About Welcome 2 America

Welcome 2 America is a posthumous album by American musician Prince, released through NPG Records on July 30, 2021. Recorded in March 2010 before the Welcome 2 America Tour, it is the first full previously-unreleased studio album of Prince material to be released posthumously. In 2008, Tal Wilkenfeld received a phone call from Prince. The 21-year-old, Australian-born musician was surprised to hear Prince on the other end of the line, who said he had been watching YouTube videos of her on repeat. Prince brought Wilkenfeld to parties at his Los Angeles home where sometimes he and his band played and she was their lone audience member, spent a few days jamming in a local studio and drove around together in a limo listening to music.

In 2009, Prince called Wilkenfeld from Minneapolis and said that he wanted to put together a trio with her, asking Wilkenfeld to find them a drummer. They settled on Chris Coleman, and Prince flew the two musicians to Paisley Park for the first time in late 2009. In March 2010, Wilkenfeld travelled to Paisley Park and began to improvise and play chords on instruction from Prince. "I just made everything up; he gave me no direction about what to play beyond a chord here or there. It was just do your thing," Wilkenfeld explained. "I never heard the lyrics, never knew what the songs were about, never heard the melody. It was like we had to be psychic when we were playing," she added. The result of this work culminated in Welcome 2 America.