"I'm not a woman, I'm not a man, I am something that you'll never understand"
Prince - I Would Die 4 U

I believe in the power of choice and I certainly believe in the concept of personal responsibility. However, I essentially came of age in the late 70's and early 80's and though I feel like I am a fairly well balanced man you'll have to forgive me if I'm a lil "different." When I was figuring out what sexuality was, what it meant to be a man, deciding what I wanted to do with my life and what my place was in the world, Ronald Reagan was President, Wall Street was running amok and Madonna, Michael Jackson and Prince ruled the airwaves. I'm sure the times had an impact on who I became.

These 3 entertainment icons affected my life in very direct ways. Madonna had the least direct impact on me because she was a woman and a white woman at that so what could I possibly have in common with her being a young black teenager? Of course oddly enough years later I realize that she and I are the most alike...more on that at a later date.

Michael Jackson is simply the biggest African-American musical icon in history not to mention the biggest music artist of all time. I was forced to dance to Jackson 5 songs as a boy, grew up loving every song he and his brothers ever recorded and even worked as his stand in on the Thriller video. As a result his impact on me was huge. However, the artist with the biggest impact by far was Prince.

Prince walked to the beat of his own special drummer and deep inside so did I. As I came of age I struggled to reconcile my awakening sexual urges as a young man with my upbringing and belief in God. When my heart was broken or some girl I liked ignored me a Prince song was there to express what I felt. As I grew into a man it was Prince and my admiration of him that lead me to learn to play several instruments, form a band and make music. Lastly, it was my respect for Prince, Michael and Madonna that cemented my understanding of the power of believing in ones self, the value of hard work and the fulfillment of my promise as a creative soul.

If you took a snap shot of my life in prince songs it'd be a real colorful photo. The 25 songs that stand out for me and probably paint a fairly decent image of who I am and have been are:

It
God
Head
Pop Life
Uptown
Anastasia
Dirty Mind
Controversy
We Can Fuck
4ever In My Life
When Doves Cry
When 2 R in Love
The Question of U
The Beautiful Ones
Strange Relationship
Condition of The Heart
If I Were Your Girlfriend
Under The Cherry Moon
Another Lonely Christmas
Anotherloverholeinyohead
Sometimes It Snows in April
How Come U Don't Call Me?
The Ballad of Dorothy Parker
All The Critics Love U in New York

Below I have included a bio on Prince from Wikipedia and some images I found online. I can't include any videos because his stubborn a$$ had all content removed from the internet. (He can't help it, he's older now and hasn't yet yielded to the reality of the world wide web 2.0 - he will in time).

The Trinity of Michael, Madonna and Prince may have screwed my generation up in the head a bit, but if we were really paying attention they also taught us alot about love, life and God.

peace and be funky.

Rick

Prince Rogers Nelson (born June 7, 1958 in Minneapolis, Minnesota) is an American musician. He performs simply as Prince, but has also been known by various other names, among them an unpronounceable symbol, leading fans and critics to dub him The Artist Formerly Known As Prince or simply The Artist.

Prince is a prolific artist, having released several hundred songs both under his own name and with other artists. He has won six Grammy Awards and an Academy Award, and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2004. In 2004, he was named as the top male pop artist of the past 25 years by ARC Rock on the Net,[1] and Rolling Stone Magazine ranked Prince #28 on their list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time.

From his early material, rooted in R&B, soul and funk, Prince has expanded his musical palette throughout his career, absorbing many other genres including pop, rock, jazz, new wave, psychedelia and hip hop. Some of his primary influences include Sly Stone, Curtis Mayfield, Jimi Hendrix, Joni Mitchell, James Brown and Carlos Santana. The distinctive characteristics of his early-to-mid 1980s work, such as sparse and industrial-sounding drum machine arrangements and the use of synthesizer riffs to serve the role traditionally occupied by horn riffs in earlier R&B, funk and soul music, were called the "Minneapolis sound" and have proved very influential.