7 The 100 Most Influential Musicians of All Time 7Prince’s recording career began with funk and soul
marketed to a black audience; his early music also reflected
the contemporary musical impact of disco. Later records
incorporated a vast array of influences, including jazz,
punk, heavy metal, the Beatles, and hip-hop, usually within
an overall approach most informed by funky up-tempo
styles and soulful ballads; the latter often featured his
expressive falsetto singing.
Taking an early interest in music, Prince began playing
the piano at age 7 and mastered the guitar and drums by
the time he joined his first band at age 14. With very few
African American residents, his hometown, Minneapolis,
Minnesota, was an unlikely site for the development of a
major black star, but Prince even managed to lead other
local musicians, most notably Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis,
to major success.
Mirrored by correspondingly intense music, Prince’s
lyrics often address sexuality and desire with frankness
and imagination. Much of his work, in its lyrics and imagery,
struggles with the constriction of social conventions and
categories. As one of his biographers put it, “The whole
thrust of Prince’s art can be understood in terms of a desire
to escape the social identities thrust upon him by simple
virtue of his being small, black, and male.”
Prince explored typographical oddities in his song titles
and lyrics as another way of evading convention. In 1993
he announced that he had changed his name to a combina-
tion of the male and female gender signs. There is also a
strong religious impulse in some of his music, sometimes
fused into a kind of sacred erotic experience that has roots
in African American churches.
“Little Red Corvette” (1983) was Prince’s first big cross-
over hit, gaining airplay on MTV at a time when virtually
no black artists appeared on the influential new medium.
Purple Rain (1984) made him one of the major stars of the