Pop icon Prince dies

Pop legend Prince—best known for his flamboyant style, both on and off stage—has died at age 57. The singer’s publicist said he died at his home in Chanhassen, Minn., but offered no details about the cause of death.

Prince Rogers Nelson was born in Minneapolis to musician parents. His mother was a jazz singer and his father was a pianist and songwriter. John Lewis Nelson said he gave his son an iconic name because “I wanted him to do everything I wanted to do.” Prince wrote his first song, “Funk Machine,” when he was 7.

He had his first major success with a self-titled album released in 1979. The record went platinum thanks to the popular singles “Why You Wanna Treat Me So Bad?” and “I Wanna Be Your Lover.” He quickly became known for suggestive and sometimes explicit lyrics.

One of his most popular and acclaimed albums, Purple Rain, came out in 1984 and sold more than 13 million copies in the United States. It spent 24 consecutive weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart and won him an Academy Award for Best Original Song Score for the movie by the same name. At one point that year, Prince had the No. 1 album, single, and film in the country—the first singer to achieve that distinction. Purple Rain is ranked 72nd on Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.

Other hit albums included 1999, Sign o’ the Times, and The Black Album. Prince also recorded the soundtrack to Tim Burton’s Batman in 1989.

In 1993, Prince changed his name to a symbol, which he described as the combination of the symbols for male and female. Warner Bros., his record label at the time, had to organize a mass mailing of floppy disks to provide the custom font to print media outlets. Prince was most commonly referred to at that time as “The Artist Formerly Known as Prince.” He eventually reverted to using his birth name.

Prince had the dubious distinction of inspiring the movement to get parental advisory warning labels on albums that contained explicit lyrics after Tipper Gore caught her 12-year-old daughter listening to his song “Darling Nikki.” Gore founded the Parents Music Resource Center to lobby for mandatory labels, but the recording industry eventually complied voluntarily. Prince songs hold the No. 1 and No. 2 spot on the so-called “Filthy Fifteen” list of explicit recordings.

In 2001, Prince became a Jehovah’s Witness, describing the experience as more of a “realization” than a conversion. He even occasionally participated in the Jehovah’s Witness tradition of knocking on doors to talk to people about their faith.

“Sometimes people act surprised, but mostly they’re really cool about it,” he told The New Yorker.

In 2014, Prince was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, which hailed him as a musical and social trailblazer: “He rewrote the rulebook, forging a synthesis of black funk and white rock that served as a blueprint for cutting-edge music in the Eighties. Prince made dance music that rocked and rock music that had a bristling, funky backbone. From the beginning, Prince and his music were androgynous, sly, sexy and provocative.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.