Prince Rogers Nelson died on April 21, 2016. He was found unresponsive in an elevator at his Paisley Park estate in Chanhassen, Minnesota at 9:30 in the morning.
First responders attempted CPR. He was 57 years old. The Midwest Medical Examiner ruled the cause of death an accidental fentanyl overdose.
Ten years later, on April 21, 2026, fans from the Netherlands, Australia and across the United States gathered at Paisley Park to mark the anniversary, and his estate released a song from the vault that has never been heard before.
“With This Tear” was recorded in November 1991 inside Paisley Park, with Prince performing every element himself, writing it, producing it, arranging it, and playing every instrument.
He offered it to Céline Dion shortly after recording it, and she released her own version in 1992. His original stayed in the vault for 35 years.
It is the first release from what the estate describes as “a number of unreleased Prince recordings scheduled for release this year, as part of a never-before-released Prince album project.” The full shape of that project has not yet been announced.
What Is The New Prince Song?
“With This Tear” arrived on April 21 via NPG Records in partnership with Legacy Recordings, a division of Sony Music.
It was newly mixed and mastered by Chris James, a Grammy-nominated engineer who worked with Prince on HITnRUN Phase Two, Art Official Age and Plectrumelectrum.
The song is a piano-heavy ballad, stripped down, reflective, a side of Prince that existed alongside but in a different register from his more theatrical work.
Rolling Stone described it as revealing intimate lyricism and layered instrumentation, with vocals that capture a sense of longing and vulnerability.
The song’s path illustrates what was ordinary in Prince’s studio practice and what made the vault so deep. He wrote it in 1991.
He initially intended it for a singer named Jevetta Steele. He redirected it to Dion.
A 2001 version recorded with a group called Milenia also remained unreleased. The 1991 original stayed locked at Paisley Park through his death and through the subsequent nine years of estate management.
What it sounds like to hear Prince play everything himself on a ballad he never released, that is what April 21, 2026 delivered to his audience.
What Happened At Paisley Park?
Paisley Park, which is normally open for tours Thursday through Monday, opened on Tuesday for the anniversary under the theme “A Day 2 Reflect. A Night 2 Remember.”
The estate built the day around a specific detail: the candle lighting ceremony was scheduled for 4:21 p.m., both a reference to the date and a way of marking the time in a numerically specific tribute, and was livestreamed for fans who could not attend in person.
Throughout the daytime, the NPG Music Club was open to the public. Fans could visit the memorial fence at the iconic Prince symbol statue, fold origami doves and leave messages, and spend time in a listening lounge playing a curated Prince playlist. Public tours ran from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.
In the evening, ticketed events included a walkthrough tour with a first look at a new 10-year anniversary exhibition, a sound healing and guided meditation session, and a screening of “Prince in Concert.”
FOX 9 reported that visitors who made the trip included fans from the Netherlands and Australia, people who crossed oceans to be at the specific place where he died, on the specific date it happened, to spend the day inside the building he built.
2016: The Year Prince Died
The circumstances of April 21, 2016 are worth restating a decade later, partly because they became inseparable from the larger conversation about the opioid crisis.
Prince had been dealing with hip pain and had been prescribed opioids. In the weeks before his death he had sought treatment for an opioid dependency.
His death, from fentanyl, not from a drug he was known to abuse recreationally, was part of a pattern that was playing out across the country and that the public did not yet fully understand.
He had no will. The battle over his estate, which included Paisley Park, the rights to his catalog, and the vault, lasted years and involved multiple legal proceedings.
The vault itself, estimated to contain thousands of unreleased recordings, became the subject of enormous interest. Prince was known to record constantly, to finish songs he had no immediate use for, and to store everything.
The vault at Paisley Park is one of the most significant archives in popular music, arguably in any art form, because its contents represent the uncirculated output of one of the most prolific recording artists of the 20th century.
The Legacy That Kept Building After He Died
In the decade since his death, Prince’s standing has not diminished. In 2025, the Recording Academy honored him with a Lifetime Achievement Grammy Award, the kind of formal institutional recognition that sometimes takes institutions decades to offer.
That same year, a stage musical adaptation of Purple Rain had its world premiere in Minneapolis, the city where he was born and where he built his career. The show brought new audiences to material that the film introduced in 1984.
Earlier in 2026, Prince’s estate made a decision that underscored how seriously the people managing his legacy take that stewardship.
They refused to allow his music to be used in a Melania documentary. The estate has been selective about how and where Prince appears.
What Is Coming Next?
The “With This Tear” release is explicitly positioned as the opening of a larger project. More unreleased recordings will follow. The specific album they are drawn from has not been named or described beyond the phrase “a never-before-released Prince album project.”
For context, the vault has been systematically explored since the estate stabilized, and what has emerged has consistently surprised listeners, not because Prince was inconsistent, but because the range of what he recorded was wider than his public catalog suggested.
In June, Paisley Park and downtown Minneapolis will host “Prince Celebration: 10th Anniversary Celebration of Life” from June 3 to 7. The five-day event will include live performances from Chaka Khan, Morris Day, Tevin Campbell, Sounds of Blackness, Cassandra O’Neal and Bobby Z.
Members of both The Revolution, his band during the Purple Rain era, and the New Power Generation will appear.
The event will also include exclusive presentations of unreleased material and rare archival content. A community sing-along and block party is planned for June in downtown Minneapolis as well.
The DJ Dance Kickoff will return to First Avenue, the Minneapolis venue where much of Purple Rain was filmed, and where fans gathered Monday near the Prince mural to remember where they were when they heard the news a decade ago.
Minnesota Governor Tim Walz was asked on Tuesday what Prince song he was listening to mark the date. “I’m a ‘1999’ guy,” he said, “because I’m old enough that it still seems like it’s the future.”
