Prince & The Revolution

Imagine if someone had told Prince there was no way to mix New Wave and psychedelia with funk and R&B. Or that a man couldn’t explore androgyny without risking his sex appeal. Imagine, really, telling Prince there were any conventional boundaries he had to respect—and then imagine how much groundbreaking art would’ve been lost if he’d listened. That includes 1984’s Purple Rain, which ranked at No. 4 on Apple Music’s 100 Best Albums, and 1986’s Parade, both made with his world-class backing band The Revolution. Beyond his ongoing status as a cultural icon, Prince (born Prince Rogers Nelson in Minneapolis in 1958) made a stack of stone-cold classics that still speak for themselves. There’s the lusty provocations of Dirty Mind and Controversy, the pure FM catnip of 1999, and the sweeping double-album ambition of Sign o’ the Times, which ranked at No. 51 on the aforementioned list. Right up until his death at his Paisley Park compound in 2016, Prince was continually reinventing himself on both record and stage. With more than 40 studio albums in his discography, his songbook is truly one of a kind.