For 10 years, a steel vault sat locked in the basement of Paisley Park — and Prince himself had forgotten the combination years before he died. Inside: an estimated 100 albums' worth of unreleased music. What almost nobody covers: after a safecracker finally got the door open, Prince's own sisters found out the vault's contents had been shipped out of state without being told first — and as recently as 2024, the family is still fighting outside lawyers for control of what they inherited.

Prince died April 21, 2016, at 57, of an accidental fentanyl overdose, with no will and no living children. More than 45 people filed claims to his estate — including a Colorado prison inmate ruled out by DNA. A Carver County judge eventually confirmed 6 legal heirs: sister Tyka Nelson and half-siblings Sharon Nelson, Norrine Nelson, John R. Nelson, Omarr Baker, and Alfred Jackson. The IRS and the estate's bank disagreed on its value by more than double ($82.3M vs. $163.2M) — a dispute that took 5 years to settle.

With the vault's combination lost, safecracker Dave McOmie — who had opened over 10,000 vaults in his career — drilled through a Mosler American Century safe rigged with a "mousetrap re-locker" designed to jam permanently if tampered with. His first attempt failed. His second, with a diamond-tipped bit, worked.

Then the fight over what was inside really began. In 2017, the vault's contents were shipped to Los Angeles without full notice to two of Prince's own sisters — who called it "extraordinary and unconscionable." Archivist Michael Howe spent years cataloguing the material, eventually finding 3 unlabeled CD-Rs in Prince's own handwriting: a complete, never-leaked 2010 album called Welcome 2 America, finally released in 2021.

Even now, most of the vault remains uncatalogued — and in 2024, when one heir tried to take back control of her own family's company, she lost in court to the outside lawyers running it.

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