Prince’s unfinished memoir set for October release

Random House will publish an unfinished memoir by the late pop superstar Prince this fall, the Associated Press reported Monday.

The publisher is set to release “The Beautiful Ones,” which shares its title with a song on Prince’s 1984 album “Purple Rain,” on Oct. 29. The news of the book’s release comes a day after the third anniversary of the musician’s death.

Prince had been working on the memoir before he died of a fentanyl overdose in 2016. He was collaborating on the project with writer Dan Piepenbring, who will contribute an introduction to the memoir.

Announcing the publication date of the memoir, Random House said in a statement, “ ‘The Beautiful Ones’ is the deeply personal account of how Prince Rogers Nelson became the Prince we know: the real-time story of a kid absorbing the world around him and creating a persona, an artistic vision, and a life, before the hits and the fame that would come to define him.”

On a web page for the book, Random House says it’s divided into four parts, with the musician’s memoir comprising the first section. The other three parts will contain scrapbooks, photographs and reproductions of handwritten lyrics by the musician.

“This work is not just a tribute to Prince, but an original and energizing literary work, full of Prince’s ideas and vision, his voice and image, his undying gift to the world,” the book’s description reads.

Prince announced he was working on a memoir in March 2016, just a month before his death at age 57.

“The good people of Random House have made me an offer I can’t refuse,” he told the audience at an ad-hoc news conference at a New York nightclub. “You all still read books, right?”

Chris Jackson, the editor of Prince’s memoir, called the book “a beautiful tribute to his life” but also “much more than that.”

“It’s a treasure not just for Prince fans but for anyone who wants to see one of our greatest creative artists and original minds at work on his greatest creation: himself,” Jackson said.