Prince may not be willing to be a "slave" to record labels, but he is OK to work with Target to exclusively retail his next three CDs. In an innovative marketing move, he'll offer a three-album bundle for $11.99. Available March 29, the three-fer will include Prince's guitar-oriented Lotusflow3r and funky-leaning MPLSound, along with Elixir, the debut by his latest protege, Bria Valente.

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This article appears in Feb 25 – Mar 3, 2009.

Eric Snider is the dean of Bay area music critics. He started in the early 1980s as one of the founding members of Music magazine, a free bi-monthly. He was the pop music critic for the then-St. Petersburg...