Earlier in the week, the three main fansites—Housequake.com, Prince.org and Prince Fams—joined forces under the banner of Prince Fans United to fight off threats from Prince’s legal team, which had forced the three sites to remove all images of Prince from their servers.

Sue this, Prince!

Prince’s response? He released a song, PFUnk, on a piss-take site, Prince Fams United.

And now, Prince has issued a rather slippery statement, claiming he was only really miffed about some live shots from the o2 Arena gigs, not every last image of him on every last fansite after all, and that, by barraging them with legal action, he’s actually ‘looking to provide fans with exclusive music… free of charge’.

I assume that’s a reference to PFUnk, a song that includes lyrics like ‘Hush yo mouth’ and ‘You might not like the taste, but I’ma stick your face in this funk’, and so, reasonably enough, has generally been interpreted as the little man saying, ‘Cock off, you whingeing twerps, I’ll do what I like’ to the people who pay his wages.

Prince is launching his new Planet Earth album as a free giveaway with a national Sunday newspaper in a move that has drawn widespread condemnation from music retailers.

The 10-track CD will be available free with an “imminent” edition of the newspaper. Planet Earth will then go on sale on July 24.

However it’s being distributed, I’m sort of faintly excited about the record. The new single, Guitar is decent-ish, in that it has wonderfully silly lyrics, and reminds me of Girls & Boys a bit.

You can listen to it by clicking the ‘play’ button below, or—more free stuff!—download it from 02.

[Click through to the site to listen to the audio]

Check your local listings or just keep an eye on the Tavis Smiley Show on PBS, and you’ll see Wendy and Prince playing guitars together and singing a song!! They taped it today… Feb. 12th so check it out!! what could be more amazing!?!?!?! …. wellllll… maybe if the Revolution…. oh nevermind! ;-)

Could this peace accord between Prince and Wendy point to a Revolution reunion? The rest of the gang were happy to play together at Sheila E’s Family Jamm fundraiser, and Prince’s recent appearance at the Grammys hints that he might be leaving the Jehova’s Witness jazz-funk behind in favour of a return to the mainstream. It’d certainly be a good way to mark the 20th anniversary of Purple Rain.

Fingers crossed, eh?