Prince dead at 57: reflections on his musical legacy

“[Prince] did not want it to be known publicly, but I’m going to say it because the world needs to know that it wasn’t just the music,” said CNN political commentator and close friend Van Jones in an interview with Don Lemon. “The music was one way he tried to help the world. But he was helping every day of his life.”

Jones added, “There are people who have solar panels on their houses right now in Oakland, California, that they don’t know Prince paid for them.”

Summing Prince up in a single word is nearly impossible.

He was a musician, an artist, an activist. He was a person whose entire life was about transcending labels and expectations. But across all his many lives, one thing remained constant: He transformed.

Prince, the wildly influential rock icon who died Thursday at the age of 57, had both incredible musical talent and an incredible knack for doing bizarre, attention-getting things. So it’s no wonder that a lot of writers have been interested in profiling him over the years. Now, those profiles are a rich source of anecdotes and insight for grieving fans and people who just want to learn more about him.

Here are some highlights from some of the best profiles of Prince over the years:

He was 57 years old. His death is sudden, shocking, and for many, devastating.

Any time a revered person dies, the established stages of grief seem to launch into hyperdrive. The second the news drops, final and cutting to the quick, the ripples start to spread. Soon enough, the grief feels magnified, becoming an ever-complicated web of shifting memory, gutted despair, muddled controversy over their worth, stark regret. Maybe there will even be some joy.

It’s been a year since Prince died at the age of 57, but culturally we’re still processing what his loss means for music. For those who grew up in a pop music world so shaped and altered by him, it can be easy to overlook how revolutionary the artist, a.k.a. “the High Priest of Pop,” was in his heyday.

But that’s only because he pioneered a performance style that’s become mainstream — one that continues to influence artists today.