Target triple pack, Crimson and Clover
Prince put LOtUSFLOW3R online via lotusflow3r.com on 24 March 2009, then shipped a Target-only three-CD package in the US on 29 March that bundled this guitar album with MPLSound and Bria Valente’s Elixer. NPG partnered with Columbia for wider reach after years of newspaper giveaways and club downloads.
Unlike Emancipation or Crystal Ball, the three discs are separate albums, not one continuous triple. LOtUSFLOW3R leans psychedelic rock and lead guitar: a Tommy James cover of Crimson and Clover, the long guitar piece Dreamer, and openers From The Lotus… / …Back 2 The Lotus framing the set. Band players appear across the rock tracks while MPLSound is mostly Prince alone in the studio, with Q-Tip on Chocolate Box.
Retail price sat near twelve dollars for three full albums, a deliberate mass-market move after the free Planet Earth newspaper experiment. Target ran TV spots; Crimson and Clover got an official video. The combined package debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard 200 and No. 1 on Top Independent and Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums charts.
French physical release followed in September 2009. Online members of the Lotusflow3r site got early WAV and MP3 access, continuing Prince’s habit of treating the web as a storefront rather than a leak risk.
Guitarists and bass players from the late-2000s touring unit thicken the rock tracks; Prince still owns the solos. Colonized Mind and Wall of Berlin push political and geographic asides into the guitar bed. The lotus framing tracks bookend the set like a ritual rather than a medley.
Columbia’s involvement put the package into conventional retail pipelines outside Target in some territories, while the US exclusivity kept the story tied to a Midwestern chain Prince knew from home.
We got sick of waiting for Sade to make a new album.
(Prince on Elixer / the quiet-storm disc in the same Target bundle, The Guardian, 2009)
Chart position proved the Target bet worked: physical buyers still showed up when the price and the exclusivity made sense. Live, Prince leaned on the guitar heroics from this disc while stuffing setlists with older funk.
As a standalone listen, LOtUSFLOW3R is the rock face of late-2000s Prince, less Minneapolis bounce than stretched solos and purple psychedelia. Pair it with MPLSound if you want the funk answer disc from the same week.
Cue Crimson and Clover or Dreamer first. The cover art and the site spelling with a 3 are branding; the guitar is the argument.
If you only stream the guitar disc, you miss half the week-of-release joke: the same checkout also handed you Minneapolis funk and a quiet-storm protege album. Buy or stream the trio when you can; chronicle the guitar face first.
