Purple Snow: Forecasting the Minneapolis Sound

Purple Snow: Forecasting the Minneapolis Sound is a 2013 compilation album released by The Numero Group that chronicles the history of Minneapolis funk music scene. The album took two years to develop by Jon Kirby who traveled to find obscure recordings in Minneapolis and interview various artists and people of the era.

Production
Purple Snow was compiled by former Wax Poetics editor Jon Kirby. The project took two years to develop and involved Kirby travelling from Numero Group's office in Chicago to Minneapolis. 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.

13 of the 32 tracks were originally unreleased., 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. Others, such as André Cymone's "Somebody Said" were unreleased, which were in a shoebox for decades. 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."

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

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