
Few artists have created a body of work as rich and varied as
Prince. During the '80s, he emerged as one of the most singular
talents of the rock & roll era, capable of seamlessly tying
together pop, funk, folk, and rock. Not only did he release a
series of groundbreaking albums; he toured frequently, produced
albums, wrote songs for many other artists, and recorded hundreds
of songs that still lie unreleased in his vaults. With each album
he released, Prince showed remarkable stylistic growth and musical
diversity, constantly experimenting with different sounds,
textures, and genres. Occasionally, his music was inconsistent, in
part because of his eclecticism, but his experiments frequently
succeeded; no other contemporary artist blended 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 Beatlesque melodies, sweet soul
ballads, and rocking guitar pop all at once. The follow-up,
Controversy, was more of the same, but 1999 was brilliant. 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, which nevertheless
sold over two million copies. In 1986, he released the even
stranger Parade, which was in its own way 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."
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, but he withdrew it just before its release, deciding it
was too dark and immoral. Instead, he released the confused
Lovesexy in 1988, which was a commercial disaster. With the
soundtrack to 1989's Batman he returned to the top of the charts,
even if the album was essentially a recap of everything he had done
before. The following year he released Graffiti Bridge (the sequel
to Purple Rain), which turned out to be a considerable commercial
disappointment. In 1991, Prince formed the New Power Generation,
the best and most versatile and talented band he had ever
assembled. With their first album, Diamonds and Pearls, Prince
reasserted his mastery of contemporary R&B; it was his biggest
hit since 1985. The following year, he released his 12th album,
which was titled with a cryptic symbol; in 1993, Prince legally
changed his name to the symbol. In 1994, after becoming embroiled
in contract disagreements with Warner Bros., he independently
released the single "The Most Beautiful Girl in the World," likely
to illustrate what he would be capable of on his own; the song
became his biggest hit in years. Later that summer, Warner released
the somewhat halfhearted Come under the name of Prince; the record
was a moderate success, going gold. In November 1994, as part of a
contractual obligation, Prince agreed to the official release of
The Black Album. In early 1995, he immersed himself in another
legal battle with Warner, proclaiming himself a slave and refusing
to deliver his new record, The Gold Experience, for release. By the
end of the summer, a fed-up Warner had negotiated a compromise that
guaranteed the album's release, plus one final record for the
label. The Gold Experience was issued in the fall; although it
received good reviews and followed a smash single, it failed to
catch fire commercially. In the summer of 1996, Prince released
Chaos & Disorder, which freed him to become an independent
artist. Setting up his own label, NPG (which was distributed by
EMI), he resurfaced later that same year with the three-disc
Emancipation, which was designed as a magnum opus that would spin
off singles for several years and support with several tours.
However, even his devoted cult following needed considerable time
to digest such an enormous compilation of songs. Once it was clear
that Emancipation wasn't the commercial blockbuster he'd hoped it
would be, Prince assembled a long-awaited collection of outtakes
and unreleased material called Crystal Ball in 1998. With Crystal
Ball, Prince discovered that it's much more difficult to get
records to an audience than it seems; some fans who pre-ordered
their copies through Prince's website (from which a bonus fifth
disc was included) didn't receive them until months after the set
began appearing in stores. Prince then released a new one-man
album, New Power Soul, just three months after Crystal Ball; even
though it was his most straightforward album since Diamonds and
Pearls, it didn't do well on the charts, partly because many
listeners didn't realize it had been released. A year later, with
"1999" predictably an end-of-the-millennium anthem, Prince issued
the remix collection 1999 (The New Master). A collection of Warner
Bros.-era leftovers, Vault: Old Friends 4 Sale, followed that
summer, and in the fall Prince returned on Arista with the all-star
Rave Un2 the Joy Fantastic. In the fall of 2001 he released the
controversial Rainbow Children, a jazz-infused circus of sound
trumpeting his conversion to the Jehovah's Witnesses that left many
longtime fans out in the cold. He further isolated himself with
2003's N.E.W.S., a four-song set of instrumental jams that sounded
a lot more fun to play than to listen to. Prince rebounded in 2003
with the chart-topping Musicology, a return to form that found the
artist back in the Top Ten, even garnering a Grammy nomination for
Best Male Pop Vocal Performance in 2005. In early 2006 he was the
musical guest on Saturday Night Live, performing two songs with a
new protégée, R&B singer Tamar. A four-song appearance at the
Brit Awards with Wendy, Lisa, and Sheila E. followed. Both
appearances previewed tracks from 3121, which hit number one on the
album charts soon after its release in March 2006. Planet Earth
followed in 2007, featuring contributions from Wendy and Lisa. In
the U.K., copies were cover-mounted on the July 15 edition of The
Mail on Sunday, provoking Columbia -- the worldwide distributor for
the release -- to refuse distribution throughout the U.K. In the
U.S., the album was issued on July 24. LotusFlow3r, a three-disc
set, arrived in 2009, featuring a trio of distinct albums:
LotusFlow3r itself (a guitar showcase), MPLSound (a throwback to
his '80s funk output), and Elixer (a smooth contemporary R&B
album featuring the breathy vocals of Bria Valente). Despite only
being available online and through one big-box retailer, the set
debuted at number two on the Billboard 200 chart. A year later,
another throwback-flavored effort, 20Ten, became his second U.K.
newspaper giveaway. No official online edition of the album was
made available. From mid-2010 to the end of 2012, Prince toured
throughout Europe, America, Europe again, Canada, and Australia.
During 2013, he released several singles, starting with
"Screwdriver" and continuing with "Breakfast Can Wait" in the
summer of that year. Early in 2014, he made a cameo appearance on
the Zooey Deschanel sitcom The New Girl, appearing in the episode
that aired following the Super Bowl. All this activity was prelude
to the spring announcement that Prince had re-signed to Warner
Bros. Records, the label he had feuded with 20 years prior. As part
of the deal, he wound up receiving ownership of his master
recordings, and the label planned a reissue campaign that would
begin with an expanded reissue of Purple Rain roughly timed to
celebrate its 30th anniversary. First came two new albums: Art
Official Age and PlectrumElectrum, the latter credited to
3rdEyeGirl, the all-female power trio that was his new-millennial
backing band. Both records came out on the same day in September
2014. Almost a year to the day, he released HITnRUN: Phase One,
with contributions from Lianne La Havas, Judith Hill, and Rita Ora.
A sequel, HITnRUN: Phase Two, was released online in December 2015,
with a physical release following in January 2016. In early 2016,
Prince set out on a rare solo tour, a run of shows he called "Piano
and a Microphone." The tour was cut short in April due to sickness,
however, and Prince flew home to Minneapolis. On April 21, 2016,
police were called to Paisley Park, where they found Prince
unresponsive; he died that day at the age of 57. On June 2, 2016,
his death was ruled by the Anoka County's Midwest Medical
Examiner's Office to be the result of an accidental overdose of
fentanyl. His early death and incredible achievement prompted an
outpouring of emotion from fans, friends, influences, and
professional associates. On the following week's Billboard charts,
he occupied four of the Top Ten album positions and four of the top
singles positions. As the particulars of his estate were sorted out
by the courts -- the singer didn't leave a will, which complicated
matters -- his Paisley Park complex opened to the public in the
autumn of 2016. That holiday season, NPG and Warner released 4Ever,
a double-disc hits collection that contained the unreleased 1982
outtake "Moonbeam Levels." Upon its November 22, 2016 release, it
debuted at 35 on Billboard's Top 200. The long-promised expanded
reissue of Purple Rain appeared in June of 2017, featuring a disc's
worth of previously unreleased music from Prince's vaults.
Anthology: 1995-2010, a double-disc compilation of highlights from
Prince's latter-day recordings, appeared in August 2018 in
conjunction with the digital re-release of his post-Warner catalog.
The archival Piano & A Microphone 1983 was released the
following month. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine