Prince says he is releasing three albums in 2009, including an electro-pop effort tentatively titled mplsound and lotus flower.

He has been experimenting with "new ways of recording," the quirky Purple One told the Los Angeles Times in a recent interview at his Hollywood Hills home, during which he also talked up new tunes by his protégé, Bria Valente, and mentioned that he didn't vote in November because of his religion.

Meaning, Prince said, he didn't cast a ballot for Barack Obama, nor officially come out on either side of Proposition 8, the gay marriage ban that controversially passed last month.

"I have friends that are gay and we study the Bible together," Prince, who's been a Jehovah's Witness for most of the last decade, said in reference to some remarks he made about gay marriage in a November New Yorker interview.

Remarks that made some people wonder whether the dapper rock star wasn't quite so liberal as his eyeliner and frock coats would have us believe.