The
Chocolate
Invasion

The pioneering NPG Music Club was launched in 2001, and gave subscribers the unprecedented opportunity to receive a steady stream of new and unreleased music directly from Prince’s studio. By 2004, Prince had released hundreds of songs and videos through his website — including live recordings, reworked versions of earlier songs, new material, and a series of narrated mixtapes called the NPG Ahdio Show.

Prince had accumulated so many songs that he began reaching back into his NPG Music Club offerings and organizing the highlights into albums. Two of those compilations, The Chocolate Invasion: Trax From the NPG Music Club, Volume 1 and The Slaughterhouse: Trax From the NPG Music Club, Volume 2 were released on March 29, 2004, while Prince was in the midst of releasing his wildly successful commercial album Musicology.

Many of the songs on The Chocolate Invasion and The Slaughterhouse had been previously released, but some were reworked or reimagined versions of previous songs. Only one song, The Chocolate Invasion’s “The Dance,” was an entirely new recording, and that song would later be re-recorded for his 2006 album 3121.

Prince had initially planned to release a 7-CD set of material titled The Chocolate Invasion in 2003, but decided to forego releasing the music in a physical format and instead continue issuing downloads directly to his network of online subscribers. Both The Chocolate Invasion and The Slaughterhouse were released as digital-only downloads for members of the NPG Music Club, and were re-released a decade later as digital downloads via TIDAL in 2015.