July 29, 2021: Hot Summer

was made exclusively available as a covermount 7" with the August 2021 edition of Rolling Stone magazine in Germany on July 29, 2021, to promote "Welcome 2 America," which was released the same week. The album's first promo single, "Welcome 2 America," had an announced release date of the previous day, July 28, 2021. The a-side features the album version of "Hot Summer," while the b-side, "The Bird," is a live audio version from the concert video released on Blu-ray as part of the album's deluxe edition, recorded on April 28, 2011, at The Forum, Inglewood, CA, USA, and slightly edited for this release (not segueing into "Jungle Love"). Its inclusion marks consecutive singles where the b-sides are live versions by Prince of tracks originally released by The Time (a 2014 live version of "Cool" was included on the previous single, "Partyman / Cool").

The cover photos were utilized in the early promotion of the album and feature in the lyric video for Welcome 2 America.

Even though "Hot Summer" was played on Minnesota Public Radio station 89.3 The Current's website on June 7, 2010 (Prince's 52nd birthday), it wasn't officially released at that time. Despite being occasionally referred to in the media as a 'single', the track became available on streaming and download services a week before its official release.