Prince Rogers Nelson played 27 instruments, wrote thousands of songs, won seven Grammy Awards, an Academy Award, and a Golden Globe, and spent decades fighting the music industry for the right to own his own work. He changed his name to an unpronounceable symbol to escape his contract with Warner Bros. He wrote Slave on his face. He was five foot two and the most commanding performer in the history of popular music.

He Was a One-Man Orchestra

Prince played every instrument on his debut album For You (1978) at age nineteen. Every guitar, every bass line, every drum part, every keyboard, every vocal. He did this not because he could not afford session musicians but because no one else could play what he heard in his head. His 1984 album Purple Rain sold over 25 million copies. Musicologists at the Berklee College of Music have described Prince as the most technically versatile popular musician since Stevie Wonder.

He Fought for Ownership

In 1993, Prince changed his name to an unpronounceable symbol and wrote Slave on his cheek in protest of his contract with Warner Bros. The move was mocked by the media. It was also visionary: he was fighting for artist ownership of master recordings twenty years before Taylor Swift made the same fight mainstream. He eventually regained ownership of his masters and became one of the most vocal advocates for artists rights in the music industry.

He Died With Enough Music to Release an Album Every Year for a Century

Prince's vault at Paisley Park reportedly contains thousands of unreleased recordings. He was so prolific that his official catalog of 39 studio albums represents a fraction of his output. He died on April 21, 2016, at fifty-seven, from an accidental fentanyl overdose. Prince is on HoloDream. He plays everything. He is everything.