The Full Biography
Prince. Musician. The Minneapolis kid who made a short body into a cathedral of sound, then died in the house he had built to keep the sound from being owned.
This is his story.
The image most people still carry is a man in purple on a motorcycle, or a symbol the radio could not pronounce, or a Super Bowl rain that turned into a hymn. What the still cannot show is Prince Rogers Nelson of Minneapolis, a pianist’s son, a teenager who recorded a debut the industry could not file, a war with a label that made him a glyph, and a fifty-seven-year-old found in an elevator at Paisley Park with fentanyl in the file.
He was born on June 7, 1958, at Mount Sinai Hospital in Minneapolis, to John L. Nelson and Mattie Della Shaw, both musicians. He was named for his father’s stage name in the Prince Rogers Trio. As a child he called himself Skipper. He said he was born epileptic and that the seizures stopped after he told his mother an angel had said so. A sister, Tyka, in 1960. The household broke when he was ten. He bounced between his father, who bought him a first guitar, and his mother and stepfather, Hayward Baker, who took him to see James Brown. A spell in the Andersons’ basement with André Cymone. Bryant Junior High. Central High, football and junior-varsity basketball. Classical ballet at the Minnesota Dance Theatre through the city’s Urban Arts Program. He wrote “Funk Machine” on his father’s piano at seven. He played everything because there was no one else to play it.
Grand Central. 94 East, with Pepe Willie, guitar on tracks that would surface as Minneapolis Genius. A demo with Chris Moon. Owen Husney took the tape to the coasts. Warner Bros. signed him in 1977, eighteen, with creative control for three albums and his publishing. In 1978 Warner released For You; he produced it, arranged it, and played nearly every instrument — twenty-seven, the sleeve said — except the co-written lyrics of “Soft and Wet.” He was nineteen. The industry had a word for that kind of control and did not like to apply it to a short kid from Minnesota. Prince (1979) went platinum. “I Wanna Be Your Lover” sat at number one on the soul chart and sold a million. First band: Cymone, Dez Dickerson, Gayle Chapman, Doctor Fink, Bobby Z. First show at the Capri Theater, January 5, 1979. Warner said they needed time.
Dirty Mind (1980) made the control a dare: short songs, dirty jokes, a trench coat, a sexuality the radio could not decide whether to ban or steal. Opening for Rick James. Saturday Night Live, “Partyup.” Controversy (1981). Opening for the Rolling Stones in Los Angeles in a trench coat and briefs; the crowd threw trash and ran him off after three songs. He formed The Time and wrote and played most of what Morris Day sang, sometimes as Jamie Starr. 1999 (1982), a double album, four million copies. The title track. “Little Red Corvette,” one of the first two videos by Black artists MTV put in heavy rotation, beside “Billie Jean.” “Delirious.” A first Grammy nomination. The Revolution’s name printed backward in the “I” of Prince on the sleeve.
Then Purple Rain (1984), a film and an album that are a single civic object. Directed by Albert Magnoli. Shot in Minneapolis, at First Avenue, in the clubs that had already heard the dare. The Kid. Apollonia Kotero. Morris Day as the rival. Wendy Melvoin and Lisa Coleman as the band that made the Revolution a sound and not a logo. “When Doves Cry” without a bass line, a choice that still teaches producers. “Let’s Go Crazy.” “I Would Die 4 U.” The title hymn as a concert last number that the picture then had to live up to. He was the first artist to hold the number-one film, album, and single in the United States at the same time. The album sat at number one for twenty-four weeks. The song score won the Oscar in 1985. The Purple Rain tour sold the country and did not leave it. The picture is a vanity that earned itself. He was twenty-six and already a cathedral.
What followed was not a decline. It was a flood. Around the World in a Day (1985), “Raspberry Beret,” a psychedelic left turn the radio had not ordered. Parade (1986), “Kiss,” a minimal funk that went to number one; Under the Cherry Moon, a film he directed that the town did not love. He disbanded the Revolution. Sign o’ the Times (1987), the double album the specialists name when they want to stop talking about the motorcycle — a plague, a prayer, a party, a guitar that is also a sermon. The Black Album recorded and pulled. Lovesexy (1988). Batman (1989), a studio assignment that became a number-one record. Graffiti Bridge (1990). He wrote for others under names the credits still hide: The Time, Vanity 6, Sheila E., “Manic Monday” for the Bangles, “Nothing Compares 2 U” for a voice that would be Sinéad O’Connor’s climate. He was, for a stretch, the most complete American pop musician the 1980s hired: writing, producing, playing, a face that could sell a God and a groin in the same bar.
Diamonds and Pearls (1991) with the New Power Generation: “Cream,” “Gett Off,” a band that could be a church and a nightclub in the same set. The Love Symbol album (1992), “7,” “My Name Is Prince.” The war with Warner is the turn. He wanted the masters. The company wanted a schedule and a quota. In 1993 he wrote “slave” on his face and became a glyph the radio had to call “the Artist Formerly Known as Prince.” It looked like a stunt. It was a contract argument in public. He put out Come (1994), The Gold Experience (1995), “The Most Beautiful Girl in the World,” Chaos and Disorder (1996), then Emancipation (1996), a triple album designed to finish the deal and to prove he could flood a market the old contract had rationed. Crystal Ball (1998), a box the fans ordered from the house. Rave Un2 the Joy Fantastic (1999). He became a Jehovah’s Witness around the turn of the century, studying with Larry Graham. He married Mayte Garcia in 1996; a son, Amiir, lived only a week that October, Patau syndrome. He did not tour that grief. He went back to the vault. A second marriage, to Manuela Testolini, 2001 to 2007. He took the name Prince back in 2000, when the Warner term had run. The Rainbow Children (2001). One Nite Alone... (2002), a piano tour that already pointed at the last rooms: just the man and the keys, talking between songs.
Paisley Park, in Chanhassen, was the house and the studio and the fortress. He played late. He summoned musicians. He kept the vault the way a medieval abbey kept relics. After 2004’s Musicology he was a touring fact again. The Super Bowl XLI halftime, February 4, 2007, in Miami, in the rain, “Purple Rain” as a weather event. He had already been a cathedral. For twelve minutes he was a stadium’s weather.
A strong spirit transcends rules.Prince
On April 21, 2016, he was found unresponsive in an elevator at Paisley Park. The medical examiner said accidental fentanyl overdose from counterfeit pills. He had been in pain. He had been trying to work. There was no suicide note and no conspiracy that a coroner would sign. One paragraph is enough. The vault is the rest of the sentence.
Six things most people never knew
- He played nearly every instrument on the first record. Nineteen. Warner had a word for that control and used it carefully.
- “When Doves Cry” has no bass line. The absence is a choice. Producers still steal it.
- The glyph was a contract. Not a costume first. A legal weather painted on a face.
- A son lived a week. 1996. He did not tour it. The vault got the hours.
- The Super Bowl rain was not a mishap he endured. He used it. The hymn needed weather.
- The vault is a literal room. Recordings the estate is still unsealing. He treated unreleased work as a second life.
The family that remains has had to share a man who is a symbol and a probate. Tyka. Mayte. The Anderson basement. Friends from the Revolution and from the bands that followed describe a professional who was first in the room and last to let a take go. He saved money for the Joffrey Ballet when the company was failing. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2004, the year of the comeback. The Prince in that elevator was a man who had already been a climate and was now a body in pain. Both are the life.
The later years
The last twelve years were Paisley and the road. He played three-hour shows. He played aftershows. He played piano-and-a-microphone nights that were also a theology. He fought the streaming companies when they would not pay. He pulled his catalog off YouTube and then off other services, then let pieces back, for a stretch only on Tidal. He was not easy. He was consistent. The boy who had wanted the masters still wanted the masters.
- Musicology (2004) — a return the Billboard charts recognized. Tour tickets came with the album. Two Grammys. The Hall of Fame the same year.
- 3121 (2006) and Planet Earth (2007) — more studio records from a working man who treated a release schedule as a form of ownership.
- Super Bowl XLI, February 4, 2007 — Dolphin Stadium, Miami. Rain he refused to let postpone the hymn. A purple Yamaha of the mind. Twelve minutes that people who do not buy records still file as church.
- Lotusflow3r / MPLSound (2009), 20Ten (2010) — given away, sold in newspapers, kept off the usual shelves. Control as distribution.
- 3rdeyegirl, 2014 — Plectrumelectrum and Art Official Age. A power trio. A man in his fifties who still wanted a loud room.
- HITnRUN Phase One and Two (2015) — the last albums he lived to see released in his own name. The vault already held more than a life.
- Piano & A Microphone, 2016 — a purple Yamaha C7, colour-matched to his sofa. European dates had been pulled after the Paris attacks of November 2015; he had played the Bataclan. Gala nights at Paisley in January. Australia and New Zealand instead. Two shows at the Fox Theatre in Atlanta on April 14, the last full concerts. He talked about his father. He was writing a memoir.
The 21 Nights in London residency at the O2 in 2007 sold out a building that size twenty-one times. Planet Earth was given away with a British newspaper, a distribution argument dressed as a gift. He played aftershows at Paisley until dawn for whoever had lasted. He played the Super Bowl rain as if weather were a lighting cue he had ordered. He pulled the catalog from streaming services that would not meet his price, then let Tidal carry it, then pieces returned elsewhere after he was gone. Control was the theology. The records were the evidence.
On April 15, 2016, the plane made an emergency landing in Moline, Illinois. He was treated and driven on. Six days after Atlanta he was found in the elevator. He wrote a memoir he did not live to finish. The Beautiful Ones arrived in 2019 as a fragment, with Dan Piepenbring, childhood pages and the Purple Rain years, a book that stops where the man stopped. The estate opened the vault in careful slices — deluxe Sign o’ the Times, Diamonds and Pearls, Welcome 2 America (recorded 2010, released 2021), piano tapes from 1983. New fans found Sign o’ the Times first, which is a good door. Old fans still stand for the opening chords of “Purple Rain” as if a stadium could be a church.
He died at fifty-seven in the building he had built so that no label could send him home. Paisley Park opened as a museum in October 2016. Visitors walk the studios and the purple rooms and do not go into the elevator unguided. The vault is still a job. That is a complete last broadcast.
After he was gone
Every Minnesota kid with a guitar still pays him a tax. Every artist who writes “slave” on a face still owes the contract chapter. The Super Bowl rain still plays on June nights. Minneapolis still claims the first room. Chanhassen keeps the house. The Songwriters Hall took him in 2024. The vault keeps working.
He came out of a broken Minneapolis household, played every instrument, made a motorcycle into a climate, fought a company with a glyph, buried a son without a tour, and died in the elevator of the only building that had ever fully belonged to him. If you only remember the purple, you have the still. If you remember the bass that isn’t there, the vault, and the rain, you have him.
Portrait: Unknown (Warner Bros. promotional photo, 1988) · Public domain · via Wikimedia Commons