Prince

In the annals of rock and roll, no figure matches the scope of Prince, the vocalist, composer, studio craftsman, and adept handler of many instruments. Few artists fused visionary pop thinking with instrumental command so seamlessly, enabling him to realize the sonic worlds he conceived. That rare blend drove his extraordinary run through the 1980s, when he issued nine gold, platinum, or multi-platinum albums, among them 1999 (1982), Purple Rain (1984), and Sign 'o' the Times (1987). Concepts arrived so rapidly that they overflowed his personal catalog. He oversaw full projects for the Time and Sheila E., then handed chart-topping material to the Bangles and Sheena Easton, thereby reshaping the era’s popular sound. Every corner of 1980s pop reflected his touch, whether in audacious funk, languid R&B grooves, electronic techno experiments, neo-psychedelic guitar work, or mainstream radio staples. His dominance stretched into the early 1990s, when he replaced longtime collaborators the Revolution with the jazz-funk New Power Generation, the ensemble behind his eighth Top Ten album Diamonds and Pearls (1991). Mid-decade brought open conflict with his label. Once freed from contractual restraints, he unleashed recorded music at an accelerated rate and reclaimed broad commercial attention, returning to the Top Ten with Musicology (2004) and reaching number one with 3121 (2006). The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee sustained a relentless creative schedule through his final decade, culminating in the simultaneous Top Ten arrivals of PlectrumElectrum and Art Official Age (2014). His passing in 2016 therefore registered as a profound jolt; the music itself remained perpetually vibrant and open to limitless possibility.

Music formed an inherited legacy for Prince. Born Prince Rogers Nelson on June 7, 1958, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, he was the child of a jazz pianist and vocalist. Self-taught on multiple instruments from childhood, he began writing original material soon afterward. Following his parents’ separation, music continued as a constant while he moved between their homes. For a time he lived with the Andersons, whose son Andre later performed as Andre Cymone. The two forged a friendship that turned into collaboration; together with Morris Day they formed the covers group Grand Central while still in high school.

Their initial major opportunity came when Pepe Willie, married to Prince’s cousin, recruited the pair into the funk outfit 94 East. Prince contributed guitar to several tracks on a 94 East demo and co-authored “Just Another Sucker” with Willie in 1977. By then the teenager had already secured a Warner Bros. deal on the strength of a demo produced with Chris Moon. He traveled to the Record Plant in Sausalito, California, to cut his debut, For You, issued in 1978. On that album Prince performed every instrument and vocal part, a bold statement for a first release. The set gained modest traction on R&B radio, its opening single “Soft and Wet” reaching number 12. Momentum built quickly with “I Wanna Be Your Lover,” the lead track from 1979’s Prince. That song topped the R&B chart and climbed to number 11 on Billboard’s Hot 100. Early 1980 brought another notable R&B success with “Why You Wanna Treat Me So Bad?,” which peaked at number 13, yet Prince deliberately avoided being typecast by incorporating rock, pop, and new-wave elements on Dirty Mind.

Dirty Mind marked Prince’s first full artistic statement, a solitary tour de force blending explicit themes with musical invention; hard funk coexisted with Beatlesque hooks, tender soul ballads, and driving guitar pop. Although it underperformed relative to its predecessor on the R&B side, “Uptown” reached number five on both the Billboard Dance and R&B charts. He intensified the provocative rock-and-funk approach on 1981’s Controversy. Pop crossover proved elusive, but the title track and “Let’s Work” still registered on the R&B survey. That same year he helmed the self-titled debut by the Time, a Minneapolis funk ensemble fronted by his longtime associate Morris Day. The resulting attention prompted the Rolling Stones to book Prince as a support act for portions of their 1981 tour, exposing him to crowds initially resistant to his boundary-crossing style. Wider acceptance arrived with 1999.

The meticulously assembled double album 1999 presented forward-looking funk-pop that displayed the breadth of his abilities. Issued in October 1982, it yielded three major hits: the title song climbed to number 12 yet became an MTV staple, while “Little Red Corvette” and “Delirious” entered the Top Ten at numbers six and eight. Here Prince first presented his backing unit the Revolution, spotlighting them in videos and on the subsequent tour; several members also appear on the record itself. Guitarist Dez Dickerson soon exited, leaving the classic lineup of Wendy Melvoin on guitar, Lisa Coleman and Matt Fink on keyboards, bassist Brown Mark, and drummer Bobby Z. This configuration appeared on Purple Rain, the motion picture Prince released in July 1984.

A dramatized rendering of his own origins filmed largely in Minneapolis, Purple Rain elevated Prince to superstar status. Launched by the stark, arresting funk of “When Doves Cry,” his initial number-one single, the film became a box-office phenomenon whose success mirrored that of its soundtrack. For a brief stretch Prince simultaneously held the top single, album, and movie in the United States. Nearly every follow-up single from the album reached the Top Ten: “Let’s Go Crazy” also hit number one, “Purple Rain” peaked at two, “I Would Die 4 U” reached eight, and “Take Me with U,” released late in the cycle, stopped at 25. Accompanying fame came friction when Tipper Gore established the Parents Music Resource Center after hearing her eleven-year-old daughter play “Darling Nikki,” the sexually charged track from Purple Rain.

With his position assured, Prince made an abrupt stylistic pivot in 1985 via Around the World in a Day, a psychedelic-pop excursion close in spirit to the Paisley Underground scene then active in Los Angeles; he even supplied the Bangles, central to that movement, with “Manic Monday,” which rose to number two in 1986. Powered by “Raspberry Beret,” the album still sold two million copies yet produced only one additional Top 40 entry, “Pop Life.” He followed swiftly with Parade, the soundtrack to his second film, Under the Cherry Moon. Although the self-directed picture faltered, the eclectic Parade scored another commercial success, anchored by the number-one smash “Kiss.”

After the Parade tour Prince dissolved the Revolution; excerpts from those performances surfaced on Sign 'o' the Times, the expansive double album released in March 1987. Compiled from remnants of several unfinished projects, it was widely praised as one of his strongest works, revealing the full range of his gifts. Three Top Ten singles emerged: the title track, “U Got the Look,” and “I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man.” Prince had intended to issue a hard-funk collection titled The Black Album in November 1987, but he withdrew it at the eleventh hour, deeming it excessively dark and immoral; a limited edition finally appeared in 1994.

He immediately recorded Lovesexy as a luminous counterweight to the abandoned The Black Album. The set became his first release since Controversy to miss the Top Ten and yielded only one Top 40 single, “Alphabet St.” Prince recovered promptly with Batman, music inspired by Tim Burton’s 1989 film adaptation of the caped crusader. The sound-collage medley “Batdance” returned him to number one for the first time since “Kiss,” while “Partyman” reached 18 later that year. He returned to the screen in 1990 with Graffiti Bridge, another self-directed feature. Its soundtrack, Prince’s third double album in seven years, drew from leftover material spanning the previous decade alongside new songs, including the lone Top Ten single “Thieves in the Temple.”

With 1991’s Diamonds and Pearls Prince introduced the New Power Generation, a polished ensemble fluent in R&B and funk. The streamlined soul of the album delivered his largest non-Batman success since Around the World in a Day; the sinuous “Cream” became his final number-one hit, and the ballad “Diamonds and Pearls” climbed to number three. The following year he released his fourteenth album under a cryptic logo merging male and female symbols. Soon dubbed the “Love Symbol,” the record found him engaging hip-hop on “My Name Is Prince,” yet it was the luminous pop of “7” that secured another Top Ten placement, appropriately peaking at number seven. In 1993 he issued his first greatest-hits package, The Hits, accompanied by an edition that gathered numerous B-sides from the 1980s.

Prince adopted the Love Symbol as his official name in 1993 to protest Warner Bros.’ reluctance to release recordings at the pace he desired. Because the glyph proved unpronounceable, he was widely referred to as “The Artist Formerly Known As Prince” (or simply “The Artist”) throughout the protracted dispute, which concluded in 2000 when his publishing agreement with Warner/Chappell lapsed. After issuing “The Most Beautiful Girl in the World” on his own NPG Records in 1994—his last Top Ten hit, reaching number three—he sought to expedite fulfillment of his Warner contract during the mid-1990s, beginning with 1994’s Come. The Gold Experience, which also contained “The Most Beautiful Girl in the World,” appeared in 1995, and Chaos and Disorder closed the Warner chapter in summer 1996. Prince marked his independence by releasing the triple-CD Emancipation on NPG that November.

Although greeted with favorable notices and initially robust sales—the triple set eventually certified double platinum on account of its length—Emancipation produced no hit singles. Prolific output became Prince’s hallmark. Just over a year later he delivered another triple-disc project, Crystal Ball, which gathered unreleased recordings spanning many years and included the bonus acoustic album The Truth; the latter received a standalone release in 2021. Fresh material soon saturated the marketplace. Newpower Soul, credited to the New Power Generation yet functioning as a de facto Prince album, surfaced in June 1998. Warner issued a collection of outtakes titled The Vault: Old Friends 4 Sale in summer 1999, and Prince signed with Arista for Rave Un2 the Joy Fantastic, a high-profile, star-studded effort that sold modestly after its November 1999 arrival.

During the early 2000s Prince explored jazz-fusion interests across several NPG releases, the first being 2001’s The Rainbow Children, which reflected his recent conversion to the Jehovah’s Witnesses. He returned to pop and R&B—and to major labels—in 2004 with Musicology, an album that restored him to the Top Ten while earning a 2005 Grammy nomination for Best Male Pop Vocal Performance; it later received double-platinum certification from the RIAA. He reinforced this commercial resurgence with 3121, which ascended to number one shortly after its March 2006 release. Planet Earth followed in 2007 and featured contributions from former Revolution members Wendy & Lisa. In the United Kingdom copies were distributed free with the July 15 edition of The Mail on Sunday, prompting Columbia, the album’s global distributor, to withhold official release there. The U.S. edition appeared July 24 and debuted at number three.

LotusFlow3r, a three-disc package, arrived in 2009 comprising three discrete albums: the guitar-centric LotusFlow3r itself, the 1980s-flavored funk of MPLSound, and Elixer, a contemporary R&B set spotlighting the breathy vocals of Bria Valente. Despite being sold only online and through a single major retailer, the collection entered the Billboard 200 at number two. A year afterward, another retro-tinged effort, 20Ten, became his second free newspaper giveaway in the United Kingdom; no official digital version was ever issued.

Between mid-2010 and late 2012 Prince toured extensively across Europe, North America, Canada, and Australia. In 2013 he issued several singles, beginning with “Screwdriver” and continuing with “Breakfast Can Wait” that summer. Early the next year he made a cameo on the Zooey Deschanel sitcom The New Girl in the episode that aired after the Super Bowl. This activity preceded the spring announcement that he had re-signed with Warner Bros., the label with which he had clashed two decades earlier. The agreement granted him ownership of his master recordings, and the label scheduled a reissue campaign slated to open with an expanded Purple Rain timed to the album’s thirtieth anniversary.

Two new albums appeared first: Art Official Age and PlectrumElectrum, the latter credited to 3rdEyeGirl, the all-female power trio that served as his millennial-era backing band. Both projects were released the same day in September 2014. Almost exactly a year later he issued HITnRUN: Phase One, featuring contributions from Lianne La Havas, Judith Hill, and Rita Ora. A sequel, HITnRUN: Phase Two, followed online in December 2015, with physical copies arriving the next month. Also in early 2016 he embarked on a rare solo tour billed as “Piano and a Microphone.” The run ended prematurely in April after illness forced him to return to Minneapolis. On April 21 police responded to Paisley Park and found Prince unresponsive; he died that day at age 57.

On June 2, 2016, Anoka County’s Midwest Medical Examiner’s Office ruled the death an accidental fentanyl overdose. The sudden loss and extraordinary accomplishments triggered widespread expressions of grief from fans, friends, musical influences, and colleagues. On the ensuing week’s Billboard charts Prince occupied four of the Top Ten album positions and four of the top singles slots. While the courts resolved estate matters—Prince had left no will—the Paisley Park complex opened to the public in autumn 2016. That holiday season NPG and Warner released 4Ever, a double-disc hits collection that included the previously unreleased 1982 outtake “Moonbeam Levels.” Upon its November 22 arrival the set debuted at number 35 on the Billboard 200. The long-awaited expanded reissue of Purple Rain appeared in June 2017, containing a full disc of vault material. Anthology: 1995-2010, a double-disc survey of later recordings, surfaced in August 2018 alongside the digital re-release of his post-Warner catalog; Sony Legacy oversaw both the compilation and subsequent physical reissues of those later works.

The archival Piano & A Microphone 1983 arrived in September 2018, debuting at number 11 in the United States and number 12 in the United Kingdom. The next major reissue, Originals, collected Prince’s own versions of fifteen songs he had originally given to other artists. Featuring his renditions of “Manic Monday,” “Nothing Compares 2 U,” “Jungle Love,” and “The Glamorous Life,” it appeared in June 2019 and entered the charts at number 15 in the U.S. and number 21 in the U.K. A deluxe edition of 1999—comprising two discs of unreleased vault recordings, a 1982 live concert, and a disc of single variations—followed that November. In May 2020 Sony reissued the 2002 “One Nite Alone” releases as the box set Up All Nite with Prince: The One Nite Alone Collection. That project was eclipsed by the September release of a Super Deluxe edition of Sign 'o' the Times, which augmented the original double album with extensive unreleased studio and live material.

Welcome 2 America, the first finished, previously unreleased album drawn from Prince’s vaults, emerged in July 2021. Recorded in March 2010 ahead of the Welcome 2 America Tour, the set featured bassist Tal Wilkenfeld and drummer Chris Coleman and debuted at number four.