The inspiration called Prince

With the passing of the musical mastermind Prince, the world yet again lost another inspiration. But the beautiful part is that with every musical genius, comes a legacy musicians can feed on forever. During Prince’s life he inspired others with his unique sound and that’s something not many artists can peer with.

Prince was a multi-talented wonderkid from Minneapolis (and very tiny, one of his nicknames was Minneapolis Midget, he was only 1m58). His music was innovatory and he could truly make everything funky. Besides him being a melodist, he was a keyboardist, dancer, record producer, film director, saxophone player, actor and what more. With these skills came an eclectic mix of musical styles that gave a whole new meaning to the genre of pop music. His Royal Badness’ style is often referred to – if comparable at all – as a mix of James Brown, Sly Stone Jimi Hendrix, Marvin Gaye, Curtis Mayfield, Carlos Santana and even Joni Mitchell.

He composed his music by himself, with the minimal help from others. This led to an enormous amount of hits ranging from up town boogy, funky dance tunes, sexy slow jams, classic rock ballads and more. Without even taking his unpublished material into account. It’s no wonder this insanely productive superstar inspired others to explore boundaries. Not only in music, also in fashion and sexuality. Frank Ocean stated: “He made me feel more comfortable with how I identify sexually simply by his display of freedom from and irreverence for obviously archaic ideas like gender conformity.” One listen to tracks as ‘Controversy‘ and ‘I Would Die 4 You’, will give you an insight in how Prince touched upon existing labels of western society.

As Rockstone Sessions is a platform to showcase new music, we love how Prince helped in fading the existing (musical) barriers, giving room to modern day artists to explore and create more amazing music to enjoy. Not only with his own exploring sound, but also with mentoring others and creating tracks you probably didn’t know were Prince’s creations. Or samples used in popular tracks, such as ‘Walk Don’t Walk’ in Jay-Z’s ‘Excuse Me Miss‘, ‘I Wanna Be Your Lover’ in Justice’s ‘Genesis‘, and even ‘Alphabet’ comes back in the track ‘Ringfinger‘ by Nine Inch Nails. But Prince himself was a mastermind when it comes to covering songs of other artists, like his version of ‘Creep‘ or ‘Crazy In Love‘, that he performed together with Beyoncé.

It is safe to say 2016 already took away some of the greatest music icons there are in the scene. Leaving us with their creative legacy that will continue to inspire others – proven by the huge amount of artists that already paid hommage to Prince online. For now, we are playing some of the Rockstone team’s favourites on repeat. R.I.P. Prince.

Prince – Raspberry Beret

Prince – Litte Red Corvette