100 Best Albums
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- JUN 25, 1984
- 9 Songs
- Purple Rain (Deluxe Expanded Edition) · 1984
- 1999 (Remastered) · 1982
- 1999 (Super Deluxe Edition) · 1982
- Prince · 1979
- Purple Rain (Deluxe Expanded Edition) · 1984
- Nothing Compares 2 U - Single · 1993
- The Hits/The B-Sides · 1984
- Graffiti Bridge · 1990
- Diamonds and Pearls (Remaster) · 1991
- Sign O' The Times · 1987
Essential Albums
- Prince had ended the 1980s—the decade in which he reigned supreme—on a royal high with 1989’s Batman soundtrack, which hit No. 1 on the Billboard charts and gave him a chart-topping single in “Batdance.” But when Prince started the 1990s with yet another soundtrack—this time for his own film, 1990’s Graffiti Bridge—it failed to recapture the glory of 1984’s Purple Rain or even 1986’s Parade: Music From the Motion Picture Under the Cherry Moon. Hoping to make his mark on the new decade, Prince reset with a new backing band, the New Power Generation—also known as the NPG—resulting in 1991’s Diamonds and Pearls, another multi-platinum jewel in his crown. Having first made made their presence felt on Graffiti Bridge—appearing on the soundtrack’s aptly titled second track, “New Power Generation”—the NPG was in full force on Diamonds and Pearls, Prince’s 13th studio album. The move marked a major departure from the sound perfected by Prince’s previous band, The Revolution. That group had helped his Purple Highness reach the pinnacle of his pop-rock powers on Purple Rain, Around the World in a Day, and Parade. But the New Power Generation was an R&B-based combo incorporating elements of jazz, blues, gospel, and, most significantly, hip-hop—which Prince clearly recognized was becoming the sound of the future: The NPG’s resident rapper, Tony M., flexes his flow on tracks like “Gett Off,” which finds Prince putting some hip-hop swag in his own delivery. But Tony M. isn’t the only vocalist to share the mic with Prince on Diamonds and Pearls. Rosie Gaines duets with Prince on the sparkling title track, one of this album’s two Top 10 hits. And the NPG are in full force on the chart-topping “Cream,” which harkens back to the psych-rock era of The Revolution, but with a bluesy streak that befits Prince’s new band.
- Prince didn’t waste any time in the 1980s. Even before the arrival of his 1986 film Under the Cherry Moon—which turned out to be a royal flop—he was already at work on new music, resulting in the double album that would become perhaps his most obsessed-about record of his career: Sign O’ The Times. Released in 1987, the album marked the end of Prince’s astonishing run with The Revolution, his famed backing band (though the group is credited here on the live jam “It’s Gonna Be a Beautiful Night,” and members Wendy Melvoin and Lisa Coleman are featured elsewhere). The 16 tracks that make up the original edition of Sign O’ The Times find Prince incorporating the various sounds he’d perfected during The Revolution era—including the psychedelic trippiness of 1985’s Around the World in a Day—along with the funk and R&B innovations he’d made on his own before Purple Rain turned him into a pop-rock supernova. Sign O’ The Times is, in essence, his magnum opus—at once a summary and celebration of everything Prince was capable of during the peak of his powers. And with the hit title tune—the album’s first single, and opening track—the Purple One became the Political One, tackling everything from drug addiction to nuclear war. On an album packed with lushly produced tracks, “Sign O’ The Times” is notably spare—so much so, you really hear the message in the music. It’s one of Prince’s boldest statements, and a spiritual successor to Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On.” And he was just getting started. Sign O’ The Times also features such crucial cuts as “If I Was Your Girlfriend,” which he sings from the perspective of his female alter ego, Camille; it’s a slinky, slightly sinister piece of freaky funk. “I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man,” meanwhile, is a burst of guitar-pop glitter that wouldn’t have been out of place on Purple Rain. And the album closer “Adore” is one of Prince’s all-time best ballads, one that finds him at the top of his game (and his falsetto). In between it all comes “U Got the Look,” Sign O’ The Times’ biggest single, and a bit of pop-rock perfection, with an eroticized Sheena Easton providing heck-a-slammin’ support.
- 100 Best Albums You can’t very well tell a story about a troubled artist whose difficult personality belies his musical genius without, you know, actual musical genius. In this sense, the soundtrack to Purple Rain began life with the highest degree of difficulty imaginable; the impossibility that its success could ever have been in doubt is the project’s greatest legacy. With half its tracklist comprising Top 10 singles, the soundtrack is what truly turned Prince Rogers Nelson from just big enough to get to star in a summer blockbuster based on his life to one of the most instantly recognizable and distinctive pop artists ever. This is no slight to the movie, which has its charms (shout-out Morris Day), as much as it’s a testament to Prince’s all-engulfing star power and genre-fluid/gender-fluid virtuosity—nine perfect, definitive pop-soul-dance-rock-R&B-funk-whatever-else songs that couldn’t help but swallow everything in their orbit. The brilliance of Purple Rain is how it stirs seemingly contradictory moods—lust, devotion, intimacy, alienation—into a brew where nothing can be separated from anything else. Prince makes trauma sound erotic (“When Doves Cry”) and salvation sound reckless (“Let’s Go Crazy”). His sexual escapades are spiritual, disorienting, and almost psychedelic (“Darling Nikki,” “Computer Blue”), while his spiritual journeys are grounded in the mechanics of a guitar solo (“Purple Rain”). The album broke records and brains: Tipper Gore’s overreaction to the image of Darling Nikki masturbating to a magazine begat a congressional witch hunt debating the morality of pop music. Prince often drew comparisons to Jimi Hendrix for the way he mixed music that felt Black and white, sacred and profane. The reality is that he had no precedent then and no comparison now.
- Heading into his fifth studio album in five years, Prince was already flexing his prolific powers—not just as a solo artist, but also as the mastermind behind several other Minneapolis groups, all of which allowed the Purple One to express his seemingly boundless creativity: In 1982 alone, Prince oversaw the release of Vanity 6’s self-titled debut album, played extensively on The Time’s sophomore hit What Time Is It?, and released the double-disc classic 1999—a visionary statement that, in many ways, was truly 17 years ahead of its time. Building on the mix of foreboding funk and blunt social statements he employed on 1980’s Dirty Mind and 1981’s Controversy, the future-shocked 1999 took Prince’s music—and message—to the masses, becoming his first album to land in the Top 10 of the Billboard Album charts. And this party manifesto spawned the singer’s biggest hits to date, including the apocalyptic title tune, the euphoric “Little Red Corvette,” and the giddy, bopping, synth-driven “Delirious.” The success of those three tracks—in particular “Little Red Corvette” and “Delirious”—would eventually land Prince his Purple Rain movie deal. Yet they’re just the opening tracks on this lengthy classic, which finds Prince’s genius in full flight. 1999 features the anthemic mantra of “D.M.S.R.,” the conscious soul of “Free,” the jazzy funk of “Lady Cab Driver,” and the libidinous lift-off of “International Lover.” But the album also found Prince evolving beyond his one-man-band beginnings, setting the stage for the Revolution era to come on Purple Rain, with Prince getting musical input from such skillful musicians as Lisa Coleman, Wendy Melvoin, Bobby Z., and Dez Dickerson. By the end of the millennium, “1999” would be played nonstop—and while it may have seemed in that moment the world had finally caught up to Prince, in truth, he was always a few years ahead of us.
- By the early 1980s, Prince was embracing his own increasing power—and provocation—as both a genre-busting artist and as a gender-bending cultural force. Dirty Mind, the singer’s bawdy punk-funk collection, had become an instant classic upon its release in 1980. His follow-up, 1981’s Controversy, finds Prince acknowledging his new-found infamy: “I just can’t believe all the things people say/Am I black or white? Am I straight or gay?” he sings on the title track. And while listeners had plenty of questions about Prince, he delighted in giving them few direct answers—an approach that would pay off throughout the decade, as the mysterious singer ascended the pop throne. Controversy—which features regal assists from Lisa Coleman, Dr. Fink, and Bobby Z., who’d rule alongside Prince as members of The Revolution—finds the singer pushing back against the reactionary political conservatism of the Reagan regime, whom he addresses directly in the punk protest of “Ronnie, Talk to Russia.” Meanwhile, the funk-pop propulsion of Controversy’s “Sexuality” and the slow-jam seduction of “Do Me, Baby”—the latter of which features nearly eight minutes of erotic enlightenment—let you know that His Royal Badness still very much had a dirty mind. The carnal delight of tracks like “Private Joy” and the raunchy romp “Jack U Off” makes it clear that, in some ways, Controversy is an unapologetically sexual sequel to its predecessor. But the album also finds Prince taking on politics (again, “Ronnie, Talk to Russia”) and religion (“Annie Christian”). And Prince has never been straight-up funkier than on “Let’s Work.” Ultimately, Controversy provides a euphoric escape from the unknown in uncertain times, and sets up Prince for the pop-altering triumph of 1999.
- Released in 1980, Dirty Mind finds Prince kicking off the most prolific period of his career—a revolutionary run in which he’d not only steer the careers of such Minneapolis acts as The Time, The Family, and Vanity/Apollonia 6, but also become a chart-topping, globe-conquering pop icon. Dirty Mind was his third album in as many years, and it found the barely-twentysomething singer declaring his musical (and sexual) maturity: If the bare-chested, feather-haired young artist on the cover of 1979’s Prince looked like a playful innocent, the bikini-briefed “Head”-master staring back from the cover of Dirty Mind seemed prime to pull off listener’s panties. No doubt: After teasing us with the frisky funk-pop of “Soft and Wet”—from his 1978 debut album, For You—and then turning up the temptation with hot Prince bops like “Sexy Dancer,” the foreplay was officially over with Dirty Mind. Kicking off with the slinky synth seduction of the title track—co-written by keyboardist Dr. Fink—Prince made his carnal intentions clear from the jump: “It doesn’t matter where we are/It doesn’t matter who’s around/It doesn’t matter, I just wanna lay ya down.” Don’t misunderstand him. After the punk-spiked indecency of “When You Were Mine”—one of the very best Prince songs to never become a hit—and the drown-in-your-own-orgasm debauchery of “Do It All Night,” Dirty Mind reaches its climax with the back-to-back bangers of “Head” and “Sister.” While the former is an explicit, insatiable ode to the joy of oral sex that remains one of Prince’s funkiest tracks—which is sure saying something—the latter is a punk-rock rave-up that dares to tackle the taboo topic of incest. Elsewhere on Dirty Mind, “Gotta Broken Heart Again” puts a folky spin on the R&B romanticism of Prince, while “Uptown” and album closer “Partyup” foresee the political and utopian visions of soon-to-come classics like Controversy and 1999.
- We pledge our allegiance to this member of rock royalty.
- The Purple One helped pioneer the art form.
- The trailblazing artist now makes up a crucial part of pop's DNA.
- The Purple One’s energy and rhythms will help push you to new heights.
- The artists who forecast Purple Rain.
- It's time to party.
Live Albums
Compilations
- Post-Revolution Prince at his most prolific.
- The story behind the show’s most legendary performance.
- Revisiting two iconic shows in Super Bowl Halftime history.
- Estelle gives praise to Prince and his acclaimed double LP.
- Celebrating the 40th anniversary of Prince’s Controversy.
About Prince
In the early 2000s, the filmmaker Kevin Smith contacted Prince to see if he could use one of Prince’s songs in one of his movies. Prince responded by asking Smith to make a documentary about him. Smith said sure, but the project never got off the ground. When Smith tried to pull out, one of Prince’s assistants explained to him that it wasn’t that simple. 'Why not?' Smith asked. After all, he wasn’t even a documentarian; he made features. 'I get it,' the assistant said—but Prince doesn’t understand reality like the rest of do. Prince… Prince calls you at three in the morning to ask if he can get a camel. He isn’t doing it to be a jerk. But he does want the camel. It’s a funny story, of course. But it also illustrates the strength and commitment of Prince’s vision. The camel is an extreme example. But imagine you told him there was no way to mix new wave and psychedelia with funk and R&B. Or that a man couldn’t explore androgyny without risking his sex appeal. Imagine, really, telling Prince there were any conventional boundaries he had to respect—and then imagine how much groundbreaking art would’ve been lost if he’d listened. Born Prince Rogers Nelson in 1958, he trained in ballet as a teenager, starting his music career just out of high school. By 24, he’d already released a body of work (including Dirty Mind, Controversy, and 1999) that helped shape nearly every style of ‘80s pop music, Black and white; by 30, he was both a midnight-movie cult hero (Purple Rain) and a Beatles-level visionary (Sign o’ the Times). To read about his Paisley Park compound is to get a glimpse of a world of almost perpetual creativity—between his debut in 1978 and his death in 2016, there was barely a year he didn’t put out an album, and there were several years during which he put out two. He was one of pop music’s true universals, and yet always distinctly Black. And to listen to him mix sexual ecstasy with spiritual transcendence (“When Doves Cry,” “If I Was Your Girlfriend”) not only finished the mission Little Richard started, it delivered on rock ’n' roll’s promise that you could find heaven here on earth if you were willing to shake for it.
- HOMETOWN
- Minneapolis, MN, United States
- BORN
- June 7, 1958
- GENRE
- R&B/Soul