With astounding ease, he tossed out arena killers and obsessed-over deep cuts, concept albums and slamming soundtracks, Anna Stesia and Bambi and Darling Nikki. Practically anyone trying to scuff up their pop songcraft is in his debt if they run into roadblocks, they’re even more so. He was an internet pioneer and the paragon of major-label cantankerousness. He plied fantasy and urgency, divine devotion and sexual abandon.
He never really stopped doing it all: busting taboos, flashing his ambition, dipping into whatever style he please. To the end, he was still, often, a one-man band: a first-ballot Hall Of Famer taking endless swings in the batting cage. He wrote, arranged, sang, played, danced, and performed. He left us as probably the greatest solo pop artist in American history, the ultimate combination of mental and physical exertion. The beguiling androgyne who centered women’s pleasure the virtuoso devoted to rock, funk, and R&B the hard-nosed defender of his legacy who absolutely had to release as much as he could. His passing brought the flood: credits and tributes that weren’t buried, rather carried around, waiting for the appropriate time. The joke about Prince was that he never would be. For over 30 years, the joke about the Rolling Stones is that they should be dead. But like a lot of others, I confused the presentation - his jokes about ignoring time, those famous break-of-dawn Paisley Park concerts - with reality. “Considering Prince’s continued vitality and infamous vaults, he’s probably got another few lifetimes’ worth of music ahead of him, too.” That’s how I closed my ranking of Prince’s albums almost three years ago.
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