been released he's recording the next one or almost done with the next one, u know.

Most of the material from For You was already 2-3 years old by the time the album was released
Baby I'm a Star 1981
Irresistible Bitch 1981
Feel U Up 1981
Tick Tick Bang 1981
Can't Stop This Feeling I Got 1982
Raspberry Beret 1982
New Position 1982
Girl 1982
Strange Relationship 1982
I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man 1982
We Can Funk 1983

All of these songs were already 2-9 years old by the time they were officially released and I'm sure that there are plenty more
[Edited 10/9/09 12:24pm]

The original version of "U" (You) dates back to the Rebels. It got an official release on Paula Abdul's "Spellbound" CD.

all of the songs on "the vault...old friends 4 sale". most came from the
early 90's but some date back even further.

most of the songs on "lotusflower" seem to be from various sessions that
took place between the recording of the "3121" album and late 2008, one
obvious example is "feel good, feel better" which was premiered on npgmc,
or no, wait, the 3121 website.

i'm also fairly certain that "a million days" dates back a lot further
than the musicology album.

IstenSzek said:

really? what makes u think that. Ill take a guess and say it dates back to the RAVE era?

Call My Name is from around 2001 or 2000 aparently seeing as it features Kip B. If you think about it it makes sense due to the name change.

Old Friends 4 Sale 1985

sometimes the title or subject of a song doesn't seem to fit when it was released. Like Welcome 2 the Dawn a very Purple Rain era phrase 1982/83-1985/86 and my first response was maybe this was a remake of a Purple Rain era song.

dance4me3121 said:

a million days? it absolutely sounds like something from 1994-1995.
i'm guessing it was too similar to the dolphin/into the light type
of songs so he just put it on the back burner and revived/reworked
it for the musicology album.

i'm probably completely wrong, but that's what it sounds like to me.