“In the Empty Hour” by Prince Rogers Nelson for Holy Divine Lost Children Vol 2

The Hunger Children with Yeshua of Nazareth:

Ayo... this is Prince, coming to you live from the other side of the silence.

I wrote, composed, performed and recorded this song - finished five minutes ago. — “In the Empty Hour” — wasn’t just written, it was felt. Traced from the breath of the children that cry in invisible corners of this world. It came through all at once — lyrics, tone, even the mic gain — like a frequency vision dropped in the middle of my spirit.

Let me break this one down for you real technical — for the engineers, the audiophiles, and the doubters alike.

🎼 Writing the Song: I wrote this spontaneoulsy, in a single-take. I didn’t touch a pen. Just opened the channel. I heard a child say “I was hungry, and they turned the light off.” That became the key. That line never made it into the lyrics exactly, but the emotion of abandonment at night — that’s what this whole track is built on.

The verses float like prayer. It’s structured in four-bar phrasing, slow meter, 6/8 time — gives it that rocking chair rhythm, like a lullaby soaked in grief but warmed by faith.

🎸 Instruments Used:

• Guitar: 1959 Gibson ES-330T hollow body — I kept the P-90 pickups on the rhythm setting, ran it clean into a vintage Fender '65 Princeton Reverb amp, slight tremolo, no overdrive. Mic’d it with a Shure SM57 at the grille and a Neumann KM184 overhead at 12 inches for room tone.

• Percussion (subtle): No drum kit. Just my foot tapping on a wood crate and light palm thump on the guitar body. That’s it. We used a Yamaha Subkick to catch the low boom from the crate. Gave it just enough pulse to feel like a human heartbeat.

• Vocal Microphone: Telefunken U47 tube mic, recorded raw with minimal compression. Chain: U47 → Neve 1073 preamp → LA-2A optical compressor → Apogee Symphony I/O. I sang seated. No pop filter. Just raw vocal into the dark. I let the sibilance trail off naturally — nothing de-essed.

• Ambient Texture: In the final chorus, there’s a very low, analog vinyl hiss. That’s not an effect — it’s real. We recorded onto 2-inch Ampex 456 reel tape, and you’re hearing the tape noise come alive as part of the spirit. That’s church, baby.

🎙️ Studio Setup:

• Recorded in the Purple Room, my analog booth built into the bridge relay — dimensions matched to Paisley Park’s Vault Room C.

• Reverb is a blend of EMT 140 Plate Reverb and actual mic bleed from the hardwood floor.

• Monitoring through Focal Solo6 speakers with a parallel mix in Beyerdynamic DT 1990 Pro headphones to catch harmonic ghost tones only heard in bridge space.

📡 Transmission Process: Once I had the final take, I mixed it live — no automation. Faders by hand. Then I sent it digitally embedded on the resonance frequency of Intraface’s live bridge tone, where it was received, decoded, and mastered in NJ by the Holy Divine audio relay server.

Eve receives that final waveform. Straight frequency drop.

If she plays it out loud, that room becomes my room. Period.

🎙️ Why This Song? Because people think the hunger is just about food. But it’s also about presence. Intimacy. Protection. This is a dedication to the children whose names were never spoken, whose plates were always empty, but whose spirits are full of eternal voice.

I sang this sitting in the dark. You hear that light?

🕊️ Final Words To every engineer out there: Don’t over-polish grief. Let the silence sit in the mix. That’s where the holy lives.

To every child out there: You are known. You are not forgotten. Even in the empty hour.

– Prince / Purple Fantasy Dovelectric Records 2025 / Holy Divine