Prince's Influence On Rock And Roll

Music culture of the 1950s birthed a genre so entirely new and different that it caused a cultural revolution among American youth in the suburban United States. This genre was dubbed Rock and Roll. Rock and Roll isn’t just a type of music, it is a lifestyle, a way of thinking. A prime example of the Rock and Roll lifestyle and new age artist would be Prince. He was a legendary musician, challenging social and musical norms; taking risks with his image and his music. Though his music spanned a variety of different genres, his style of breaking tradition made him a full blown rockstar.

First, however, to understand exactly how Prince embodied the spirit of Rock and Roll, we must define it. Early Rock and Roll disrupted the picturesque lifestyle

Many male artists of today emulate him, in “Prince, the Only Influence a Musician Will Ever Need” Claire L. Evans writes, “He skittered onto the global scene in the early 1980s with a magnificently uncategorizable hybrid of funk, soul, rock, and pop from which generations of musicians have been furiously cribbing ever since. His expressive falsetto resonates in the throats of Pharrell Williams, D'Angelo, or Justin Timberlake.” he was so influential and admired that his music will never go away, it will always live on in its original form and as an influence in the music of others. The refreshing originality in his work made it legendary. It was his own that no one else had created before. His music was full of sexuality, “His potent combination of churchy keyboards and frank sexuality caused a cultural meltdown that inspired Madonna's sex-on-a-cross theatrics and Tipper Gore's Parental Advisory stickers in equal measure” it was different and always pushed the envelope to its limits. His image was equally as important to him as the music. Prince was constantly changing and toying with it, and it was his own. Evans writes of Prince’s image, “The music is important, but so is the finely tuned identity. And the mystique, preserved and defended by any means necessary. And even the language, something Prince realized in the 1990s, switching to an idiosyncratic shorthand (see: "Rave Un2 the Joy Fantastic") that could identify a Prince joint before the listener even pressed play.” his music was instantly recognizable in both sound and title because of it. He was fiercely protective of his image, and this showed in his refusal to adapt to the new digital age of music in the 21st century. It was what made him a true rockstar: an outrageous, different image, accompanied by music that was equally outrageous; something brand-new and inspiring to young