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The Slaughterhouse

2004 studio album by Prince

Manuscripts, fine bindings, an engraving plate and preserved performance ephemera
Arts and lettersInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionMay 20, 2026
Entity authorityQ953216 ↗
Source-derived summary

The Slaughterhouse (Trax from the NPG Music Club Volume 2) is the thirtieth studio album by American recording artist Prince. It was released on March 29, 2004 by NPG Records. The album was released as MP3s through his website, NPG Music Club. The album's title comes from the first line of the song "Silicon", "Welcome 2 the slaughterhouse." The tracks consist of material previously available on the same website back in 2001, although some may have rearrangements of music and/or lyrics. "2045: Radical Man" was released on the soundtrack of Spike Lee's Bamboozled in 2001. "Peace" and "The Daisy Chain" were released as limited edition CD singles during Prince's 2001 Hit n Run Tour. In 2015, the album was released on the Tidal music service. It was made available on other online music services like Spotify and the iTunes Store in 2018.

Even though the album has never been officially released as a CD, there are bootlegs available.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “The Slaughterhouse” is 2004 studio album by Prince. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Slaughterhouse, studio and album, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA productive route into publication, performance and collection histories when the underlying object or edition remains clearly identified. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—2004, 2001, 2045, 2015—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 2004-03-29. For this dossier, Slaughterhouse, studio and album is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “2004 studio album by Prince” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 20, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q953216. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2004, 2001, 2045 and 2015.

Critical limits

Rights, attribution and provenance may remain disputed even when a general reference summary presents a stable account. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. 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.

Best used for
  • Identifying works and editions
  • Tracing reception history
  • Finding collection records
Verify next

The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “The Slaughterhouse”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow The Slaughterhouse primary sources, The Slaughterhouse archive and Slaughterhouse research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “The Slaughterhouse”?
  2. Where is authorship, date or provenance documented?
  3. Which edition, object, performance or recording is being described?
Subject index

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “The Slaughterhouse” 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.