Prince pioneered what would come to be known as 'the Minneapolis Sound'

Prince was known as a genre-crossing polymath

The son of two Minneapolis jazz musicians, Prince was surrounded by music from a young age. His full name, Prince Rogers, was actually derived from his father's group, the Prince Rogers Trio. He eventually learned how to play his father's piano, teaching himself the themes to popular TV shows. Eventually, he learned other instruments and expanded his music tastes, indulging in records by Sly and the Family Stone, Jimi Hendrix, Joni Mitchell, and more. Below is his junior high school yearbook photo.

Explore a map of Prince's Minneapolis

Prince might be the most famous and influential musician from a city brimming with them. This interactive map from Prince's estate lets you explore the city's locales that shaped him, from early residences to concert halls and recording studios.

Prince had an eclectic range of influences

Early in his career, Prince would sometimes claim in interviews that he didn't listen to much music outside of his own. In later years, he'd admit that was a lie born out of arrogance. In reality, he listened to a wide array of artists, with great admiration for people like the Cocteau Twins, D'Angelo, Led Zeppelin, Joni Mitchell, Miles Davis, De La Soul, and many others. This survey of his career's interviews collects all those mentions of other artists, creating a fascinating database of the music that inspired Prince.

Prince removed the bass from 'When Doves Cry,' creating the song's unique sound

It was an unorthodox choice, especially for someone associated with funk music, a genre that relies on prominent bass lines, but Prince wanted the song—written in the 11th hour for "Purple Rain"—to have more space. It worked: The song wound up as the lead single for the album and went to number one on the Billboard Hot 100.

Prince wrote numerous hits for other artists

Prince is renowned as a performer, but he's also one of the great American songwriters, having penned career-defining songs for acts like Sinead O'Connor ("Nothing Compares 2 U"), the Bangles ("Manic Monday"), and many others.

In 2022, a Minneapolis news station stumbled upon footage of Prince as a child

A production manager at the city's CBS affiliate was looking through the archives for footage of a 1970 teacher strike when he noticed a young boy he believed was Prince. The newsroom worked to extract the audio and identify the childhood friends of the famous musician, who confirmed it was indeed him in the video.

Watch the live debut of 'Purple Rain'

Prince debuted the song at Minneapolis' historic First Avenue venue on Aug. 3, 1983. That live version was recorded and released on the "Purple Rain" album with minimal overdubs. You can watch that performance below.

A dispute with his label led to Prince changing his name to a symbol

Prince wrote and recorded music at a fever pitch. That kind of prolific output, however, concerned his label, Warner Bros., which believed that too many releases might oversaturate the market. That eventually led to tensions between Prince and the label, with Prince asking for his master recordings, which would give him full control over how his music would be used. Warner Bros. declined, and Prince changed his name to the unpronounceable symbol that he'd used on album covers in the past, believing it would void his record contract. It didn't, but Warner Bros. eventually released him, though he began going by Prince in 2000 and resigned with Warner Bros. in 2014.

Prince's 'Sign O' the Times' was considered a major artistic milestone

The double album was an ambitious collection of songs that traversed musical styles—drawing on the emerging hip-hop records of the genre's golden age and technological experimentation—and explored social issues, including the AIDS epidemic, addiction, and violence. It would go on to be one of the most critically acclaimed albums of the year and eventually be considered one of the most important in pop music history.

The story behind Prince's rivalry with Michael Jackson

The Purple One was often compared to the King of Pop, but Prince considered himself the superior artist. This retrospective details the many contentious encounters between the two giants, but it also highlights the sincere admiration they had for each other's work.

Ironically, Prince's infamous 'Darling Nikki' ends with a Christian message

The Parents Music Resource Center targeted the "Purple Rain" cut as being a particularly dangerous example of sexually explicit music. The song ends with nearly 30 seconds of indecipherable backwards vocals. When they're reversed, however, you can hear a Christian message: "Hello, how are you? / Fine, fine, 'cause I know that the Lord is coming soon / Coming, coming soon." That might've surprised the members of the PMRC, but it wouldn't have surprised fans of Prince, who spoke often about being a Christian.

Prince's sexually explicit 1984 track 'Darling Nikki' attracted the ire of the Parents Music Resource Center, an advocacy group that inspired the Parental Advisory sticker, even though the song ends with a Christian message.

Miles Davis' 'Kind of Blue' changed the genre by pioneering modal jazz

Davis was an adept bebop trumpet player, but he grew tired of the style. With 1959's "Kind of Blue," he pioneered a new style of jazz, called modal jazz, that focused less on improvising on chord progressions and more on open, tone-based expression.

Phil Spector’s ‘Wall of Sound’ revolutionized girl groups—and pop music

The method captured a room of live musicians and transmitted the sound into a basement outfitted with more speakers and microphones. That sound was then sent into the central control room, producing a massive recording that sounded unlike anything else in pop music.

Long before grunge, Hüsker Dü blended pop's melodies and punk's speed

The Minneapolis trio began as a lightning-fast hardcore band, but they slowly became more melodic than many of their early '80s peers without sacrificing their punk edge. That combination would eventually be called a mess of names: college rock, alternative, indie, and, eventually, grunge.

How British youth resurrected overlooked American soul music

Motown released some of the 1960s' biggest soul records and changed the sound of pop music. The label also inspired countless smaller, regional labels that released songs by lesser-known artists that received limited attention. That changed with the rise of British Northern Soul, an underground scene that repurposed these obscure records (including several overlooked Motown releases) for all-night dance parties and, in the process, minted some unexpected American superstars.

How 'Nevermind' realigned the music industry

Nirvana's breakout album inspired other major labels to hunt for similarly loud, countercultural bands. That led to a fascinating period in popular music that found defiantly anticommercial indie acts like the Melvins, the Butthole Surfers, and Ween (among many, many others) suddenly offered lucrative contracts.

Prince died in 2016 from an accidental fentanyl overdose

The music legend was found dead in an elevator at his Paisley Park residence on April 21, 2016. The cause of death was an accidental overdose from taking pills he believed to be Vicodin, but were actually counterfeit pills laced with fentanyl. Law enforcement was unable to determine who provided him with those pills. He was 57 at the time of his death.

Chuck Berry was one of the genre's early innovators

A pioneer of rock ‘n’ roll, Berry redefined music in the 1950s with hits like "Maybellene" and "Johnny B. Goode." Drawing from blues and country, his signature riffs and storytelling influenced generations of artists.

Jazz built the template for hip-hop

Hip-hop was born out of obscure samples, including many that were taken from the annals of jazz. That style was especially popular in rap's early eras, with the subgenre "jazz rap" becoming an accurate descriptor for New York groups like A Tribe Called Quest and Gangstarr.

How Spotify creates niche genres

One of Spotify's most recognizable features is its playlists. The provider offers an endless stream of strangely titled mixes with names like "Hyperpop," "Phonk," and "Lorem," which suggest uniform genres and scenes despite featuring seemingly random assortments of artists and songs. This article unpacks why Spotify organizes its music in this way and how, unintentionally, the process erases organic movements that developed outside of the app.

One disco producer saw 'Star Wars' four times on its opening weekend and was so inspired that he recorded the album 'Star Wars and Other Intergalactic Funk,' which produced a chart-topping single.

Daniel Johnston's home recordings have inspired countless rock legends

The singer-songwriter self-released cassettes in the early '80s that were not fit for the radio—their sound quality was poor, and the songs were often little more than an organ and Johnston's high-pitched voice, singing about things like Casper the Friendly Ghost. The tapes eventually found their way to alternative tastemakers, who lauded the songs' brilliance and inspired a cult following that has admired Johnston's music for decades.

Hear 50 years of iconic hip-hop samples, the genre's foundational looped tracks

Kendrick Lamar's breakthrough concept album was inspired by real events

The rapper's 2012 album "good kid, m.A.A.d city" follows a young, impressionable protagonist who unwittingly becomes associated with a series of crimes. As this episode of the "Disgraceland" podcast explains, Lamar's album may be nonlinear and impressionistic, but it's based on autobiographical elements.

Daft Punk's 2006 set helped mainstream electronic dance music

Daft Punk's 2006 Coachella set wasn't just a performance—it was a turning point for electronic music. Their futuristic pyramid, dazzling visuals, and seamless live mixing captivated a packed crowd and pushed EDM into the mainstream.

'Nebraska' was a sharp pivot inspired by proto-punk band Suicide

After "Born to Run," Springsteen's songwriting turned darker on subsequent albums "Darkness on the Edge of Town" and "The River," as he began exploring the harsher realities of adulthood and working-class life, but "Nebraska" was his most gothic, featuring haunted songs partially inspired by the abrasive proto-punk duo Suicide.

The Canadian artist considered the 'Picasso of the North'

Norval Morrisseau's art is bold, with vivid colors and striking angles. His interviews were similar, with the artist often challenging the way questions were posed and his life was characterized, believing he was being unfairly pigeonholed as an Indigenous artist. This overview of Morisseau's work and life is a helpful primer on the artist, the perfect place to start before jumping into the deep end.

Quincy Jones' 'Big Band Bossa Nova' helped introduce bossa nova—a jazz-influenced Brazilian genre—to the US

A century of Billboard issues documenting the evolution of popular music.

70 years ago today, city officials in Santa Cruz, California, banned rock 'n' roll to protect its youth from corruption after witnessing a 'provocative' concert the night before.

The Beatles' US label rejected the band's first two singles, 'Please Please Me' and 'From Me to You,' with one executive calling the band 'dead in the water.'

The Ramones' 'Pet Sematary,' the theme song for the Stephen King novel of the same name, was written while the band was admiring the writer's collection of horror memorabilia.

Warren Buffett's former professor Benjamin Graham is known as the 'father of value investing,' a strategy in which investors seek to buy stocks trading below their intrinsic worth.

Mid-century modern graphic designers, known for their bright colors and bold lines in advertising, also found success with children's books.

Walt Disney's early film 'Alice's Wonderland' was a groundbreaking innovation in the silent film era

The Mona Lisa's celebrity status and repeated restorations have obscured what made the painting so revolutionary for its time

Exploring the Larry Bird punch that almost changed March Madness

Before writing 'Walden,' transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau nearly burned down his hometown with a campfire that grew out of control.

Fireworks make a loud booming sound after exploding due to air expanding faster than the speed of sound.

Explore fun facts from the USPS, including unique post office buildings, a stamp that traveled past Pluto, and more.

The Nasdaq's 'Magnificent 7' companies are responsible for roughly 40% of the Nasdaq 100 index's gains, while the remaining 93 companies account for the other 60%.

Salvador Dalí believed he was his own dead brother, who had died nine months before he was born

Budweiser stores yeast derived from the original 1800s strain in a secret bunker, which only the Head of Yeast Management can access—not even the CEO

Abraham Lincoln was almost assassinated weeks before his inauguration as he traveled from Illinois to DC through Baltimore in 1861; it took two independent claims for Lincoln to be convinced the threat was real

The Great Salt Lake's distinct dual coloration results from high-salinity organisms that only live in the northern portion and produce a purple protein.

Some Pokémon have been named after real and fictional organisms, while some real-world species have been named after Pokémon, such as Chilicola charizard and Binburrum zapdos.

For centuries, it was common to sleep in two shifts: a few hours at the beginning of the night, and a longer period beginning around midnight

NBA superstar Victor Wembanyama spent the 2025 summer training with monks in central China to enhance his body and mind.