Purple Snow: Forecasting the Minneapolis Sound

Purple Snow was compiled by former Wax Poetics editor Jon Kirby.[3] The project took two years to develop and involved Kirby travelling from Numero Group's office in Chicago to Minneapolis.[3] His research also included making phone calls, writing letters with his first meeting being with a woman named Kim Johnson who was in a group called Best Kept Secret who warned that creating this album would be extremely difficult.[3]

13 of the 32 tracks were originally unreleased.,[4] while some of the singles that had tracks included on the release were originally only pressed to 500 copies, and sold to church groups and older high school friends.[3] Others, such as André Cymone's "Somebody Said" were unreleased, which were in a shoebox for decades.[3] Kirby specifically spoke about the help of Charles Chambliss photographs from the era, which assisted in his research, explaining that "A lot of the people I talked to had forgotten about their stuff. But when I reminded them by showing them pictures or mentioning names, they would remember all kinds of stories. It was an amazing experience."[3]

Purple Snow: Forecasting the Minneapolis Sound was released by The Numero Group on December 3, 2013.[1][5][6] The album was released on double compact disc and four vinyl box set.[7] The album included liner notes in a hardbound, full-color book.[7] Kirby's liner notes for the album were later nominated for Best Album Notes at the 57th Annual Grammy Awards.[8]

Professional ratings

Aggregate scores
Source	Rating
Metacritic	83/100[9]
Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic	[1]
Pitchfork	(8.4/10)[2]
NME	[4]
Spin	[5]

On Metacritic, the album received an 83 out of 100 average rating indicating "Universal acclaim" from an average of 10 critics.[9]