In maybe the most surprising news coming out of the music world this year, it’s just been announced that musical legend Prince will be publishing his memoirs next year. So just why is this so shocking? In the almost forty years since Prince released his first album at the tender age of 19, he’s been notoriously reclusive and shy when it comes to giving interviews, especially when it comes to talking about anything to do with his personal life. Whenever journalists interview him, they’re not allowed to record the interviews, everything must be from memory. When you enter Prince’s home, you must sign an NDA that says you won’t divulge anything you see or hear in his home (luckily, Kevin Smith ripped his NDA up before signing).

Prince’s publishers Spiegel & Grau describe his memoir as “an unconventional and poetic journey through his life and creative work.” The book will find Prince writing about his early family life, as well as the “people, places, and ideas that fired his imagination” and the inspiration behind many of his classic songs. The publisher added “millions of words have been written about Prince — books and articles, essays and criticism — but we’re thrilled to be publishing Prince’s powerful reflections on his own life in his own incandescently vivid, witty, and poetic voice.”

While that’s all well and good and worth the price of admission alone, we longtime Prince fans will hopefully get the real dirt with this memoir. Like how much of the “autobiographical” film Purple Rain was actually based on truth? What about his notorious relationships with famous women like Kim Basinger, Madonna, Sheila E., Carmen Electra, Apollonia, and Vanity (the latter four of which he named)? Why did he change his name to an unpronouncable symbol for nearly ten years? How much of that hilarious Dave Chappelle skit is truth? And maybe most importantly, how does Prince feel about having invented Twitter writing some thirty years before Twitter was even a thing? (Prince was replacing words like “for” with “4”, and “you” with “u” way before Millennials did).

Prince’s memoir is due to hit sometime in 2017.

Are you excited about a memoir from His Royal Badness? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.

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HT: Rolling Stone

IMAGE: Prince/NPG Records