"The Greatest Romance Ever Sold" is a song and single from Prince

Prince (musician)

Prince Rogers Nelson , often known simply as Prince, is an American singer, songwriter, musician, and actor. Prince has produced ten platinum albums and thirty Top 40 singles during his career. Prince founded his own recording studio and label; writing, self-producing and playing most, or all, of...

's (his stage name at that time being an unpronounceable symbol) 1999 album Rave Un2 the Joy Fantastic

Rave Un2 the Joy Fantastic

Rave Un2 the Joy Fantastic is the twenty-third studio album by Prince . Featuring a radio-friendly sound, the album was conceived as a return to commercial success after several years without significant public attention...

. The track is a smooth ballad

Ballad

A ballad is a form of verse, often a narrative set to music. Ballads were particularly characteristic of British and Irish popular poetry and song from the later medieval period until the 19th century and used extensively across Europe and later the Americas, Australia and North Africa. Many...

, featuring Prince's multi-layered vocals in the chorus.

The B-side

A-side and B-side

A-side and B-side originally referred to the two sides of gramophone records on which singles were released beginning in the 1950s. The terms have come to refer to the types of song conventionally placed on each side of the record, with the A-side being the featured song , while the B-side, or...

 was a remix of the track known as the "Adam and Eve" remix, featuring a rap by Eve

Eve (rapper)

Eve Jihan Jeffers , is an American rapper, songwriter, record producer and actress. Her first three albums have reached a total of over 8 million albums sold worldwide. She has also achieved success in fashion as she started a clothing line titled "Fetish." She won a Grammy Award in 2002 for the...

. This mix was later mixed into the album version and available on the remixed version of the album called Rave In2 the Joy Fantastic

Rave In2 the Joy Fantastic

Rave In2 the Joy Fantastic is a remix album by Prince , released via mail exclusively through the NPG Music Club, an Internet subscription service, on April 29, 2001. The album is an alternative version of Rave Un2 the Joy Fantastic, released the previous year.The album makes a number of...

. Prince's verse from the song was later interpolated into the song "Silicon" on the 2004 album The Slaughterhouse

The Slaughterhouse

The Slaughterhouse is the twenty-ninth studio album by Prince released as MP3s through his website, NPG Music Club. The album's title comes from the first line of "Silicon:" "welcome 2 the slaughterhouse". The tracks consist of material previously available on the same website back in 2001,...

. The maxi single

Maxi single

A maxi single or maxi-single is a music single release with more than the usual two tracks of an a-side song and a b-side song.-The first maxi singles:...

 included additional remixes, produced by The Neptunes

The Neptunes

The Neptunes are a record production duo consisting of Pharrell Williams and Chad Hugo, who are credited with contributing the sound for many successful hip hop, R&B and pop artists in the late-1990s and 2000s...

 (featuring a guest appearance by rapper

Rapping

Rapping refers to "spoken or chanted rhyming lyrics". The art form can be broken down into different components, as in the book How to Rap where it is separated into “content”, “flow” , and “delivery”...

 Q-Tip

Q-Tip (rapper)

Kamaal Ibn John Fareed , better known by his stage name Q-Tip, is an American hip hop artist, producer, singer, and actor from St. Albans, Queens, New York, part of the critically acclaimed group A Tribe Called Quest...

) and Jason Nevins

Jason Nevins

Jason Nevins is an American DJ, producer and remixer, who is most widely known for his pop dance productions.-Career:In the early 1990s, Nevins began releasing singles under various monikers through various dance labels, but achieved global recognition in 1998 with his production of Run-DMC's...

.

Intended to be a comeback single for Prince, the song only became a minor hit, peaking at #63 (#23 on the R&B charts). This could possibly be because the song's music video may not have been released for best effect, instead premiering shortly after Rave Un2 the Joy Fantastic was released and over a month after single was for sale. The failure of this single to make waves contributed to the relatively poor performance of the album.

Charts

Chart (1999/2000)	Peak position
U.S. Billboard Hot 100 Billboard Hot 100 The Billboard Hot 100 is the United States music industry standard singles popularity chart issued weekly by Billboard magazine. Chart rankings are based on radio play and sales; the tracking-week for sales begins on Monday and ends on Sunday, while the radio play tracking-week runs from Wednesday...	63
U.S. Billboard Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs, is a chart released weekly by Billboard in the United States.The chart, initiated in 1942, is used to track the success of popular music songs in urban, or primarily African American, venues. Dominated over the years at various times by jazz, rhythm and blues, doo-wop, soul,...	23
U.S. Billboard Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay The Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay chart is the airplay component chart of the Billboard Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Singles & Tracks chart. It is not the R&B subset of The Hot 100 Airplay, but rather a separate panel of R&B stations in urban markets used for the R&B/Hip-Hop chart...	33