Prince Rogers Nelson.
Widely known as Prince, was a legendary American singer and songwriters amongst many other things in the music industry. He was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota in the United States on June 7th 1958 and passed today (April 21st).
The legendary pop icon came from a musical family with both parents in the music industry – His father was a pianist and songwriter, and his mother was a jazz singer. Prince was also known for his raunchy lyrics and being a pioneer in the crossover of Pop, Funk, R&B and Rock music.
Music Career & Success
Prince developed an early interest in music, writing his first song called ‘Funk Machine’ on his father’s piano, aged 7. Before recording his first debut album, Prince made music with his cousin’s band ’94 East’ – He wrote the songs for the band and played Guitar.
In 1976, aged 17 Prince made a demo tape with Chris Moon, who took the tape to a Minneapolis businessman called Husney. Hussey then signed Prince which led to a recording contract with Warner Bros.
Prince then moved to Los Angeles and recorded his first debut album titled ‘For You’ in 1978. Prince’s second album ‘Prince’, went platinum in 1979. The two main songs that drove that album’s success was ‘Why You Wanna Treat Me So Bad?’ and ‘I Wanna Be Your Lover’.
Prince was one of the best-selling artists of all-time.
In 1984 he gained major success with song ‘Purple Rain’ which sold more than 13 million copies in the US and spent 24 consecutive weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart. ‘Purple Rain’ also served as the soundtrack to his movie which was titled the same as the song. Other songs from the film such as ‘When Doves Cry’, also gained massive success reaching number 1 worldwide.
A year later he released an album called ‘Around The World In a Day’, and the year after that he released another album titled ‘Parade.’ Both were very successful.
In 1987 he de-banded from his band ‘The Revolution’ and went on to release his first solo album titled ‘Sign O The Times’. This album was followed by several other successful albums. In 1993, Prince changed his name to an unpronounced love symbol, but as people still widely referred to him as Prince he later changed his name back in 2000. He then released a further 15 albums.
Throughout his long-standing career in the music industry Prince sold over 100 million records worldwide.
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