PRINCE

Aphenomenal talent, Prince has excelled as a singer, songwriter, instrumentalist, dancer, producer, and showman. The New Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll hailed him as “one of the most flamboyant, controversial, influential, and popular artists of the 1980s … and also one of the least predictable and most mysterious.” And that was before 1993 when Prince changed his name first to a cryptic icon, made up of male and female gender symbols, then “Victor,” and finally “The Artist Formerly Known As Prince” (Tafkap)—informally, “The Artist.”

Prince Rogers Nelson was born on June 7, 1958, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the son of the leader of a local jazz group. A self-taught musician, he learned piano at age seven, guitar at 13, and drums at 14. After forming the band Grand Central in high school, he signed with Warner Bros, as a solo artist at age 20 and quickly released a pair of solid urban dance albums, For You (1978) and Prince (1979), the latter yielding the No. 1 U.S. rhythm-and-blues (R&B) hit “I Wanna Be Your Lover.”

By 1980, when the album Dirty Mind was released, Prince had refined his often blatantly sexual, racially ambiguous hybrid of rock and funk. Prince’s next two albums, Controversy (1981) and 1999 (1982), reaffirmed his mastery of contemporary R&B.

With the release of his semi-autobiographical movie Purple Rain (1984), Prince finally made the leap to superstar status. The soundtrack album sold 10 million copies, spent six months at the top of the charts, and contained the chart-topping “When Doves Fly” and “Let’s Go Crazy.” The film also won an Oscar for best original score. Prince ignited a fierce controversy with his suggestive lyrics for “Darling Nikki,” resulting in the formation of the “Parents’ Music Resource Center” and the record industry’s self-censoring sticker policy.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, however, the extraordinary highs in the diminutive superstar’s career were offset by a succession of extreme lows. He scored several big hit singles—“Kiss,” “Raspberry Beret,” and “Cream”—but the movies Under the Cherry Moon (1986) and Graffiti Bridge (1989) were both critical and commercial failures. Prince’s often eclectic albums ranged from the irresistibly funky Sign o’ the Times (1987) to the disappointingly bland soul of the soundtrack to Graffiti Bridge.

The ever-flamboyant Prince shows off his eccentric dressing style at the 1985 Grammy Awards.

In the early 1990s, Prince’s behaviour became increasingly eccentric. A protracted dispute with Warner Bros, became so acrimonious that the singer refused to be seen in public without the word “slave” written on his face—expressing how he felt about the terms of his contract. The dispute meant there was a lengthy hiatus in Prince’s career. When the singer finally managed to free himself from Warner Bros., the resulting releases—Emancipation (1996) and Crystal Ball (1998)—were disappointing. Nevertheless, by this time, Prince’s colourful career had produced enough sublime songs for such failures to be overlooked.

Michael R. Ross