I´ve just read this article that compares one of my favorite writers, Franz Kafka, with Prince.

Nice article but I think the author could´ve gone a bit further than just comparing Kafka´s wish to burn all his work and Prince´s wish to keep things in the vault (for example, both artists had very strict, disciplinarian fathers , both were introverted etc. etc. ).

Anyway....what are your thoughts on this subject? Do you think it´s ok that Max Brodt ignored Franz Kafka´s will and released his work? Do you think Prince wanted his music to be released after his death? ( I do think so, regardless of the lyrics....I think he accepted that one day, somebody is going to release every precious song or video from the vault because he already hinted at it).

Should Prince´s raunchier lyrics stay in the vault out of respect, or is it more important to release it as is, without any changes, for the sake of preserving his legacy and ALL of his body of work? For posterity?

Shortly before succumbing to tuberculosis in Prague in 1924, Franz Kafka penned a letter to his friend, Max Brod, asking for all his unpublished work—manuscripts, diaries, private letters, sketches, and all—to be “burned unread.”

Kafka died, the letter was discovered, and Brod promptly ignored it. Thanks to him, stories such as The Trial and The Castle, which Kafka didn’t ever want printed, are today celebrated as seminal works of 20th century literature; the author’s name is attired in global renown. But the posthumous publication of Kafka’s work also triggered a convoluted legal battle over who really owns them—as well as an ethical dispute over whether they should’ve been released.

One year ago today, on April 21, 2016, Prince died in his Paisley Park home in Minnesota at the age of 57. The iconic musician has since been caught up in posthumous conflict that is quickly becoming kafkaesque.

Tired, yet furious, after a decades-long copyright fight with Warner Bros, which at one point led him to write “slave” on his face and forsake his name for an u...ble symbol, Prince devoted the latter half of his career to fighting the record industry for control of his own work. “If you don’t own your masters, the masters will own you,” the artist became famous for saying, repeating it in interview after interview. He only put one song on Spotify when he was alive, choosing to keep his catalog restricted to one streaming platform (Jay Z’s Tidal, which offers higher rates for artists).

He hoarded thousands of hours of unreleased music in a bank vault in his house. The scant collection of Prince music available on YouTube is mostly recorded from public events like the Super Bowl.

Full article here:

https://qz.com/963985/pri...ns-wishes/

[Edited 4/24/17 12:33pm]

that comparison is a big stretch but it's true that we should be grateful to brod that
he completely ignored kafka's wishes because had he done so, well, it would have been a
tremendous loss, eventhough we obviously wouldn't have known.

we should just be thankful that there is a vault to bicker over and that prince didn't just
erase everything from say 1980-2000 one day. according to boxil he did erase some of
the tapes for songs with cursing or very sexual songs, but the bulk of the recordings in
it should be ok.

an artist might not want a certain work out there, but realistically, these posthumous
releases will always be considered as such and an artist usually isn't held 'accountable'
for their archive being exposed to the public after their death. or at least this bulk of
their work is viewed with a different interest.

gogol burned his second part/sequel to "dead souls" in his final days. and emily bronte
burned an entire novel. obviously they did so, fully convinced that this was what they
should do and felt they did the right thing.

but all this time later, whenever i think about those two books, it just hurts.

anyway, drifted way off point again

BillieBalloon said:

Love Kafka too. The thing is Prince said in an interview one day somebody will release the music from the vault. Personally I think it should be released unless Prince explicitly stated it shouldn't, and I dont think he did. The problem is, in the absence of a will, what music to release and what to keep in the vault.

pure conjecture on my part here, but i really do believe that prince already sequenced at least

a dozen albums over the years, that perhaps still need to be mastered, but which would be
pretty much 'good to go' for release. those things should be released first, since they are part
of his actual finished legacy if he stored them away 'completed'.

beyond those, although i think we could be five to ten years further down the road once we'd
get those released and a reissue series to run along them.

all the 'loose change' in the vault, that's a different beast altogether. i guess people from his
former bands perhaps could give some insight into what to release and what not?

I actually am thankful at times that there was no will. I always half expected Prince would do exactly what Kafka did, or what (according to tradition) Virgil did. Supposedly Augustus himself overruled Virgil's wish that the unrevised manuscript of the Aeneid be burned, telling his executors to just publish it with as little editorial tinkering as possible. If I were emperor, that's exactly what I'd have done with the vault.