We lost an other unique figure who we can call a Trojan horse in the heart of music. Prince Rogers Nelson passed away leaving us a relatively boring musical future.
Prince was a funky, flamboyant musician with great creativity which was far beyond the limits of popular music. Prince integrated a wide variety of styles, including funk, rock, R&B, soul, psychedelia, and pop and became the founder of the Minneapolis sound.
Beginning to perform in 1975, he first contracted Warner Bros and released his first solo album For You for that label. The album displayed his multi-instrumentalist musicianship as he played all 27 instruments.
Beginning in 1984, He recorded three albums including Purple Rain with his band The Revolution. After the disbanding of The Revolution, he recorded a solo album Sign o’ the Times in 1987. His next backing group was The New Power Generation which he debuted in 1991.
In 1992 he made a real radical decision which can be compared to Frank Zappa after he conflicted with Warner Bros. Risking his career, he left the courtesy of his stage name Prince and used a symbol which he meant love. He released 5 records between 1994-1996, which is a huge number and a mark of his freedom. He was reviewed as “the artist formerly known as Prince” at that period.
Prince also gave his compositions for the use of other artists. The revival of Tom Jones with the support of Art of Noise was provided by the composition of Prince called Kiss in 1989.
Sinead O’Connor’s first hit song Nothing Compares 2 U in 1990 was also Prince’s composition. Prince also supported artists like Alicia Keys, Chaka Khan and Steve Nicks with his brilliant compositions.
Prince was also an activist in copyright issues as he sued Youtube and Ebay for not filtering unauthorized music.
Selling over 100 million records he did not only became a popular figure, but a Trojan horse who could easily criticize the system created by the recording companies. Therefore, he created a persona of a transitional independent musician between mainstream labels and independent companies.
If we try to categorize him in mainstream terms, he will answer with his first song in the Love Symbol Album: “My name is Prince and I am funky”.
