Prince Lives — His New Album Is Dropping Friday

Prince may be gone — but his music lives on. Despite his death last year at age 57, the musician has a new album dropping on Friday, which will mark the one-year anniversary of his death.

“Deliverance” will be a six-song EP, and the title track is available for download or streaming now through iTunes and Apple Music.

The songs are unreleased tracks from studio recordings made between 2006 and 2008. Fans can pre-order the mix of tunes through Google Play, Amazon, and iTunes. A physical copy of the EP will be released June 2.

The songs on the EP were written and produced by Prince and his mixing and recording engineer, Ian Boxill, who spent the past year putting finishing touches on the music.

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“I believe ‘Deliverance’ is a timely release with everything going on in the world today and in light of the one-year anniversary of his passing. I hope when people hear Prince singing these songs, it will bring comfort to many,” said Boxill in a public statement.

To those familiar with Prince’s career, a new album should come as little surprise. The musician was known for creating a large amount of unreleased content throughout his career.

Director Kevin Smith (“Clerks,” “Cop Out”) revealed in a live Q&A (that was later released as part of 2002’s “An Evening with Kevin Smith”) that he had filmed a documentary for Prince that has never seen the light of day.

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Prince hired the director to film segments of his talks with fans about a new album. Smith was informed when he left the project that it would likely never be released.

Smith said he was told by one of Prince’s producers that, despite all the footage he shot, he shouldn’t “count on seeing it.” The producer told Smith that she had produced “50 music videos” to 50 songs “you’ve never heard.” Smith then said he was informed that the unreleased work was put in a “vault.”

Now it appears “Deliverance” may be the first work released from that vault. Prince is hardly the only artist to have work published after his passing. Artists work constantly, tinkering away at this and that — typically releasing only a small portion of what has passed through their hands.

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A large portion of rapper Tupac Shakur’s music was released after his death in 1996. Though it fueled conspiracy theories that his passing might have been a hoax, Shakur was likely just constantly writing and trying out new music, looking for only the best to be released to his fans. Prince seems to have had the same work ethic.

Posthumous work is common with novelists as well. There are still rumors about unreleased J.D. Salinger (“Catcher in the Rye”) novels that will be published at some point in the near future. A 2013 documentary titled “Salinger” dug into the writer’s life and predicted that five new novels would be released between 2015 and 2020 based on the unused material the late, reclusive author left behind.

There are still rumors about unreleased J.D. Salinger novels.

Ernest Hemingway died in 1961 — but books with his name on them were released for decades after, such as the novel “The Garden of Eden” in 1986.

“Jurassic” Park” author Michael Crichton died in 2008, but an entire pirate adventure novel was discovered later. Called “Pirate Latitudes,” it was published in 2009. The list goes on.

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It speaks volumes about artists, musicians, and other creative producers of material that much of their work can live on and be discovered after they have passed away. Artistic creation can be a both a habit and a job — and lead to several lifetimes’ worth of material.

In more unfortunate news that will not please Prince fans, an unsealed affidavit revealed Monday that the musician was prescribed oxycodone shortly before his death under a friend’s name — in order to protect Prince’s privacy. Prince was found unresponsive at his home on April 21, 2016, due to an accidental overdose of fentanyl. Police are still currently investigating where Prince got the drugs that killed him.