Prince
Prince Rogers Nelson (born June 7, 1958), known from 1993 to 2000 as symbol (or informally, The Artist Formerly Known as Prince, Tafkap, or simply The Artist), is a popular American musician. He had the biggest song of 1984 with “When Doves Cry” and is best known for his album and movie “Purple Rain”.
His music has spanned myriad styles; from his early material, rooted in funk and soul, he has constantly expanded his musical palette throughout his career, absorbing many other genres including new wave, pop, rock, blues, jazz and hip hop. Born in Minneapolis, he has based his entire career in Minnesota. He now resides in Los Angeles.
The distinctive characteristics of the early-to-mid 1980s work that raised him to super-stardom - which includes industrial sounding drum machine arrangements, the use of synthesizer riffs to serve the role of horn riffs traditionally used in earlier R&B, funk and soul music - became known as “the Minneapolis sound,”. He has a reputation as a workaholic, having released over a thousand songs both under his own name and through other artists, and is known for having composed and recorded many more songs that remain unreleased. Regarded as a perfectionist, Prince has a reputation as being somewhat difficult to work with and for being highly protective of his music. He writes, composes and produces most of his music single-handedly. He also plays most of the instruments on his albums.
Few artists have created a body of work as rich and varied as Prince. During the ‘80s, he emerged as one of the singular talents of the rock & roll era, capable of seamlessly tying together pop, funk and rock. Not only did he release a series of groundbreaking albums, he toured frequently, produced albums and wrote songs for many other artists, and recorded hundreds of songs that still lie unreleased in his vaults. With each album he has released, Prince has shown remarkable stylistic growth and musical diversity, constantly experimenting with different sounds, textures, and genres. Occasionally, his music can be maddeningly inconsistent because of this eclecticism, but his experiments frequently succeed; no other contemporary artist can blend so many diverse styles into a cohesive whole.
Prince’s first two albums were solid, if unremarkable, late-‘70s funk-pop. With 1980’s Dirty mind, he recorded his first masterpiece, a one-man tour de force of sex and music; it was hard funk, catchy Beatles-esque melodies, sweet soul ballads, and rocking guitar pop, all at once. The follow-up, Controversy, was more of the same, but 1999 was brilliant and helped break Prince into the mainstream pop charts. The video for the single “Little Red Corvette” was one of the first music videos by an African American to be played on MTV alongside Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean”. The album was a monster hit, selling over three million copies, but it was nothing compared to 1984’s Purple rain.
Purple Rain made Prince a superstar; it eventually sold over ten million copies in the U.S. and spent 24 weeks at number one. Partially recorded with his touring band the Revolution, the record featured the most pop-oriented music he has ever made. Instead of continuing in this accessible direction, he veered off into the bizarre psycho-psychedelia of Around the world in a day (1985), which nevertheless sold over two million copies. In 1986, he released Parade, which in its own way was as ambitious and intricate as any art rock of the ‘60s; however, no art rock was ever grounded with a hit as brilliant as the spare funk of “Kiss.” The album was a soundtrack to his second movie, the universally panned “Under The Cherry Moon”.
By 1987, Prince’s ambitions were growing by leaps and bounds, resulting in the sprawling masterpiece Sign O’ The Times. Prince was set to release the hard funk of The Black Album by the end of the year, yet he withdrew it just before its release, deciding it was too dark and immoral. Instead, he released the confused Lovesexy