Episode Details

Prince played twenty-seven instruments on his debut album. He wrote, produced, and performed nearly everything himself, maintaining that control for his entire career. The paradox: the man who controlled every note made some of the most spontaneous, uninhibited music of the twentieth century.

This episode covers Prince from Minneapolis through Purple Rain, his war with Warner Bros., the unpronounceable symbol, and his emergence as a prophet of the streaming era.

• He played all twenty-seven instruments on his debut album For You at age nineteen
• He changed his name to an unpronounceable symbol in 1993 to protest his Warner Bros. contract
• Purple Rain spent twenty-four consecutive weeks at number one on the Billboard 200
• His Paisley Park vault reportedly contains thousands of unreleased recordings