Why Prince Matters

Prince Rogers Nelson has died at 57 years young.
It is truly tragic that such an uncompromising and gifted artist has left this plane of existence. I attempt not to write or comment often about an artists’s passing. I feel that is not right to attempt to make a celebrity’s death an excuse to drum up website visits or YouTube views. However, Prince’s music and vision has legitimately affected my state of being.

Prince was an absolute inspiration to me and many others. He influenced a generation of musicians with his peerless dedication, performance and relentlessness. He truly captured the spirit of Dionysus as he captured the imaginations and desires of his audience. Prince was and is a revelation to a stagnant and faltering record industry.

In a time when musicians are devoured by their labels and the media, Prince overthrew the norm and paved his own way to glory and relevance. His uncompromising vision started in his teenage years when he produced his first album, a true masterpiece titled “For You”. He always stood for the rights of creators to their own work and always represented an unwavering devotion to the art inside all of us.

Prince is inside all of us. That bit inside of you that demands freedom and control, that yearns for meaning and substance and wants to yell at the world “Fuck you, I am my own person with my own thoughts.” Prince was relentless in his pursuit of personal perfection and expression, a genuine trailblazer and pioneer in poetry, harmony and destiny.

We have lost an authentic artistic pioneer today. An artist who is as close to a magician as David Bowie, Aleister Crowley or Merlin. Prince took his feelings and thoughts and tranformed them into symbols and words that resonate within all of us and bring about genuine change. His work has helped me through break-ups, love and many lonely nights at bars when all I wanted was a friend. I found a friend in Prince. His music inspires me to continue on without compromise or accommodation, to devote my life to my own ideals and values and to unequivocally follow my own path and desires.

Here’s to you, Prince Rogers Nelson! It is with the most honest and sincere sentiment that I say… Nothing compares to YOU.
To love and revolution!
May his art live forever
–Rockin’ Robbie Billups