Prince

His father was a pianist who performed as Prince Rogers and gave the name to his son because he wanted the boy to do everything he had not. Prince said he was born epileptic and that the seizures stopped after he told his mother an angel had promised it. He wrote a song called Funk Machine on that piano at seven. His parents divorced when he was ten, and he moved between households until his father put him out, after which he lived in the neighbors' basement and started a band with their son André. He played three sports at Central High and studied classical ballet through a public schools program. At 19 a local ad man got him a Warner Bros. contract leaving him creative control and his publishing.

He played all 27 instruments on his first album at 19 and did not really stop after that. Dirty Mind in 1980 and Controversy in 1981 welded funk, rock, new wave and gospel into something with no obvious parent. 1999 sold hugely. Purple Rain in 1984 made him a film star and put five singles into the American top ten. Then he refused to repeat it — Around the World in a Day, Parade, the sprawling Sign o' the Times, and an album he recalled after 500,000 copies had been pressed because he decided it was evil. He wrote hits for other people's records under invented names. He produced nearly everything himself and played most of the parts. Between 1978 and 1996 he put out album after album for Warner Bros. and filled a vault with what he did not.

He owed six more albums under the deal he renewed in 1992, and the label wanted them spaced out. He did not. In 1993 he replaced his name with an unpronounceable symbol, and Warner had to mail the press floppy disks of a custom font so it could be set in type. When the label held back The Gold Experience he appeared in public with the word slave on his cheek. He got the masters back in 2014 by re-signing, 18 years after walking away. The control had another face. Wendy Melvoin says that after he became a Jehovah's Witness he refused a Revolution reunion because she was a lesbian and Jewish, and asked her to hold a press conference renouncing homosexuality. Remarks against gay marriage attributed to him in 2008 were disowned by his management and by him.

He left no will. His full sister and five half-siblings inherited, roughly 700 people came forward within three weeks claiming to be relatives, and a court-appointed trustee had the vault drilled open. His ashes went into a 3D-printed urn shaped like Paisley Park and sit in its atrium. Most of the family shares have since been sold to a music rights company. In 2024 Ezra Edelman finished a nine-hour documentary for Netflix that the estate called sensationalized, and in February 2025 it was cancelled and replaced by a project the estate controls. The estate then posted footage of a vault door swinging open, captioned that the vault is free. A compilation drawn from it is due in August 2026.

Prince's life against the full span of the corpus.

• For You album
  Written, produced, arranged and almost entirely played by him alone 1978
• Dirty Mind album 1980
• 1999 album 1982
• Purple Rain album
  Soundtrack to the film — the record that made him a global star 1984
• Sign o' the Times album 1987
• Emancipation album
  Three discs of exactly 60 minutes each, his first release free of Warner Bros. 1996

• 1965 aged ~7 Writes his first song at seven on his father's piano
• 1977 aged ~19 Signs with Warner Bros. at 19, keeping creative control and his publishing
• January 5, 1979 aged 20 Plays his first show with a band, at the Capri Theater in Minneapolis Warner executives came, and decided he needed more time.
• 1984 aged ~26 Purple Rain arrives as an album and a film
• 1993 aged ~35 Replaces his name with an unpronounceable symbol in the fight with Warner Bros. The label mailed out floppy disks of a custom font so the press could print it.
• 2001 aged ~43 Becomes a Jehovah's Witness through the bassist Larry Graham He called it a realization rather than a conversion.
• February 4, 2007 aged 48 Plays the Super Bowl halftime show in Miami, in the rain Twelve minutes in front of 140 million viewers, on a stage shaped like his symbol.
• 2014 aged ~56 Re-signs with Warner and gets ownership of his master recordings
• April 21, 2016 aged 57 Found dead in an elevator at Paisley Park at 57 Six days earlier his plane had made an emergency landing at Moline, where he was given naloxone.

• James Brown 1933–2006
  Singer and bandleader whose rhythmic innovations created funk and profoundly shaped hip-hop, dance, and popular performance. the concert his stepfather took him to
• Miles Davis 1926–1991
  Trumpeter and bandleader who repeatedly redirected jazz through bebop, cool jazz, modal music, and fusion. played with him at Paisley Park in 1987
• Little Richard 1932–2020
  Singer and pianist whose explosive performances and recordings helped establish the sound and visual style of rock and roll. the androgyny he inherited
• Duke Ellington 1899–1974
  Composer and bandleader who expanded the artistic ambition and vocabulary of jazz. one of the artists Miles Davis said he was made of
• Andy Warhol 1928–1987
  Pop art pioneer whose Campbell's soup cans and celebrity portraits defined contemporary American art. painted the Orange Prince