On April 21st, the world was shocked to hear that famous rock musician Prince had died at the young age of 57. At first there were only reports that a body was found at Prince’s Paisley Park studio in Chanhassen, Minnesota which lead many fans to worry if the body they found was Prince and upon getting confirmation that it was in fact him, fans immediately started paying tribute to him to honor his contributions to music. Prince was in fact a musician who has a long list of contributions to music not only during the 1980s but even in music today.

Prince’s contributions to music could go back as early as the beginning of his career when he was signed to Warner Bros records as a teenager and released his first album “For You” in 1978 in which, with the exception of one song, he wrote every song on the album by himself and performed every instrument on the album. This is a trait that Prince had on his other albums during his career with many tracks featuring Prince exclusively on them and even when he would have other musicians with him, he still wrote nearly every one of his songs. This trait went on to continue over his nearly 50 album career in which he released albums up until late 2015. Prince has also been cited as the inspiration for several musicians across different genres such as pop singer Justin Timberlake, hip hop artist Usher, and rock musician Lenny Kravitz have all said that they consider Prince to be influential in their music careers.

Prince not only recorded many studio albums during his career, but Prince also went on to record two soundtrack albums including the soundtrack for both the 1984 film Purple Rain which he not only composed all the music for, but also starred in it as the film was loosely based on his life and early career. The album also went on to win multiple awards including several Grammys and well as an Oscar and also received multi-platinum certification from the RIAA and went on to become one of the bestselling albums of all time. Another famous soundtrack Prince went on to record was the soundtrack for Tim Burton’s 1989 Batman film and while Prince did not star in that movie he still composed nearly every track on his own. This soundtrack also went on to top charts and also get platinum certification.

Not only did Prince break multiple records in his music career, but it was his song “Darling Nikki” that lead Tipper Gore to found the Parents Research Music Center which is responsible for putting Parental Advisory stickers on CDs that contain explicit lyrics. Not only is this a practice that is still into effect today, this also lead to many other musicians such as Frank Zappa, John Denver and Dee Snyder of Twisted Sister to testify before Congress over the PMRC and the topic of free speech and music censorship which then lead to many performers taking part in a movement that is against the PMRC. While Prince was not vocal in the debate for or against the PMRC, it was his song that helped spark the debate and sparked the debate of music censorship. And while this wasn’t his debate, Prince was vocal in the debate over internet piracy and was vocal in fighting internet piracy.

While Prince may be gone, he cannot truly be gone as his place in music history is one that will last for the ages. It is difficult to look at popular music from the last 30 years and not find some part of it that was influenced by Prince.