Prince

Singer, musician, and entertainer

• Born: June 7, 1958
• Birthplace: Minneapolis, Minnesota
• Died: April 21, 2016
• Place of death: Chanhassen, Minnesota

Prince was an iconic figure of 1980s American popular music, known for his blend of funk, soul, pop, and rock and roll. This unique combination of genres brought his work to a racially diverse audience, his popularity with which was amplified by his overtly sexual productions and androgynous, extravagant, and often controversial persona.

Early Life

Prince was born Prince Rogers Nelson in Minneapolis, Minnesota, to musicians John Nelson and Mattie Shaw on June 7, 1958. His name was drawn from his father’s stage name. John was the pianist and composer for the Prince Rogers Trio, a jazz group well known in Minneapolis. Prince was surrounded by music throughout his childhood, playing and composing on his father’s piano in the family living room and attending his father’s jazz performances in clubs and theaters throughout the city. As a teenager, he learned to play guitar; joined his first band, Grand Central (later known as Champagne); and learned to produce studio recordings. With his own early recordings, Prince began looking for a record label shortly after high school.

When he signed a contract with Warner Bros. Records in 1977, nineteen-year-old Prince negotiated an exceptional amount of creative independence from the label, including sole primary control over recording and production. At a time when most major record labels, including Warner Bros., were run by white executives and marketed black musicians according to racial stereotypes, this contract was unprecedented. Prince’s parents had moved to liberal Minnesota to escape the racial turmoil of the South, and Prince eschewed racial stereotyping throughout his upbringing. He was careful to emphasize his diverse capabilities as an artist, not an “African American artist.” Thus, in 1978, he alone recorded and produced his debut album, For You. Despite its middling success, the album revealed Prince’s early artistic focus on blending various genres, including funk and pop, and overt emphasis on sexual, highly eroticized lyrical themes.

Life’s Work

With a clear artistic vision, Prince developed a touring band comprising both black and white musicians, male and female, and produced an album each year for the next four years. Although none was a smash hit, the sexual themes that permeated his albums, especially the aggressively erotic Dirty Mind (1980), attracted a lot of attention. Prince’s androgynous image and flamboyant fashion sense sparked further interest.

When “Little Red Corvette” from the album1999 (1982) was put into regular rotation on MTV, Prince became only the second black musician—after Michael Jackson—to have his video featured on the channel. The song was a widespread hit and expanded Prince’s fan base beyond African Americans. It featured funk-soul vocals over a relaxed pop tone and rock-style guitar solos. After 1999, Prince’s major breakthrough came with his semiautobiographical feature film Purple Rain (1984) and its accompanying sound track, featuring the work of Prince and his new band, the Revolution. Several singles from the sound track, including “When Doves Cry,” “Let’s Go Crazy,” and “Purple Rain,” reached the top of the charts. The sound track and film garnered critical acclaim and brought Prince international fame, three Grammy Awards, and an Oscar. In 1985, in collaboration with Warner Bros., Prince built his own record studio complex, called Paisley Park, just outside Minneapolis. From there he produced his next eight albums and increased his work as a promoter of other artists—mostly female—such asSheena Easton andCarmen Electra.

In the early 1990s, Prince’s relationship with Warner Bros. Records disintegrated over contract disputes and conflicts regarding Paisley Park. Prince waged a high-profile battle against the label, appearing at an interview with the word “slave” scrawled across his cheek, invoking the problems of black artists in a white-controlled industry, and legally changing his name to an unpronounceable symbol. When he eventually was released from his Warner Bros. contract, Prince released an album titled Emancipation (1996), underscoring his earlier references to slavery. He later returned to using his original name.

Despite a series of personal struggles in the late 1990s and 2000s, including two divorces and the deaths of his newborn son and parents, Prince continued to tour and produce albums. The early 2000s were a period of musical experimentation for Prince; he produced several jazz and funk albums. which were not commercially successful. He made a comeback with the pop album Musicology, released in 2004. On the tour for Musicology, he experimented with including the album with concert ticket purchases. Prince was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2004. He released Planet Earth in 2007, and 20Ten in 2010. Prince performed at the Super Bowl halftime show in 2007.

In 2014 Prince released two albums simultaneously, Art Official Age and Plectrumelectrum. Art Official Age, which critics considered the more successful of the two, was a return to the height of his eighties sound, while Plectrumelectrum was more experimental funk rock. Prince continued to tour and released his final two albums through Jay Z's streaming service, Tidal. The tandem albums, HitnRun Phase 1 and HitnRun Phase 2 showcased Prince's unique brand of soul-funk with elements of rock and EDM.

In his last few years, Prince's health was beginning to fail him. He passed away on April 21, 2016, at his home of an accidental drug overdose of fentanyl, an opioid drug. Prince had been battling a secret addiction for some time. Only a week before, he had been hospitalized after losing consciousness on his private jet, which had to make an emergency landing.

Significance

Prince was one of the main figures in 1980s American popular music, rivaling the popularity of contemporary artists Madonna and Michael Jackson, and created nearly thirty albums from the late 1970s to 2010. What made Prince’s music such a sensation was its unique sound: More than any other artist before him, Prince sought to fuse a variety of musical styles, most notably pop- and funk-inspired bass grooves, rock-and-roll guitar playing, and soul-derived, sexually driven vocals. His fusion of music genres typically marketed to whites—rock and pop—with characteristically black genres—funk and soul—and his early insistence on full artistic control of his albums significantly altered perceptions of African American artists in the music industry and helped his work appeal to a large and racially diverse audience. Beyond his music, Prince’s flamboyant persona explored issues of sexuality and gender and ensured his iconic status as a creative visionary.

Bibliography

Draper, Jason. Prince: Life and Times. London: Jawbone, 2009. Print.

Hahn, Alex. Possessed: The Rise and Fall of Prince. New York: Billboard, 2003. Print.

Morton, Brian. Prince: A Thief in the Temple. Edinburgh: Canongate, 2007. Print.

Pareles, Jon. "Prince, an Artist Who Defied Genre, Is Dead at 57." New York Times. New York Times, 21 Apr. 2016. Web. 23 June 2016.

Perone, James E. The Words and Music of Prince. Westport: Praeger, 2008. Print.