MINNEAPOLIS — Prince deserves better.

He was the complete rock star, rivaling Bob Dylan as the greatest music maker to come out of Minnesota. He became an international sensation with an unparalleled reputation as a concert performer.

A decade after his death, not enough of Prince’s legacy has emerged. A vast vault of unheard material remains unreleased. Little is being done to introduce him to a new generation of music lovers.

What has his estate done for Prince lately?

Prince’s fans are disappointed and frustrated because his visibility is not growing to match his lofty stature.

“I do feel for Prince fans that his legacy has not been looked after,” said Matthew Jeffery of London, who this month published a 10,000-word open letter to the Prince estate on Substack.

A much-anticipated, authorized nine-hour Netflix documentary by an Oscar-winning filmmaker was shelved in late 2024 after nearly five years in the making because the Prince estate objected to its tone and focus.

A highly touted, $26.5 million “Purple Rain” musical staged by a Tony-winning team based on Prince’s hit 1984 movie had a splashy opening in Minneapolis in fall 2025. But it doesn’t seem likely to reach its stated goal of Broadway in the immediate future.

No significant new material has been issued from Prince’s vaunted vault of unreleased recordings and concert videos since 2023’s “Diamonds and Pearls Super Deluxe” boxed set.

“You should understand that we just took over this estate 3½ years ago, and I would say [it’s been] less than a year and a half being able to be free of the restrictions that Netflix had,” said Londell McMillan of Prince Legacy LLC, co-manager of the estate. “Rome wasn’t built in three years.”

Netflix had exclusive access to material in Prince’s vault for its documentary, an arrangement negotiated by a previous estate administrator.

And not all Prince fans are down on the current estate.

“The estate’s heart is in the right place in terms of protecting his legacy, whether they are popular or not. Their intent is where it should be,” said Donny English, a Washington, D.C., lawyer who saw Prince in concert about 100 times over 35 years.

“Their vision for the future of preserving his legacy and releasing music seems to be a good one. The problem is the execution has been bad,” English said. “You can’t be both the visionary and the person to execute the plan.”

Follow through — or at least communicating what’s happening — is a significant issue.

For instance, in June 2025 at the annual Prince Celebration gathering of fans in the Twin Cities, McMillan and business partner Charles Spicer Jr. touted some upcoming major Prince projects — specifically a jukebox musical film helmed by Oscar winner Ryan Coogler as well as the estate’s own documentary, now that Netflix is out of the picture.

McMillan told the Minnesota Star Tribune this month that the Coogler film and in-house documentary are in development, and the musical is undergoing “edits” with a possible opening on Broadway in 2027 or 2028.

Plans for Prince Celebration 2026 in June were scheduled to be announced on March 25 but weren’t shared until April 14 with Chaka Khan, Morris Day and Miguel among the performers along with appearances by Bootsy Collins and Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis.

There is apparently no staff at Paisley Park, Prince’s studio complex turned museum in Chanhassen, empowered to make decisions. Directions seem to come from McMillan, a New York entertainment lawyer, manager and publisher who has other obligations besides co-managing the Prince estate.

McMillan, who has become the face and de facto spokesman for all things Prince these days, acknowledged, “there is a role that we can play better in communicating and embracing fan input.”

Lack of activities and lack of communication have turned off Stacy Morgan, a regular at Paisley Park since she moved to Minneapolis from New York in 2020 because she’s a Prince fan.

“I haven’t been motivated,” said Morgan, who appreciates “Prince Night” at the Twins and Timberwolves games. “I love going to Paisley Park even if it’s parts I’ve seen a million times. But right now, what’s even happening out there?”

Untangling the estate

After years of Prince’s six heirs fighting in probate court, the management of the estate changed in 2021. That’s when Prince’s three eldest surviving siblings transferred their half of the estate to McMillan’s Prince Legacy LLC, and the other surviving siblings sold their interests to Primary Wave Music, a New York management and publishing firm that has worked with the estates of Whitney Houston and Bob Marley.

For the first three years after Prince died, Paisley Park was run by Graceland Holdings LLC. That organization did a commendable job establishing it as a museum and staging Celebration, a multiday fan convention with live performances, panel discussions and listening/viewing parties of material from the vault.

Following the expiration of Graceland’s contract, Paisley Park was operated by an executive staff, hired by a court-appointed administrator. That group notably organized 2021’s striking display “The Beautiful Collection” of 300 pairs of Prince’s bespoke shoes, the best exhibit and thing to happen at Paisley Park since it opened as a museum.

McMillan, who has overseen Paisley for four years, seems as concerned with protecting Prince’s legacy as promoting it. For example, he recently sought to stop Apollonia, Prince’s co-star in the 1984 film “Purple Rain,” from trademarking her stage name because McMillan felt that Prince, who coined the moniker, had proprietary interest for marketing “Apollonia” in the “Purple Rain” musical. Last week, Rolling Stone reported that Apollonia and McMillan had reached a confidential out-of-court settlement.

McMillan scotched plans for Prince’s star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, set to be unveiled on April 21.

“We had plans to do that. I thought it would be great for his legacy to continue,” Mayte Garcia, Prince’s first ex-wife, told the Star Tribune. “Legalities. I don’t have any comment on it. Unfortunately, the powers that be have plans for another time.”

McMillan explained that Prince twice declined the Walk of Fame star offer when he was alive because he “didn’t want his name in the ground.” McMillan recently proposed that Prince be honored on a wall instead, as Muhammad Ali is on the Walk of Fame, but the Hollywood honchos nixed that.

While the estate has released some impressively curated reissues of Prince’s albums and material from the vault (see related story), it has done so at a noticeably slower pace than, say, the catalogs of Bob Dylan, David Bowie, Bruce Springsteen or Neil Young.

Even though the late Michael Jackson didn’t leave behind many unreleased recordings, his legacy has been buoyed by a new biopic opening April 24, two Cirque du Soleil shows that began in the 2010s and the 2021 Broadway hit “MJ the Musical” that has subsequently toured the world.

Pulling together a project from Prince’s treasure trove is not as simple as it might seem, McMillan said. Decisions are made jointly by his Prince Legacy LLC and co-managers Primary Wave, a privately held company that answers to shareholders. The co-managers have to deal with various assets partners such as Warner Bros. and Sony record labels and Universal Music Publishing, not to mention technology, including digitizing the materials in the vault.

In short, it’s more complicated than fans realize to secure agreements and produce new projects.

That said, McMillan mentioned that reissues of a deluxe version of Prince’s “Parade” (1986) and “Musicology” (2004) are in the works.

Reaching Gen Z

Unauthorized things happen outside the Prince estate that promote his legacy, including college classes, photo books and tribute bands like the Minneapolis-based Chase & Ovation.

“Anything that puts Prince in front of people is important,” said Baltimore photographer Steve Parke, who this month will publish his second book, “Prince: Black, White, Color,” after spending 13 years on the icon’s staff.

“I always get people being surprised by the photos of him in the [Minnesota Landscape] Arboretum with all the fall leaves around him. That particular set of photos becomes a meme all over social media in the fall.”

Arguably the best thing that has happened to Prince’s legacy of late is two of his songs, “Purple Rain” and “When Doves Cry,” were featured in the finale of Netflix’s “Stranger Things” in December.

That exposure helped introduce Prince to a younger audience, sparking boosts of 577% and 128% in streams on Spotify for those two songs, respectively, among Gen Z listeners.

“He’s had a resurgence with my generation,” said Sophia Arndt, 21, a University of Minnesota senior from Stillwater who is arts & entertainment editor of the Minnesota Daily. “After the finale of ‘Stranger Things,’ you couldn’t go anywhere on social media without hearing that opening guitar [riff] to ‘Purple Rain.’ I’ve seen that impact especially on my friends who weren’t raised in Minnesota.”

People discover Prince for the first time in different ways.

Morgan, a Minneapolis bank manager, took a group of 30 non-Prince fans from her office on a tour of Paisley Park three years ago.

“It’s one thing to hear about Prince but it’s another thing to be at Paisley,” she said. “They still talk about it to this day. It’s a group that wants to go back.”

What fans want

Longtime fans are speaking up because they would like to see the estate do more to promote Prince.

“Many fans, creators and cultural observers feel a growing unease, not because Prince’s work has lost power but because the structures guiding his legacy still do not reflect the scale, imagination, or ambition he embodied in life,” wrote Jeffery, the British fan who posted a thoughtful, thorough open letter.

“This is not said lightly and it is not said with hostility. It is disappointment born of belief and a sense that something extraordinary is being handled without enough visible direction.”

A Prince fan of more than 40 years in Hungary has started a petition asking the Prince estate to create a panel of fans — a trust of sorts — to advise them on how to proceed. Kares Balogh reports that his petition has more than 200 signatures.

He would like to see the estate publish a full catalog of Prince’s work in a book and then announce a series of releases from the vault as well as an education program.

“The press attention around the book would help keep Prince’s name in the news and support sales of his actual work instead of the exploitative memorabilia currently on offer,” Balogh wrote.

McMillan counters that he appreciates the enthusiasm of the fans, calling them “well-intentioned and ill-informed.”

Other Prince aficionados have specific things on their Purple wish lists.

“Demos might be at the top of my list,” said University of Minnesota professor Elliott Powell, who has taught a class on Prince for 10 years. “I want to get a glimpse into the creative process of Prince even if it’s not finished demos or if it’s things he’s working through.”

Powell, English and Morgan pine for the release of concert films — specifically Aug. 3, 1983 (when “Purple Rain” songs were introduced) and June 7, 1984, (Prince’s birthday) both at First Avenue, and Jan. 21, 2016 (first Piano & a Microphone shows) at Paisley Park. Fans also want to see “The Second Coming,” an unedited movie Prince filmed in 1982 during the Controversy Tour.

“There are so many amazing concerts that should come out,” said ex-wife Garcia. “He was always filming. He was such a creative person. We wrote a children’s book called ‘Happy Tears,’ which is really, really beautiful. I’d love to release that.”

McMillan acknowledges that his team is understaffed. In January, the estate hired a new cohort of archivists and engineers to catalog and digitize the remaining 55% of the vault that’s undocumented.

Superfan English, 54, has spent more than $75,000 on Prince (merchandise, events and four annual tours of Paisley Park plus travel) in the past decade, but he frets that none of his seven kids, ages 13 to 33, had a desire to watch “Purple Rain” with him.

English is concerned that Prince’s core audience — people in their 50s and 60s — will be dying with no new generations of fans to succeed them. He thinks the next 10 to 20 years are crucial to cementing Prince’s legacy.

“Unless we do a better job of preserving that legacy so it does continue to grow, so he isn’t forgotten 100 years from now…,” English said as his voice trailed off. “He should be as much a part of history as Socrates or Plato or some of these people we read about centuries later.”

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