Kylie Minogue and Prince‘s lost collaboration ‘Baby Doll’ has surfaced online 32 years after it was created.
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The song came about in 1992 after Minogue met Prince backstage after his ‘Diamonds and Pearls’ show at Earls Court in June of that year. She asked Prince what he was working on and he later invited her to his famed Paisley Park studio in Minneapolis.
The funk-laden version that has landed online features lyrics that Minogue confirmed were in the song in 2018: “Let me be your baby doll, sugar and spice and all things nice/ Let me be your paradise.”
Check it out below:
Prior to this, while they were hanging out in a London hotel room surrounded by studio equipment, Prince reportedly asked: “Where are your lyrics?”
At that point in time, Minogue wasn’t writing lyrics but threw some together for Prince to structure a track around. The demo was then posted in cassette form to Minogue’s address, but it has since gone missing.
Minogue has spoken about the track’s existence in interviews for years and has mentioned that her record label wasn’t interested in the idea of him producing it all himself, so she never got to record it. She has also mentioned that the Prince Estate might also have a copy.
It was also reportedly set to appear as one of the Vault tracks recorded between 1990 and 1992 on a Diamonds and Love compilation The Prince Estate planned to release in the Summer of 2022. The scope of the project was then changed to include only songs from the Diamonds And Pearls era so the songs recorded after October 1991, including ‘Baby Doll’, were cut.
The news comes just a month after the death of Prince’s sister Tyka Nelson. Her death was confirmed by her son, President Nelson, to local news outlet Minnesota Star Tribune. The cause of her death was not disclosed.
In June this year, Nelson shared details of her final conversations with her brother, and his similarities with their family members.
She added that she was not aware of his illness but when she hugged him, she felt he had lost some weight. “A couple of times I said, ‘How are you really?’ He didn’t go into anything with me. That was bothering me, and he knew it was but that was all he wanted to tell me,” she said. “I don’t want to go into that. You’re going to spoil the book. Don’t you want me to make money?”
Nelson revealed that the final interaction between her and Prince occurred four days prior to his death. “He kept avoiding questions. I kept getting mad. I felt like ‘talk to me for two seconds.’ He’d change the subject, make a joke and then we’d both laugh,” she told the publication.
She continued: “He asked me could I find more information about our family. Prince wanted me to find Sharon’s number. I didn’t question it. It was like, ‘Send this picture to that person.’ OK. What for?”
