Prince (musician)
Prince Rogers Nelson (June 7, 1958 – April 21, 2016) was an American singer, multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, record producer, and actor. The recipient of numerous awards and nominations, he is widely regarded as one of the greatest musicians of his generation.[7] He was known for his flamboyant, androgynous persona;[8][9] his wide vocal range, which included a far-reaching falsetto and high-pitched screams; and his skill as a multi-instrumentalist, often preferring to play all or most of the instruments on his recordings.[10] His music incorporated a wide variety of styles, including funk, R&B, rock, new wave, soul, synth-pop, pop, jazz, blues, and hip hop. Prince produced his albums himself, pioneering the Minneapolis sound.
This article is about the American singer and musician. For other uses, see Prince (disambiguation).
Prince
April 21, 2016 (aged 57)
Accidental fentanyl overdose
- The Artist (Formerly Known as Prince) (TAFKAP)
- Camille
- Singer
- songwriter
- musician
- record producer
- actor
1975–2016
-
Manuela Testolini(m. 2001; div. 2007)
1
Tyka Nelson (sister)
- Vocals
- guitar
- keyboards
- bass
- drums
Born and raised in Minneapolis, Prince signed a record deal with Warner Bros. Records at the age of 19, soon releasing the albums For You (1978) and Prince (1979). He went on to achieve critical success with the influential albums Dirty Mind (1980), Controversy (1981), and 1999 (1982). His sixth album, Purple Rain (1984), was recorded with his new backing band the Revolution and was also the soundtrack to the film of the same name in which he starred. Purple Rain garnered continued success for Prince and was a major commercial achievement, spending six consecutive months atop the Billboard 200 chart.[11] The soundtrack also won Prince the Academy Award for Best Original Song Score whilst the movie grossed $70.3 million worldwide, against its $7.2 million budget and publications. Critics have regarded Purple Rain as one of the greatest musical films.[12][13] After disbanding the Revolution, Prince released the album Sign o' the Times (1987), widely hailed by critics as the greatest work of his career.
In the midst of a contractual dispute with Warner Bros. in 1993, he changed his stage name to the unpronounceable symbol 
(known to fans as the "Love Symbol") and was often referred to as The Artist Formerly Known as Prince (or TAFKAP) or simply The Artist.[14][15] After moving to Arista Records in 1998, Prince reverted to his original name in 2000. Over the next decade, six of his albums entered the U.S. top 10 charts.[16][17] In April 2016, at the age of 57, Prince died after accidentally overdosing on fentanyl at his Paisley Park home and recording studio in Chanhassen, Minnesota. He was a prolific musician who released 39 albums during his life, with a vast array of unreleased material left in a custom-built bank vault underneath his home after his death, including fully completed albums and over 50 finished music videos.[18] Numerous posthumous collections of his previously unheard work have been issued by his estate.
Prince sold over 100 million records worldwide during his lifetime, ranking him among the best-selling music artists of all time.[19] His awards included the Grammy President's Merit Award, the American Music Awards for Achievement and of Merit, the Billboard Icon Award, an Academy Award, and a Golden Globe Award. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2004, the U.K. Music Hall of Fame in 2006, and the Rhythm and Blues Music Hall of Fame in 2016, and was inducted twice into the Black Music & Entertainment Walk of Fame in 2022.[20][21] Estimates of the complete number of songs written by Prince range anywhere from 500 to well over 1,000.[22] Some of these songs were made popular after being covered by other musicians, including "Nothing Compares 2 U" by Sinéad O'Connor and "Manic Monday" by the Bangles.[23]
Early life
Prince Rogers Nelson was born in Minneapolis on June 7, 1958, the son of jazz singer Mattie Della (née Shaw) and pianist and songwriter John Lewis Nelson.[24] All four of his grandparents were from Louisiana.[25] His grand-aunt was the black nationalist Mittie Maude Lena Gordon, who established the Peace Movement of Ethiopia and advocated emigration to West Africa in response to American white supremacy.[26][27] The jazz drummer Louis Hayes was his paternal cousin.[28]
Prince was named after his father's most popular stage name, Prince Rogers, which his father used while performing with Prince's mother in a jazz group called the Prince Rogers Trio.[29] In 1991, Prince's father told A Current Affair that he named his son "Prince" because he wanted Prince "to do everything I wanted to do".[30] Prince was not fond of his name and wanted people to instead call him "Skipper", a name which stuck throughout his childhood.[29][31][32] Prince said he was "born epileptic" and had seizures when he was young. He stated, "My mother told me one day I walked in to her and said, 'Mom, I'm not going to be sick anymore,' and she said, 'Why?' and I said, 'Because an angel told me so.'"[33] Prince's younger sister, Tyka, was born on May 18, 1960.[16][34] Both siblings developed a keen interest in music, which was encouraged by their father.[35] His parents were both members of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, an evangelical denomination.[36]
In 2022, during a Minneapolis teachers' strike, Minneapolis-St. Paul news station WCCO-TV was researching a previous teacher's strike in April 1970 and accidentally uncovered an interview they had done with Prince about that 1970 strike. Prince, who was 11 years old at the time, said about the strike, "I think they should get a better education too cause, um, and I think they should get some more money cause they work, they be working extra hours for us and all that stuff." While he never identifies himself in the interview, it was confirmed to be him through interviews with a historian in Minneapolis who is also a fan of Prince, as well as by a former classmate who was a member of Prince's first band. The video is one of very few videos of Prince from that stage of his life.[37]
Prince wrote his first song, "Funk Machine", on his father's piano when he was seven years old.[35] His parents divorced when he was 10. His mother remarried to Hayward Baker, with whom she had a son named Omarr; Prince had a fraught relationship with Omarr, to the extent that it caused him to repeatedly switch homes, sometimes living with his father and sometimes with his mother and stepfather.[35][38] Baker took Prince to see James Brown in concert, and Prince credited Baker with improving the family's finances. After a brief period of living with his father, who bought him his first guitar, Prince moved into the basement of his neighbors, the Anderson family, after his father threw him out.[39] He befriended the Andersons' son, Andre, who later collaborated with Prince and became known as André Cymone.[40][41]
Prince attended Minneapolis' Bryant Junior High and then Central High School, where he played football, basketball, and baseball. He played on Central's junior varsity basketball team, and continued to play basketball for fun as an adult.[42][43] Prince may have been among the Bryant students who tested The Oregon Trail during its development in autumn 1971.[44] He was trained in classical ballet at the Minnesota Dance Theatre through the Urban Arts Program of Minneapolis Public Schools,[45] Prince became an advocate for dancers, and used his wealth to save the failing Joffrey Ballet in Chicago during the 1990s.[46][47] He met songwriter and producer Jimmy Jam in 1973 and impressed Jam with his musical talent, early mastery of a wide range of instruments, and work ethic.[48]
Posthumous projects
2016–2019
The first posthumous release from the Estate was 4Ever on November 22, 2016. It was a compilation of Prince's hits plus one previously unreleased song, "Moonbeam Levels", originally recorded for the 1999 sessions in 1992.[270]
On February 9, 2017, Prince's estate signed a distribution deal with Universal Music Group, which includes the post-1995 recordings on his NPG Records label and unreleased tracks from his vault.[271] On June 27, Comerica (acting on behalf of the estate) requested that Carver County District Judge Kevin Eide cancel the estate's deal with Universal, as UMG's contract would interfere with a contract with Warner Music Group that Prince signed in 2014. After Universal's attorneys were granted access to the Warner contract, the attorneys also offered to cancel the deal.[272] On July 13, the court voided Universal's deal with Prince's estate, though Universal will continue to administer Prince's songwriting credits and create merchandise.[273]
On April 19, an EP featuring six unreleased Prince recordings, Deliverance, was announced with an expected release date for later that week.[274] The next day, Prince's estate was granted a temporary restraining order against George Ian Boxill, an engineer who co-produced the tracks and was in possession of the master tapes, and halted the release of the EP.[275]
On June 23, a deluxe reissue of Purple Rain was released.[276] The most expansive edition contained the first being a remaster of the original album made in 2015 and overseen by Prince himself, a bonus disc of previously unheard material called From the Vault & Previously Unreleased plus single and maxi-single edits, B-sides and the first DVD issue of Prince and the Revolution: Live recorded in Syracuse on the Purple Rain Tour.[277] The album debuted at No. 4 on the Billboard 200 and at No. 1 on both the Billboard R&B Albums and Vinyl Albums charts.[276]
In April 2018, the previously unreleased original recording of "Nothing Compares 2 U" from 1984 was released as a single.[278] A music video was also released consisting of edited rehearsal footage shot in the summer of 1984.[279] Troy Carter, adviser for Prince's estate, later announced in an interview with Variety that a full-length album was planned for release on September 28.[280]
In June of that year, the Prince estate signed a distribution deal with Sony Music Entertainment including the rights to all of Prince's studio albums, plus unreleased music, remixes, live recordings, music videos and B-sides.[281] From 2021 onwards, Prince's Warner Bros. albums from 1978–1996 are distributed by Sony/Legacy Recordings in the United States, with Warner Music Group still controlling the international rights.[282]
On August 17, all 23 post-Warner Bros. albums by Prince were released digitally on streaming platforms, together with a new compilation album entitled Anthology: 1995–2010.[283] Only one song remained unavailable to stream, "The Most Beautiful Girl in the World", due to a plagiarism lawsuit in Italy that was not resolved until 2022. On September 21, Piano and a Microphone 1983 was released, an intimate recording of Prince privately rehearsing with a piano.[284]
The Sony/Legacy reissues began in 2019. Throughout that year, Musicology, 3121, Planet Earth, Rave Un2 the Joy Fantastic, Rave In2 the Joy Fantastic, Chaos and Disorder and Emancipation were reissued on CD and vinyl. Ultimate Rave was also released, a 2 CD and 1 DVD set which included the concert film of Rave Un2 the Year 2000.[285][286] The Versace Experience - Prelude 2 Gold was also reissued for Record Store Day.[287]
In June, a compilation of Prince's original recordings of songs given to other artists, entitled Originals, was released - initially exclusively through TIDAL, then later on CD and vinyl.[288] In October, a single of Prince's previously unheard original acoustic demo of "I Feel for You"[289] was released digitally and as a limited 7" single.
In October 2019, Prince's incomplete memoir The Beautiful Ones was published by Random House.[290] Prince had worked on the memoir project with Dan Piepenbring during the Piano and a Microphone Tour in 2016 and had managed to complete around 50 pages before his death.[291] The book includes those pages plus a lengthy account by Piepenbring of how the project came to be, a scrapbook of rare personal photos and miscellanea from the vault, and Prince's original handwritten concept for the film Purple Rain.
In November, a Deluxe reissue of 1999 was released. This reissue had several configurations, the most expansive including 35 previously unreleased songs and two live concerts.[292]
2020–present
In 2020, a Super Deluxe reissue of Sign o' the Times was released. This reissue had various configurations, with the most expansive containing the original album, the single and maxi-single mixes, related B-sides, plus 45 previously unissued studio tracks, a live show from the Sign o' the Times Tour in Utrecht plus a DVD featuring the New Year's Eve 1987 show at Paisley Park.[293] Pitchfork rated the Super Deluxe version 10 out of 10 and named it Best New Reissue.[294]
In June 2021, The Truth was reissued on vinyl for Record Store Day.[295] The following month saw the release of Welcome 2 America, a completely unheard album originally recorded and shelved in 2010.[296]
In 2022, Prince and the Revolution: Live was reissued on Blu-Ray, along with the soundtrack which was also released on CD and vinyl for the first time.[297] This year also saw the release of "The Most Beautiful Girl in the World" on streaming services. It had previously been unavailable due to a plagiarism lawsuit in Italy which the estate has now resolved; Bruno Bergonzi and Michele Vicino are now legally recognised as co-writers in Italy.[298]
In 2023, a Super Deluxe reissue of Diamonds and Pearls was released, containing the original album plus remixes and B-sides from this era, 33 previously unheard tracks and a Blu-ray of a live concert recorded at Glam Slam as a rehearsal for the Diamonds and Pearls Tour.[299]
Legal issues
Pseudonyms
In 1993, during negotiations regarding the release of The Gold Experience, a legal battle ensued between Warner Bros. and Prince over the artistic and financial control of his musical output. During the lawsuit, Prince appeared in public with the word "slave" written on his cheek.[382] He explained that he had changed his name to an unpronounceable symbol to emancipate himself from his contract with Warner Bros., and that he had done it out of frustration because he felt his own name now belonged to the company.[383][384]
Prince sometimes used pseudonyms to separate himself from the music he had written, produced or recorded, and at one point stated that his ownership and achievement were strengthened by the act of giving away ideas.[134] Pseudonyms he adopted, at various times, include: Jamie Starr and The Starr Company (for the songs he wrote for the Time and many other artists from 1981 to 1984), Joey Coco (for many unreleased Prince songs in the late 1980s, as well as songs written for Sheena Easton and Kenny Rogers), Alexander Nevermind (for writing the song "Sugar Walls" (1984) by Sheena Easton), and Christopher (used for his songwriting credit of "Manic Monday" (1986) for the Bangles).
Copyright issues
On September 14, 2007, Prince announced that he was going to sue YouTube and eBay, because they hosted his copyrighted material, and he hired the international Internet-policing company Web Sheriff.[385][386] In October, Stephanie Lenz filed a lawsuit against Universal Music Publishing Group claiming that they were abusing copyright law after the music publisher had YouTube take down Lenz's home movie in which the Prince song "Let's Go Crazy" played faintly in the background.[387][388] On November 5, several Prince fan sites formed "Prince Fans United" to fight back against legal requests which, they claim, Prince made to prevent all use of photographs, images, lyrics, album covers, and anything linked to his likeness.[389] Prince's lawyers claimed that this constituted copyright infringement; the Prince Fans United said that the legal actions were "attempts to stifle all critical commentary about Prince". Prince's promoter AEG stated that the only offending items on the three fansites were live shots from Prince's 21 nights in London at the O2 Arena earlier in the year.[390]
On November 8, Prince Fans United received a song named "PFUnk", providing a kind of "unofficial answer" to their movement. The song originally debuted on the PFU main site,[391] was retitled "F.U.N.K.", but this is not one of the selected songs available on the iTunes Store. On November 14, the satirical website b3ta.com pulled their "image challenge of the week" devoted to Prince after legal threats from the star under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).[392]
At the 2008 Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival ("Coachella Festival"), Prince performed a cover of Radiohead's "Creep"; however, immediately afterward, he forced YouTube and other sites to remove footage that fans had taken of the performance despite Radiohead's request to leave it on the website.[393] Days later, YouTube reinstated the videos, as Radiohead had said: "It's our song, let people hear it." In 2009, Prince put the video of the Coachella performance on his official website.
In 2010, Prince declared: "the internet is completely over", elaborating five years later that "the internet was over for anyone who wants to get paid... tell me a musician who's got rich off digital sales".[362]
In 2013, the Electronic Frontier Foundation granted to Prince the inaugural "Raspberry Beret Lifetime Aggrievement Award"[394] for what they said was abuse of the DMCA takedown process.[395]
In January 2014, Prince filed a lawsuit titled Prince v. Chodera against 22 online users for direct copyright infringement, unauthorized fixation, contributory copyright infringement, and bootlegging.[396] Several of the users were fans who had shared links to bootlegged versions of Prince concerts through social media websites like Facebook.[397][398] In the same month, he dismissed the entire action without prejudice.[399]
Prince was one of a small handful of musicians to deny "Weird Al" Yankovic requests to parody his music (Yankovic does not need legal permission to parody songs, but requests artists permission as professional courtesy).[400][401] By Yankovic's account, he'd done so "about a half-dozen times" and has been the sole artist not to give any explanation for his rejection beyond a flat "no".[402]
Posthumous releases (excluding compilations and reissues):
Prince also released two albums credited to Madhouse, three albums credited to the New Power Generation, and one credited to the NPG Orchestra:
Madhouse:
The New Power Generation:
NPG Orchestra:
