100 Essential Prince Moments: From High School Basketball to His Final 'Purple Rain' Performance

On April 21, 2016, Prince died at age 57 in his native Minnesota. The restlessly creative, immeasurably talented, genre-blurring artist was an icon of rock, pop, R&B, funk and dance.

Without a doubt, his influence will be felt on the world for decades to come. In honor of the Purple One's impact, we're remembering the many eclectic moments, songs, albums and anecdotes that constitute Prince's life, legend and legacy.

Recorded in 1977, Prince released his debut album, For You, in the spring of 1978. While impressive in the respect that wrote, composed and played every instrument on the album, there wasn't anything about the 33-minute LP to indicate the breadth of his genius quite yet. Regardless, the single "Soft and Wet" gave him his first Billboard chart appearance on Nov. 4, 1978 at No. 96 on the Hot 100 (it peaked at No. 92 that same month).

The most memorable non-music moment of the Purple Rain film is undoubtedly when Prince pranks Apollonia. During the outdoor scene, he orders her to "purify yourself in the waters of Lake Minnetonka" as a matter of initiation. Naturally, she hops into the lake they're standing next to. The only problem, which she learns as he speeds away on his purple motorcycle, is that the freezing lake she jumped into naked wasn't Lake Minnetonka.

With Prince's third album, Dirty Mind, he came into his own as a creative genius, solidified the Minneapolis sound (which would have a massive impact on the '80s) and delivered his first start-to-finish classic with a unified sonic vision. “Uptown,” “Head,” “When You Were Mine” and the title track are all immortal.

Prince worked with a number of other acts throughout his life, fostering careers and outright creating new bands. His greatest creative success as a mentor was with Morris Day and The Time. While they appeared opposite Prince in Purple Rain (and later Graffiti Bridge) as his villainous, ridiculous rivals, in real life, they delivered multiple '80s funk classics, from their 1981 eponymous debut to 1982's What Time Is It? to 1984's Ice Cream Castles. While the Time were a ferocious live band -- Prince once called them “the only [opening act] that scared me” -- most of the instruments on their albums were played by Prince and Morris Day.

In the music video for “Alphabet St.” from LoveSexy, his first album after The Black Album kerfuffle, the video can be paused at 0:27 right after Prince is shown holding a cane. You can see the words, "Don't buy The Black Album. I'm sorry" running vertically across the screen.

We're not saying Prince had the greatest Super Bowl halftime performance of all-time simply because he recently died -- we're saying it because it's 100 percent true. After all, it was Prince playing "Purple Rain" in the rain. What could be better than that?

Prince had an awkward relationship with the Internet -- he said it was “over” in 2010, but later clarified his remark to say he meant it was “over for anyone who wants to get paid.” Regardless, his first few tweets were classic Prince. The second simply read "Prince's 2nd tweet," and the third was a photo of a plate blanketed in pepper with the caption, "Did eye add 2 much pepper?" It didn't really make that much sense, but then again, that was the appeal of Prince's offbeat sense of humor.

During his very public legal battle with Warner Bros., Prince appeared in public with the word "slave" written across his face to protest what he felt was the label holding him artistically hostage. Some thought it was genius commentary, others thought it was ridiculous, but everyone in 1993 was talking about it.

Prince’s love for Fox's New Girl landed him his very own episode. For Season 3’s 14th episode, simply titled “Prince,” actress Zooey Deschanel came face to face with the musical enigma and had the same freak-out reaction any mortal being would.

Prince speaks onstage during The 57th Annual Grammy Awards at the STAPLES Center on Feb. 8, 2015 in Los Angeles, California. 

Prince & 3rd Eye Girl's "Fixurlifeup" music video.

It's a testament to Prince's powers that for as familiar as "Kiss" is on the radio (and on dancefloors), it's never quite lost the punch contained within that one sprightly funk riff. It helps that his screamed-to-the-ceiling falsetto on the chorus is exactly the kind of Little Richard-esque insanity that few rockers can nail, though many have tried. In April 1986, "Kiss" became his third Hot 100 No. 1 hit.

What can you say about Purple Rain that hasn't been said before? Not only was it one of the most flawless, rewarding and impressive albums of the '80s, it was also one of the decade's biggest. The soundtrack to his film reigned at No. 1 for 24 weeks on the Billboard 200.

After Adam West's camp king Batman but before Christopher Nolan's brooding Dark Knight, Tim Burton split the difference between the two extremes with his 1989 film. For the accompanying soundtrack, Prince created music that helped underline the menace of Gotham with the inherent absurdity of a man in a bat costume. In addition to the soundtrack topping the Billboard 200, “Batdance” was an improbable No. 1 hit.

"Nothing Compares 2 U" was originally written for The Family, one of many Prince svengali acts, featuring former Time members Paul Peterson and Jellybean Johnson, along with future Prince bandmembers Eric Leeds and Mico Weaver, as well as Wendy Melvoin’s twin sister (and Prince paramour) Susannah. Their 1985 album went nowhere and the group split up after one show, but the song became a global smash when revived five years later by Sinead O’Connor. The song did even better than "Manic," crowning the Hot 100 for four weeks in 1990, beginning its reign (in a sad coincidence) on April 21, 1990, exactly 26 years before Prince died. Prince soon reclaimed the song, performing it on his 1990 Nude tour and frequently throughout the following years -- a 1992 live version, featuring singer/keyboardist Rosie Gaines, was released as a single from his Hits collection (and rose to No. 62 on Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs in 1994).

In Oct. 2014, Prince earned two concurrent No. 1 debut albums when Art Official Age crowned Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums, and Prince & 3rdEyeGirl's Plectrumelectrum hit No. 1 on Top Rock Albums.

While most musicians and stars move away from their hometown when they hit it big, Prince never abandoned his beloved Minneapolis. Building his Xanadu-esque complex Paisley Park in Chanhassen, MN, Prince stayed close to his roots and frequently hosted parties, concerts and movie screenings in his abode.

Questlove is basically the coolest musician DJ anyone can score for their party...unless you’re Prince. The Roots drummer revealed (via a hilarious animated clip) that the Purple One once fired him from a DJ gig at the last minute and replaced Questo’s music curation skills with a DVD of Pixar’s Finding Nemo.

At one point, Prince rented a house from Chicago Bulls’ player Carlos Boozer and redecorated it to his particular tastes. Allow Boozer’s friend and former teammate Jay Williams to tell the story (as told to ESPN): "Supposedly, Prince changed the front gate to the Prince sign, he changed the master bedroom to a hair salon, he changed the streaming blue waters that led to the front door to purple water, he knocked out walls, he changed the molding on top of the ceiling. Booz was livid. So pissed off, so angry ... He put his Purple Rain stamp on it ... Booz was like, 'I was getting ready to go over there and beat this little man down.' And dude was just like 'Here, Boozer, here is a little check for about a million, it'll take care of everything, get it back the way you want it.' And Booz was like, 'This little man is cool as hell.'"

After years of perms, Prince went natural and revealed his unadorned afro on The View.

In one beautifully bizarre scene from Purple Rain, Prince acted out a petulant disagreement with real-life Revolution bandmates Wendy & Lisa. Instead of arguing with them, he demonstrated his (fairly impressive) ventriloquism skills by ignoring Wendy & Lisa and talking to a weird little puppet instead. 

In Alan Light's wonderful book Let's Go Crazy, he details how Bob Seger inadvertently inspired Prince to write "Purple Rain." Prince was somewhat confounded by the success of Seger, leading his keyboardist, Matt Fink, to opine that Seger's success relied on his sing-along power ballads. Perhaps seeing that as a challenge, Prince wrote "Purple Rain" in that vein.

This story from Joni Mitchell about her history with a pre-fame Prince, as told to New York Magazine, is priceless: "Prince attended one of my concerts in Minnesota. I remember seeing him sitting in the front row when he was very young. He must have been about 15. He was in an aisle seat and he had unusually big eyes. He watched the whole show with his collar up, looking side to side. You couldn’t miss him -- he was a little Prince-ling. Prince used to write me fan mail with all of the U’s and hearts that way that he writes."

As much as he stayed out of the public eye, Prince never stopped paying attention to music that mattered. A Kendrick Lamar fan, Prince almost sang on the studio version of To Pimp a Butterfly's “Complexion (A Zulu Love),” but alas, it wasn’t meant to be. “We just ran out of time, it's as simple as that,” Lamar explained.

In 1977, 19-year-old Prince Rogers Nelson met with 26-year-old photographer Robert Whitman for his first photoshoot. This shot was taken outside the Schmitt Music Company in downtown Minneapolis.