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Unreleased Prince Album From 2010, Focusing On Social Justice, To Be Released This Summer

MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) -- Prince never shied away from getting political with his music. His 1987 magnum opus "Sign o' the Times" opened with the title track, a late '80s manifesto for all wrong in the world.

And one of his last major singles released was "Baltimore," a scorching response to the 2015 death of Freddie Gray at the hands of Baltimore police officers.

Now, more than a decade after it was produced, an unreleased Prince album from 2010 is set to be released July 30.

"Welcome 2 America" is said to deal directly with racial inequality and social justice, and includes nods to the Black Lives Matter movement.

"The injustice inequality, Prince knew about that firsthand, you know, growing up as a black man. He knew what that was. And he could write about it and he could sing about it," Shelby J, a vocalist who worked with Prince, said while speaking with "60 Minutes." "When you got Breonna Taylor, you got Ahmaud Arbery, you got the George Floyd going on, it's like we are the movement is happening.  I think that the world is ready to absorb what he's saying on this album. I mean it's right on time. You know, right on time."

Those who worked with Prince say there's an untold wealth of unreleased material that the Minnesota-native singer-songwriter created through the years, some of which has seen the light of day since his death in 2016 at 57.

"I'd never seen anybody that had that much work inside of them. It's just this unending stream of just music," keyboardist and musical director Morris Hayes said.

As of yet, this would be the first posthumously released studio album from the Prince estate. Prior to this, the live album, "Piano and a Microphone 1983" and a collection of outtakes, "Originals," were released.

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