11. Prince, The Black Album (1988)

11. Princ e, The Black Album (1988)

Like Neil Young, Prince has a habit of recording entire albums’ worth of material and then abandoning them on a whim, which has made him a boon to bootleggers, much to his very vocal dismay. In 1987, one album made it all the way to being pressed up in promo form before Prince called off its release. The copies that made it into journalists’ hands came in all-black sleeves and didn’t list Prince’s name or the title he had for the record, which may have initially been called The Funk Bible, but quickly became known as The Black Album. Its inverse-Beatles title and rapturous word-of-mouth reviews gave it a deep dose of renegade samizdat cool, but the record’s biggest attraction came from the mystery surrounding its near-release. Why would one of the biggest pop stars suddenly withdraw a finished album that everyone in the world wanted to hear? There were rumors that the music was too risqué for the label, or that Prince had freaked out on drugs and decided that the whole album was possessed by demons. It’s also possible that Prince is just a control freak who decided at the last possible minute that its more hard-funk-oriented direction wasn’t the right next move. Still, it remains a crucial part of Prince folklore, and eventually saw legitimate release in 1994. [Miles Raymer]