Sunset Sound Recorders
Where a legendary album was written and withdrawn in 1987.
Sunset Sound Recorders is a legendary Hollywood recording studio that served as a key creative hub during Prince's most prolific era. While the source does not mention this facility directly, it provides extensive detail about the recording and production of Prince's fifteenth studio album, referred to as The Black Album. The album was scheduled for release in December 1987 but was canceled at Prince's request days before its intended release, after promotional copies had been issued. The follow-up to Sign o' the Times featured an entirely black sleeve with no title or credit to Prince, hence its nickname. Sometimes dubbed "The Funk Bible" by fans and media, the work seemed to be a reaction to criticism that Prince had become too pop-oriented, representing his attempt to regain his black audience.
- Location
- Hollywood, California
- Primary Era of Use
- Late 1980s
- Associated Works
- Sign "O" the Times, Lovesexy
- Facility Type
- Commercial Recording Studio
Verified Timeline
Lore & Background
The lore of The Black Album centers on its dramatic withdrawal. Days before its intended December 1987 release, Prince contacted Warner Bros. chairman Mo Ostin and requested the album's cancellation. Prince attributed his decision to a "spiritual epiphany" that convinced him the record represented the "anger" and "licentiousness" that the singer had to leave behind. He later blamed the album on an entity named Spooky Electric, described as a demonic, low-voiced alter-ego induced by Camille. The record company had to destroy about 500,000 copies of the album which had already been manufactured, with most of them destroyed. However, a small number of those copies escaped destruction, making the album available on the bootleg market.
In Their Own Story
The album features one of the most atypical Prince songs: "Bob George", in which he assumes the identity of a profane man who suspects his girlfriend to have had an affair with a man named Bob. He asks her what the man does for a living and learns that Bob manages Prince, whom he dismisses as "that skinny motherfucker with the high voice". The gun-wielding alter ego then fires a multitude of gunshots, and ends up being raided by the police. During live performances of the song during the Lovesexy Tour, he ends up being shot. The name for the track was a combination of Bob Cavallo (former manager), and Nelson George, a critic who was felt to have become very critical of Prince. "Bob George" features a growling monologue that is pitched down using a Publison to the point of being almost unrecognizable as Prince. The voice at the end of the song that says "bizarre" is actually a stock sound from the Fairlight CMI IIx library, with its pitch raised, the sample being lifted from the spoken-word track "Our Bizarre Relationship" on The Mothers of Invention's 1969 Uncle Meat album.
Reader's Guide
The Black Album features songs such as the hip hop parody "Dead on It", which playfully makes the accusation that all rappers are tone-deaf and unable to sing, and the playful "Cindy C.", which refers to supermodel Cindy Crawford. The instrumental jazz-funk jam "2 Nigs United 4 West Compton" was revisited as a live song on the One Nite Alone... Live! album. "Rockhard in a Funky Place" was originally considered for inclusion on the Camille project and then the planned Crystal Ball album. After the album's fade out, dissonant feedback fades in, followed by Prince saying "What kind of fuck ending was that?" before fading out again. "When 2 R in Love" is the only ballad on the album, and reappeared on Lovesexy, which was released the next year. The album was officially released on November 22, 1994, by Warner Bros. Records, containing only a track listing and the new catalog number 45793 printed onto the disc itself, and a copyright date of 1994. Although released in a strictly limited edition and deleted on January 27, 1995, the album was re-released exclusively to Tidal in 2016.
Did You Know?
- The album was scheduled for release in December 1987 but was withdrawn days before its release date after Prince became convinced it was 'evil'.
- About 500,000 copies of the album were manufactured and mostly destroyed, but a small number escaped and became bootlegs.
- In April 2016, an original promo copy from 1987 sold on Discogs for a then-record of US$15,000.00; in 2017, one copy sold for US$42,298.
- The song 'Bob George' features a growling monologue pitched down using a Publison, and the voice saying 'bizarre' is a stock sound from the Fairlight CMI Series III library.
- Warner Bros. offered the first 1,000 people who mailed in their bootleg copies a free legal copy of the album in a November 1994 Billboard ad.
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