Prince

Prince, born Prince Rogers Nelson on June 7, 1958, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and died on April 21, 2016, in Chanhaska in the same state, was an American songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, producer, dancer and actor. Throughout his career, he explored a wide variety of musical styles, from pop to funk, soul, rock and R&B. Prince's career began in 1978 and his discography includes more than thirty studio albums released over almost forty years. He also composed songs and produced albums for other artists, including the Bangles, Chaka Khan, Patti LaBelle, Madonna, Sheila E., Mavis Staples and The Time. A virtuoso multi-instrumentalist who could play about twenty instruments, excelling especially at guitar, bass, piano, drums and keyboards, Prince cultivated an aura of an ambitious, eclectic creator and an unparalleled stage presence through dancing and playing solos. He was also known for sexually explicit references in some of his songs and for wearing eccentric stage costumes.

His biggest commercial success was the album Purple Rain released in 1984 (soundtrack to the eponymous film in which he played the lead role), which sold twenty million copies and featured, besides the title track, the hits Let's Go Crazy and When Doves Cry. He also wrote Sign o' the Times, the Batman (1989) Tim Burton film soundtrack, and the hits Little Red Corvette, Kiss, Cream and Sexy MF. The hit song Nothing Compares 2 U by Sinéad O'Connor is also a Prince composition, as is Manic Monday by the Bangles.

In 1993, he abandoned his stage name in favor of the unpronounceable "Love Symbol" pictogram to contest the contract that bound him to the Warner Bros. record label. He was partially freed from it in 1996, then completely in 2000, and resumed his original pseudonym. He signed a new agreement with the company in 2014, which allowed him to become, in principle, the owner of his Warner recordings (which was one of the reasons for the conflict of the 1990s). He was also one of the first to experiment with music distribution over the Internet before distancing himself from it.

His fame extended mainly from 1982 to 1994, from the album 1999 to the song The Most Beautiful Girl in the World. Prince experienced a resurgence in popularity starting in 2004, the year of his induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the release of the album Musicology, which sold two million copies in the United States. His performance, in heavy rain, of Purple Rain during halftime of Super Bowl XLI on February 4, 2007, in Miami, is generally considered one of the greatest moments in these traditional annual musical performances, given at center field before tens of thousands of spectators and millions of television viewers.

Prince sold approximately 100 million records worldwide, making him one of the artists with the most record sales. The artist died on April 21, 2016, in Chanhaska, in an elevator in his Paisley Park complex, as a victim at age 57 of an overdose of pain medication.