Raised in a troubled home where his father was a struggling piano player, Prince's escape was, from an early age, his music. A genuine musical prodigy, he taught himself to play more than 20 different instruments by ear alone, and as early as junior high was fronting his own band, Grand Central. He graduated from high school at age 16 and moved out of his parents' house to live in a friend's basement. A year later, a studio engineer offered to swap him some recording time in exchange for some session piano work. After he stepped away from the keyboard, Prince added bass, drums, lead guitar, and backing vocal tracks to the same piece, stunning the studio tech and writing the script for the rest of his career. A trip to New York led to two contract offers, but also convinced the youngster that he'd left his heart in Minneapolis. Returning to his hometown, he cut a three-track demo that amazed Warner Bros. Records executives, and at 19, he was given a budget of $100,000 and total control over his debut album.

For You, released in 1978, featured Prince on every instrument, but still wound up going over budget. His next album, Prince, released a year later, increased his reputation well beyond a meager cult following thanks to the hit "I Wanna Be Your Lover," which landed Prince an appearance on American Bandstand. Things slowed down slightly when 1980's Dirty Mind failed to spawn a Top 40 single (inexplicably, the album's catchiest track, "When You Were Mine," was never issued as a 45), but it was the record that put critics firmly in the Prince camp. He bounced back commercially with 1981's Controversy, which cleverly capitalized on the fuss being made about his X-rated lyrics and androgynous persona. That same year, he gained his first exposure to the mainstream rock audience by opening a few shows for the Rolling Stones. Taking the stage in a trench coat and bikini briefs, he faced down nearly 100,000 Stones fans at the Los Angeles Coliseum, and was booed off the stage.

The stage was set for a complete crossover to the pop mainstream, and 1982's double-album 1999 provided it. Led by its three brilliant singles — "1999," "Little Red Corvette," and "Delirious" — the album put Prince all over the radio and the just-hatched MTV, and stayed on the Billboard charts for almost three years. With a successful tour and an album perched in the Top 10, 1983 was a great year for Prince, but it couldn't hold a candle to what he would achieve the following year. With the July release of Purple Rain, Prince moved into territory only Elvis Presley and the Beatles could relate to: at the age of 26, he simultaneously had a single ("When Doves Cry"), an album, and a movie in the No. 1 spot on the Billboard and box-office charts. Purple Rain didn't just visit the top of the charts, it moved into the penthouse and spent a staggering 24 weeks there, good enough for the fourth-longest stay in history by a pop album. The Purple Rain era ended triumphantly the following February when Prince won the Oscar for Best Score. A scant ten months later, he followed up his blockbuster with a more subdued effort, Around the World in a Day. It, too, topped the charts, this time for a more reasonable three weeks, and was the first release on Prince's new label imprint, Paisley Park.

The next three years were a period of truly remarkable creative output for the songwriter. While he continued his established pace of releasing a new album every year, efforts like 1986's Parade (which accompanied his second film — and directorial debut — the disastrous Under a Cherry Moon) and 1987's Sign o' the Times found Prince recording five songs for every one he put out — this despite the fact that Times was his second double-album. Some of the unreleased material went to other Minneapolis artists signed to Paisley Park, including the Family (who recorded the first version of the Prince original "Nothing Compares 2U," which would become