The Rainbow Children
2001 studio album by Prince
The Rainbow Children is the twenty-fourth studio album by American recording artist Prince. It was released on November 20, 2001, by NPG Records and Redline Entertainment. It was also released through Prince's website earlier in the year. It is the first album released outside of the NPG Music Club to be released under the name of Prince again, as he had reverted to his previous stage name from his symbolic moniker a year earlier. It was released on double vinyl with a glossy color booklet, and was not available on vinyl again until the Legacy release in 2020.
This concept album illustrates common Prince themes of spirituality and human sexuality, as well as love and racism, through the fictitious story of a social movement toward a Martin Luther King Jr.-inspired utopian society. The album seems to allude to his recent conversion to the Jehovah's Witnesses denomination, but Egyptian monotheism and New Age concepts such as the Akashic records are used as metaphors as well. Jazzier than any of his previous efforts, it was met with mixed reactions. Some fans saw the album as a musical and spiritual evolution for Prince.
The Rainbow Children was released through the independent distributor Redline Entertainment.
“The Rainbow Children” enters the record as 2001 studio album by Prince. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Rainbow, Children and studio can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“The Rainbow Children” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Rainbow, Children and studio provides the most credible route into that argument.
Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 25, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1889451. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2001 and 2020.
Later fame can flatten the distinction between original context, subsequent adaptation and institutional collecting history. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.
- Identifying works and editions
- Tracing reception history
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The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “The Rainbow Children”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow The Rainbow Children primary sources, The Rainbow Children archive and Rainbow research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “The Rainbow Children” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.