I make records all the time, there's tons of stuff in the vault and we'll see if it will come out one of these days.

This is the story of Welcome to America, produced by the Prince of State and distributed by Sony Music Entertainment.

Welcome back to the official Prince podcast. This is the first of four episodes that we've put together for you to celebrate the intriguing 2010 album Welcome to America.

Which is being released from Prince's vault for the very first time on July 30th.

I'm Andrea Swenson, I'm a music journalist in Prince's hometown of Minneapolis and I'm excited to be co-hosting this episode with a very special guest.

The talented vocalist, songwriter, producer and entrepreneur Shelby J.

Hey everybody, I'm so happy to be here.

Hey Shelby, now I know the Prince fans and fans listening are familiar with you, but for the uninitiated, can you tell us how long you worked with Prince?

Yes, I sang with Prince and the MPG from the end of 2006.

Doing live shows told right up until about 2015 and then I was going into Paisley as he was listening the songs for my album, just visiting him and spending time.

One on one, up until our last time hanging, which was in January 2016.

Wow, yeah.

And I know you were heavily involved in the making of Welcome to America because your voices heard all throughout this album.

Yes, it is. I am so grateful and thankful.

I always say how Prince was so generous with his light and he pushed my vocal way up to lead on certain songs.

Son of a slave master, I remember sitting with him and going over that, all those lyrics and he's got me singing the whole song.

And then my vocals, my voice that deep, tender, raspy, kind of mavicy voice, you can hear it all throughout the record.

It's a real honor. It's a real honor.

Before we get too far, I feel like we need to play more of these unreleased songs for the people listening.

And now the title track, Welcome to America. What should we queue up next?

Well, you know, my favorite song is same page, different book. I'm just saying thousand light years from here too.

But we'll be getting into that one later. How about we start with Check the Record.

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