Prince's hand-made artwork for a previously unknown configuration of Emancipation: report from Michael Van Huffel

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The Most Unique Thing I Have,
A True Prince Story (with your permission, Hucky Austin)

I came into work one day at Paisley Park. I’d just gotten in, maybe ten o’clock. Mayte (Prince’s partner and later wife) came to my office and handed me a CD jewel case. She said “He wants you to have this.” At the time, he was going by the symbol, and was quite serious about not being called “Prince”. People have asked about that many times, but somehow it didn’t make it all that strange or difficult to communicate.

Steve Parke and I spent an extraordinary amount of time designing and mocking up CD packages for Prince—the vast majority of which never actually came out. Lots of printing, cutting, scoring, folding, spraying and glueing. Prince liked to see the physical object, the package, what he’d done as a physical thing and how it would be if it was out in the world.

It was a full package, so to speak. That is, a cover, insert, art behind where the CD sits, and the back. All put together. It was cut-out pieces of some draft printouts that had been laying around the office, collages. There were also cut-out pieces of other things, that looked like they came out of high-gloss magazines or books, photos. These were combined and glued. The cover was an image of him that I was mocking-up for the Emancipation album, glued on other images. In the part where the CD sits, there were somewhat meticulous patterns drawn in pen, and colored behind. The back and a track list of songs on the CD that was included, handwritten, including the copyright to NPG records and other information that routinely is on the back of CDs. There was a CD inside with the songs—none of which had been released at that point. In my memory, the CD burner that the engineers used was about half the size of a refrigerator. It was a MACHINE.

My first thought was that Prince had put this together as a basis for something he wanted me to make into fully-realized album artwork. I asked Mayte, ‘What is this for, or about?’ and she said ‘I don’t know, ask him…” and she left. (note: Mayte was very nice, this makes it sound like she was short, but she wasn’t).
I didn’t know what to make of this. I saw Prince a lot, but if it was a project he wanted me to do, I wanted to get on it. Because when he did come around, he would have expected some progress. So, I called Therese. Therese was, at the time, sort of his right-hand person. She’d been around for a long time, had a very strong personality, was somewhat jaded and very easily annoyed. There was no management structure there at all, so she was pretty much who I could ask about this, aside from Prince.

I said “Do you know what this CD package is about?”, not realizing she was already more than annoyed and ready to tell me all about it. She said “I don’t know. All I know is that he drove us crazy last night, sending people out to get scissors, glue, markers. And in his office this morning, he cut up a bunch of really expensive coffee-table photo books and there’s a huge mess I had to clean up.”

I said ‘Oh’. Then said ‘…but do you know what it’s for?’ And she said something along the lines of “it’s a gift, stupid”. She may have said ‘dummy’ or she might have just said ‘Michael’ with a tone that strongly implied I was an idiot. She was good at that sort of thing. I’d like to note again, I liked Therese and she was funny, and most of the time had my back.

However, though Prince was generous in many ways, gift-giving was not something I had seen a lot of around the offices. So, I said to Therese, ‘A gift? What? For what? Why?’

And she said ‘Ask him’, and hung up.

I stared at this thing. Prince’s songs often leaked—sometimes things were thrown in the trash and someone scavenged them, sometimes he gave stuff to people and they got out in the world, etc. And he would go on real tears about this, angry, wondering how things got out (note: often it was because he was somewhat careless himself, but that was not something I would bring up). To some degree, having a CD of unreleased music—it felt like I had a piece of plutonium sitting there. I think Steve and I were pretty careful when he left CDs of new music laying around, just to have plausible deniability if something unreleased came out. So, I had it on my desk and I kept looking over at it, still baffled.

A little later in the day, Prince came in. He did what he did, told me what he wanted me to work on, when he wanted to see it, etc. Then I picked up the CD and I said 'So, er, Mayte gave this to me this morning…?’. And he nodded. I said ‘…and?’ He said ‘It’s for you’. I said ‘It’s just a .. gift, for me to have?’ and he nodded again. I said ‘Wow, thank you.. I mean, why… just…’
This is when he cut me off. He just shook his head, which I took to mean ‘be quiet now’, which I was. I said ‘Thanks, man’ or something similar. He looked at me for a second—with the be quiet look again—and then split. It wasn’t altogether unusual to get some kind of sign from him, verbal or body-language, that maybe the subject at hand was not one he wished to pursue. I think both Steven and I were able to talk to him in a pretty normal way, he was relaxed and cool around us most of the time. But you had to also learn not to push things if you got that vibe.

That night, after work, I listened to the CD. It was all music I’d never heard. It was really exciting. I kept thinking he’d likely ask me for it back. He never did.

I never found out exactly why he did that. I have a theory, though. He really loved these mocked-up packages that we made for him. Steve wasn’t around just then, but I think it was a bit of a gratitude thing, a moment of real generosity. He kind of gave me what we made for him all the time—with the bonus of a CD of unreleased music. Most of those songs eventually came out in one form or another. People have all kinds of cool and/or extraordinary memorabilia from their times working for Prince. I have an arts and crafty CD package that he made for me. It’s not extraordinary in itself, it’s a collage of images glued together, and handwriting and squiggles. But it is something extraordinary and one of the few possessions I care anything about. It is entirely unique.

I got fired soon after that—though I continued to do work for him in various capacities for a couple years after that. People often have some kind of reaction to the fact i got fired, and the only real response I have to that is ‘he fired better people than me, for even sillier reasons’.

It is the original configuration.

It was available on "Emancipation: The Secret Chapter" SAB CD in pristine quality.

The only doubt I have is on the third track, here titled "Slowly Candle Burns" when on TSC it's the track "Slave" we all know.

Maybe it is a pre-title, with the first track listed here as only "Slave" and not "Slave (2 The System)" as after.
Or maybe it is an entirely different track, and "Slave" is the first track as on the 3rd disk of the released CD.

Brilliant story. So much insights

Wow, this is incredible!

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Awesome insight.

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I do wonder if this can really be considered an early configuration. Michael clearly says this was a gift from Prince.

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I would consider this more of a compilation of what Prince thought Michael might like..... or indeed, Prince may have been trying out an early configuration.

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Thanks for sharing!

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wow, he really needs to share that cd!

based on the title indeed I would think track 3 is Slave

I might play the tracks in that order too and burn a CD (yeah I still do that too lol)