Prince was always juggling three lives at once. By 1988, the Purple One was caught in a weird, vibrating tension between the commercial juggernaut of Purple Rain and the experimental, almost spiritual isolation of his Paisley Park estate. People keep asking about Rave Unto the Joy Fantastic because it’s one of the great "what ifs" of music history. It wasn’t just a song. It was supposed to be the title of an album that would redefine him after the Lovesexy era, yet it ended up becoming a ghost that haunted his vault for a decade.
If you look at the timeline, things get messy fast.
Prince started working on the original Rave Unto the Joy Fantastic project in late 1988. He was prolific. Manically so. He was recording tracks like "Electric Chair," "Pink Cashmere," and "24," imagining a record that felt loose, psychedelic, and deeply funky. But then Hollywood called. Tim Burton needed a soundtrack for Batman, and Warner Bros. smelled a billion-dollar opportunity.
Prince basically dropped everything. He cannibalized the Rave sessions to build the Batman soundtrack. This is why the 1989 Batman album feels so cohesive yet chaotic; it’s built on the bones of a project that was originally meant to be Prince's "joyous" re-emergence.
Why the original Rave Unto the Joy Fantastic matters to collectors
Most casual fans only know the 1999 album Rave Un2 the Joy Fantastic. Honestly? They aren't the same beast. The 1988 version was a moment in time where Prince was experimenting with a specific kind of digital-funk-meets-rock-god energy that he never quite captured again.
Check the "Electric Chair" performance from Saturday Night Live in 1989. That's the vibe. It’s raw. It’s loud. It’s Prince playing guitar like he’s trying to set the wood on fire. The title track itself, Rave Unto the Joy Fantastic, was a psychedelic masterpiece that didn't see the light of day in its original form for years.
When he finally released an album with a similar name in 1999 under Arista Records, the sound had shifted. He was using different tools. He had different collaborators like Gwen Stefani and Eve. The 1999 version was a bid for pop relevance in the TRL era, whereas the 1988 concept was an artist trying to find his soul after the commercial "failure" (by his standards) of Lovesexy.
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The Vault and the Warner Bros. Friction
Prince’s relationship with Warner Bros. is legendary for being terrible.
By the time he was shelving the original Rave project, the cracks were showing. He felt the label didn't understand his pace. He wanted to release music as fast as he breathed. They wanted to market it. This friction is exactly why so many tracks from the Rave era ended up on "The Batman" or were tucked away in the legendary Vault.
- "Electric Chair" became a Batman standout.
- "Pink Cashmere" stayed hidden until the 1993 The Hits/The B-Sides collection.
- "Joy in Repetition" (often linked to these sessions) found a home on Graffiti Bridge.
It's a puzzle. You have to be a bit of a detective to hear what that 1988 album would have sounded like. It’s a scattered map across four different years of releases.
Parsing the 1999 "Rave Un2 the Joy Fantastic"
Fast forward a decade. Prince is now "The Artist Formerly Known as Prince." He signs a one-off deal with Clive Davis at Arista. He resurrects the title, tweaks the spelling to "Un2," and delivers a star-studded record.
It was a polarizing move.
Critics at the time, like those at Rolling Stone, felt he was trying too hard to fit into a 1999 radio landscape. But if you listen to "The Greatest Romance Ever Sold," you hear a man who still had the midas touch for a melody. The problem was the baggage. By using the Rave Unto the Joy Fantastic name, he invited comparisons to his peak 80s output.
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The 1999 album is fascinating because it’s a snapshot of a legend trying to navigate the end of the millennium. It has some incredible moments—"The Sun, the Moon and Stars" is a gorgeous piece of work—but it’s a different universe from the 1988 sessions.
Misconceptions about the "Rave" bootlegs
There's a lot of misinformation in the collector community. You’ll find "Rave Unto the Joy Fantastic" bootlegs that include tracks from Graffiti Bridge or leftovers from Sign o' the Times.
Don't be fooled.
The actual 1988 configuration was relatively short. It was meant to be a punchy, high-energy statement. When people talk about it being a "lost masterpiece," they’re usually referring to the sheer quality of the individual tracks like "God is Alive" and "If I Had a Harem." These songs show a Prince who was less concerned with being a "movie star" and more concerned with being the world's best bandleader.
How to experience the "Rave" era today
If you want to actually hear the spirit of Rave Unto the Joy Fantastic, you can't just hit play on a single Spotify album. You have to curate it.
Start with the Batman soundtrack, specifically "Electric Chair" and "Vicki Waiting." These are the closest links to the original 1988 intent. Then, jump to the 1999 Rave Un2 the Joy Fantastic to see how the concept evolved. Finally, dig into the Sign o' the Times Super Deluxe Edition. While technically earlier, many of the experimental threads found there were what Prince was pulling on when he started the Rave sessions.
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Prince’s estate has been doing a decent job of opening the Vault, but the specific "Rave 88" configuration hasn't received its own standalone archival release yet. It remains one of those holy grails for fans who prefer his late-80s grit to his late-90s polish.
The legacy of the "Joy Fantastic"
Ultimately, the phrase "Rave Unto the Joy Fantastic" became a mantra for Prince. It represented his philosophy of music as a spiritual, ecstatic experience. Even when the albums didn't sell ten million copies, he stayed true to that idea.
He was always chasing a sound that felt like a party and a prayer at the same time.
Whether you're listening to the bootlegs of the 1988 sessions or the polished 1999 Arista release, the DNA is the same. It’s about the refusal to be bored. It's about the refusal to stay in one lane. Prince changed his mind about Rave because he found something else that excited him—the Batman mythos—and that’s just how he operated. He followed the lightning.
If you're looking to dive deeper into this specific pocket of music history, focus your energy on the 1988-1990 transition. It's the most fertile, confusing, and brilliant period of his career. You'll find a version of Prince that was simultaneously the biggest star in the world and a guy just messing around with a drum machine at 3:00 AM in Chanhassen, Minnesota.
To get the most out of the Rave Unto the Joy Fantastic history, take these steps:
- Listen to the "Batman" 30th Anniversary discussions: Many historians have finally mapped out which songs were originally meant for the Rave project.
- Compare "Man'o'War" (1999) to earlier demos: It shows how Prince would sit on a song for a decade before he felt the world was ready for it.
- Watch the Rave Un2 the Year 2000 concert: It’s the best visual representation of what he wanted the "Joy Fantastic" to look like—a massive, multi-genre celebration.
- Search for the 1988 tracklist: Try to build a playlist using the leaked 1988 sequence to see if it holds up better than the Batman soundtrack we actually got.
The music is all out there. You just have to know where to look.