Prince: The Legacy

%28Photo%3A+Warner+Bros.+Pictures%29

(Photo: Warner Bros. Pictures)

On the date of April 21, we lost a legend in the music world. But what we didn’t lose was Prince’s legacy. With that being said let’s look at the legacy of a music icon. It all started June 7, 1958 Prince Rogers Nelson was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Prince at the young age of 7 taught himself to play piano then came the guitar at 13 and drums at 14 all self taught. At 14 he was in a band called Grand Central then 4 years later it happened. At 18 years old he would sign his first contract with Warner Bros after his demo tape made with Chris Moon was reached out to them.

After that Prince got straight to work and came out with his first album “For Your” april 1978. On that album Prince would go on to play all 27 instruments and write all of the songs himself other than “Soft and Wet” which was co written by moon. Then his breakthrough, Prince would form a band and perform one show but Warner Bros. would later say they need time off to develop music. After Prince would release his critically acclaimed self titled album “Prince”. It would go on to reach #4 on the Top R&B/Black Albums with the help R&B hits Why You Wanna Treat Me So Bad?” and “I Wanna Be Your Lover“.  “I Wanna Be Your Love” would go on to sell over a million copies. 1980 Prince would go on to release another album “Dirty Mind” it reached certified gold status.

That year Prince would become the opening act on Rick James “Fire it Up” tour and in 1981 makes his first appearance on SNL. Prince in 1981 would form a side project band called the Time and they would release 4 albums between 1981 and 1990 he would perform most of the backup vocals and instrumentals. Then in late 1982 Prince would release one of his better albums “1999” it would sell over 3 million. Tracks like “Little red corvette”, “Delirious”, and “International Lover” would become famous off that album and International Lover would earn his first grammy nomination . 1984 would be the biggest year of prince’s career.  That year Prince would put out his first movie “Purple Rain” and album titled the same. The album sold over more than 13 million copies and the movie over $68 million in the US At one point in the year 1984 Prince had the number 1 album, single, and movie in the US.

Purple Rain is currently number 72 in the Rolling Stones top 500 albums of all time and. Prince Throughout his career was a very controversial artist because of his sexually lyrics he would use in his songs. In particular one song “Darling Nikki” which ended up having a group of people form the Parents Music Resource Center. But that wouldn’t stop him from coming out with other songs like this like “Around The World In A Day”, “Parade”, “Love Sexy”, and “Batman”. In 1990 Prince would come out with a sequel to Purple Rain called “Graffiti Bridge” and an album titled the same. The movie would do poorly while the album was the high point of both. In ‘91 Prince would change his name to also known as the “love symbol.” He would soon change his name back to prince and would go on to release 21 albums under that name and perform one of the more memorable Super Bowl halftime shows at XLI.

Prince died at the young age of 57 and will always be remembered in not only the music community but the world.