32 years after virtuosic rocker Prince and Australian pop princess Kylie Minogue teamed up for a collaboration, their-previously unheard efforts have now reportedly been leaked online.
The track, titled “Baby Doll”, has been discussed at length by fans of the Purple One, with its origins tracing back to the Australian leg of Prince’s Diamonds and Pearls tour in April and May of 1992. Recorded at Sydney’s Studios 301 during his visit to the country, Prince and Minogue reportedly connected during the former’s performance at London’s Earl’s Court in June of the same year.
“We just kind of hung out,” Minogue told Zane Lowe in 2020. “I don’t even know what that means, but we hung out and he kind of put me on the spot a bit. He was like, ‘So where are your lyrics?’”
The pair reportedly continued their discussions before Prince sent his driver to Minogue’s apartment with a tape of his efforts. “There’s a cassette in my hand with Prince singing, a song called ‘Baby Doll,’ that I kind of was involved with, but he who slept four hours a night or something and just created stuff the rest of the other 20 hours,” she remembered. “That was my almost, we didn’t record it.”
Ultimately, the track didn’t receive the full studio treatment due to Minogue’s label nixing the idea.
The newly-leaked version of the track arrived on Friday (Dec. 16) via the New Paisley Generation YouTube account and features the same lyrics that Minogue confirmed in 2018 to have written for the collaboration.
Per the upload’s description, “Baby Doll” was one of the tracks from Prince’s Vault that were planned to be included on an intended project called Diamonds and Love in 2022. This release would have included unreleased material recorded during the sessions for 1991’s Diamonds and Pearls album and 1992’s Love Symbol record.
A deluxe reissue of the late artist’s Diamonds and Pearls album emerged in 2023, but was limited solely to the material recorded prior to the record’s original release in October 1991 – ultimately excluding the track.
According to U.K. publication The Sun, a source explained that “Kylie is just as baffled as everyone else as to where the track has come from.
“It was initially delivered to her on a cassette back in the Nineties and since Prince’s death in 2016, belonged to his estate,” they said. “Any leak is annoying but it’s nice for fans to finally know what the mystery song sounds like, God knows they have waited long enough.
“As for what will happen now if anything, fans will have to wait and see.”
