Alex McCown
My college years were defined by Prince. Specifically, they were defined by the eternal quest to get into one of Prince’s late-night jam-fests at Paisley Park. More weekend nights than I care to count, whatever I was doing would get unceremoniously dropped whenever I heard the rumor flying around: Prince is throwing a party tonight! Whoever had access to a car would race for it, along with the three or four people lucky enough to call a seat, and off we’d go, barreling toward the mysterious gated estate. Most of the time, nothing would come of it. But, on extremely rare occasions, you might find yourself standing awkwardly in a giant room, watching Gwen Stefani sipping a glass of wine nearby, as everyone waited for the great Purple One to make his entrance, start playing music, and not stop until several hours later, having seemingly levitated the entire place via sheer force of personality. Sadly, this was never me—I missed out on ever getting lucky enough, meaning I would simply demand that friends of mine who did manage to get in regale me with the entire account, from the first note to the final bow. But even the failure carried a kind of connection to Prince. After returning to my dorm from another failed attempt, I’d put on his music, look out the window, and, as the sun came up, wonder about the experience I was missing. Maybe never getting into the compound wasn’t all bad: Forever in my mind, I’ll have the magical, otherworldly, and intimate Prince performance I didn’t get in reality. No other American artist I know of possesses that kind of transcendent mystique, one that even liberates my daydreams from the everyday. Emancipation, indeed.
Noel Murray
I wrote a lot about Prince for The A.V. Club when I inducted Dirty Mind into Permanent Records. But I didn’t include anything of my personal experience, like how I always felt like I was getting away with something whenever I listened to Dirty Mind, Controversy, and 1999 in my Tennessee suburban home, where I wasn’t even allowed to watch R-rated movies. My most vivid Prince memory will always be listening to Purple Rain for the first time. I saved up my allowance and bought the album at Walmart, on the strength of the advance single, “When Doves Cry.” When I dropped the needle on the record and heard “Let’s Go Crazy”—before it was getting played on the radio—I experienced what I can only describe as a moment of transcendent musical ecstasy. The song was so exciting that I was literally shaking by the end, and had to pause before I could continue. I don’t know that Prince’s mix of deep Christianity and libertine pleasure-seeking ever made sense to anyone besides himself, but I can say that “Let’s Go Crazy” was a simultaneously religious and erotic expression, like nothing else. (Well, like nothing by anyone other than Prince, that is.)
William Hughes
I was never the obsessive fan of Prince’s music that I know so many of my colleagues and contemporaries are. But it was impossible not to respect him as a creative force, and as a man who refused to compromise his artistic vision, even at the risk of being labeled “eccentric” for refusing to go with the flow. Battling the record labels, putting Spotify on blast, even changing his name: It’s painfully rare to see someone able to protect his own talents with that kind of confidence and conviction, and the world is poorer for losing that self-possession and strength.
Becca James
A lot of growing up is about trying to find people you can identify with. That’s easier for some people based solely on where they live. If you’re in New York, for example, there’s a plethora of entertainment you can claim as your own and celebrities that got their start in your neighborhood. As a kid from rural, northern Wisconsin, that wasn’t my experience. There was, however, Prince. Sure, Minneapolis was still a three-hour drive away, but as the nearest metropolitan area, it was my city and that made Prince, a pioneer of Minneapolis sound, my artist. What started as a mere hat tip to someone else from the Midwest quickly turned into a deeper admiration. How could it not? Prince as a musician is so obviously talented and I fondly look back on car trips to and from Minneapolis with some of his best jams blaring. But what I admire most about Prince is that his talent, authentic and influential in equal measure, wasn’t confined to the stage, screen, or my stereo. That is to say, Prince is one of the first people that taught me it’s okay to be unconventional, and not just a performer, but as a person. Hell, he’s one of the first people from Minneapolis that I knew that was anything but “Minnesota nice,” and in that I found a kindred spirit. I like to imagine that wherever he is now, he’s greeted those around him with, “Boys and motherfuckin’ girls, this is your captain with no name speaking, and I’m here to rock your world,” because even the afterlife is too short for passive aggression.
David Anthony
It’s impossible for me to isolate a single part of Prince’s life and career that meant the most to me. I loved his music dearly (I have never, ever put money in a jukebox and not played “Raspberry Beret”), but what was always most inspiring—and occasionally frustrating—was his fierce commitment to doing whatever the fuck he wanted. He did things on his own terms, never willing to give an inch of himself to something he wasn’t fully invested in. He was independent in a way few artists ever have been, and losing that beacon of artistic freedom hits harder than I ever thought it would.
Josh Modell
I wrote this for a Hear This a while back, but most of you probably didn’t read it, so let me just tell it again: My oldest sister was almost done with high school when I was just a 7-year-old pup starting to get obsessed with music, and her record collection was pretty incredible for someone her age in 1981: I listened without any preconceived notions to The Residents, Circle Jerks, and more. I was especially enamored with the title track to Prince’s 1981 album Controversy—I still am, really—but I’d occasionally get through the entire record, which ends with the rollicking, ridiculous “Jack U Off.” It may be the least subtle song in a catalog full of unsubtle sex jams, with every verse featuring a new location in which Prince offers to, um, jack you off: movie show, restaurant, his neighborhood, on a date, in your mama’s car (a Cadillac). Now, as a second- or third-grader, I clearly had no idea what services Prince was so keen to provide, I just liked the sound of the words. It ends like this: “I’ll jack you o-o-o-off, I’ll jack you off.” I remember distinctly approaching our family car, a red AMC Matador, jauntily singing the song to myself. One of my sisters froze and said, “Sing that again! Sing it to Mom!” I knew immediately that singing it to my mom was a bad idea, though I imagine she probably would’ve just laughed and told me not to sing it at school. (God bless you, Mom.) “Jack U Off” was never a hit, and it’s overshadowed by much better songs—“Controversy” and “Sexuality”—not to mention albums. But it’s got a special place in my heart for accidentally making me say the darndest things.