EXCLUSIVE: New Details on Prince's Online Venture, Live Dates, Photos, and More!

Prince's new online venture, LOtUSFLOW3R.com, will debut on March 24. The site will offer digital downloads of the three new albums previously announced with a March 29 street date, in CD format, at Target stores. Two sources in Prince's camp also have confirmed that the rumored price of $77 for one year's subscription to the site has been formally settled upon. The picture above is an exclusive screengrab provided to us by Prince's web developer, Scott Addison Clay, who recently gave me an advance tour of the Web site. That image, which is also featured on the cover of the LOtUSFLOW3R CD, will be the user's portal into the online "world" of that album, complete with lyrics, artwork and new photos, in addition to the tunes. Two other "worlds," one for each of the other two Princely releases, also exist on an animated 3-D plane, in an arrangement that Clay compares to the popular game Myst. The album "MPLSoUND," as previously reported, is Prince's electronic counterpart to the guitar-heavy "LOtUSFLOW3R," while "Elixer" is the debut offering from Prince's latest protege, Bria Valente. Check out the covers for "MPLSoUND" and "Elixer" below, first on PopVox:
 

On the technical tip, Clay's creation is clearly a step up from some of 's past online homes, some of which were subject to unfortunate outages at peak times of Prince interest. And, by the way, the new music sounds pretty exciting, too. "Boom," the proper kickoff to LOtUSFLOW3R following a 30-second instrumental interlude, mixes psychedelia with funk rhythms and orgiastic guitar wailing. The song "Chocolate Box," on the electro-influenced album titled "MPLSoUND," features one of the all-time great Prince boudoir boasts: "I got a box a chocolates / that'll rock the socks of / any girl that wanna come my way." It also features one of Prince's best collaborations with a rapper to date, in the person of Q-Tip. During the 90's, Prince's revolving door MC's-for-hire were generally far less distinct than his music. And even when Prince used name-brand rhymers like Chuck D, their styles did not always mesh. Q-Tip's jazzy delivery, however, is the perfect fit for Prince's endearingly askew electronic sound-world. Here's to more of that kind of collaboration. (You can read my January profile of Q-Tip here.)

There are other new details, as well. Prince will perform "multiple times," in different locations around Los Angeles, on March 24, though those performances will not be streamed or recorded for the site. As Billboard previously reported, Prince will then be a guest on the Jay Leno show from March 25-27 (and again during Leno's last week in May). A representative for the Purple One says, however, that ticketing information for the three non-Leno events on March 24th will be posted on the beta version of LOtUSFLOW3R.com in the coming days. "The site is going to be your key to figure out how to get access," Prince's representative told NEWSWEEK.

Three new videos, one for each single off the new albums, are also in the can. "Crimson and Clover," Prince's cover of the Tommy James and the Shondells classic (with a little bit of Hendrix's "Wild Thing" thrown in for good measure) is the first single from "LOtUSFLOW3R." The aforementioned "Chocolate Box" is the nominee from "MPLSoUND," while the Bria Valente song "Everytime" will be the first multimedia from that disc. All three videos will debut on the site upon its March 24 launch.

And for the curious, here's another, exclusive new shot of Bria, taken by Prince himself:

During the tour, LOtUSFLOW3R.com appeared to be a multimedia powerhouse capable of playing videos and live clips (including Prince's cover of Radiohead's "Creep" from last year's Coachella) while also handling advanced 3-D modeling and Flash-based photo galleries. Clay gave us some more details about future plans for the site. Check out next week's print edition of NEWSWEEK for more details.