- That skinny motherfucker with the high voice returns.
From the beginning, Prince has been a master of concept. Arriving on the Minneapolis music scene in the late 1970s, the teenage singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist was regarded as an R&B whiz kid in the vein of Stevie Wonder, and celebrated for creating full-blooded recordings by himself in the studio, layering instrumental tracks—bass, drums, piano, guitars, vocals, everything—all played by himself. Questing to stand out in the long shadow of Stevie, Prince got conceptual. As Touré explains in 2013’s I Would Die 4 U: Why Prince Became an Icon, the almost eerily self-possessed young artist applied himself wholly to two new ideals. First, to represent, as Prince said verbatim to a friend at the time, “pure sex”—at all times, in all ways, to all people. Second, crafting his every move to create maximum controversy.
His achievement of this second goal was particularly dazzling. After placing himself naked on the back cover of his self-titled second album (sitting astride a winged white horse, no less) failed to achieve the desired shock…
