As the obituaries and critical appreciations of the inestimably great artist who will forever be known as Prince continue to roll in, we thought a more appropriate tack was a focus on the personal role he played in our lives.
It’s one thing to like and admire a given artist’s body of work, couple of songs, couple of records, a video or two, maybe you even saw them play live once or twice. But Prince is in a very small category of artists with a legitimate claim to having defined the aesthetic and cultural (and therefore commercial, and therefore political) framework of a generation. One forgets what it felt like to have a true musical all-the-way genius who is also the greatest imaginable performer who is also a tunesmith of the highest order who also happens to be a transgressive avatar of race/gender/sexuality/class/genre who is also funny be at or near the top of the charts, in your radio, on your turntable, in your headphones, on your TV screens, and in every magazine all at the same time. It couldn’t help but leave a mark on the five writers who contribute below. Prince wouldn’t have had it any other way…