10 Rock Albums That You Were Never Supposed To Hear

The entire decade of the '80s really belonged to Prince. Soon after hitting the scene and making one of the greatest albums ever with Purple Rain, it's astonishing to conceive of the amount of classics the Purple One made afterwards, whether it be the baroque pop of Around the World in a Day or the cinematic vision he had with Parade. Instead of having something equally hard-hitting around the corner though, some spiritual red tape got in the way of The Black Album.

Recorded shortly after his magnum opus Sign o the Times, what was to become The Black Album was going to be another instance of Prince taking his music one step further, deciding to experiment with various hip hop sounds along with the funk and R&B he loved. Just when all the pieces seemed to be in the right place, Prince actually pulled on the release at the last minute.

Once undergoing a spiritual cleansing of his mind, Prince came to the conclusion that the music he created was too evil to be put out to the public, throwing together Lovesexy as a re-do of the original concept he had envisioned. Though it stayed in the vault for years at a time, it wasn't until 1994 that we actually got to hear what this new vision sounded like. Whereas Prince always laid himself out bare on the vinyl, The Black Album is the one release where he actually feels at a distance.