Prince

Covering ground that will be familiar to Prince devotees but helpful to newcomers, Draper (Prince: Life and Times) adds to the growing collection of biographies of the visionary artist, who played almost all the instruments on his albums, promoted and sold his music digitally well before most musicians did, refused to compromise his work as he navigated the music industry over multiple decades, and traversed genres and formats. Interviewing bandmates, managers, and other industry professionals who worked with Prince, Draper tells the story of the artist’s early life in Minneapolis up until his death in 2016. Readers will learn about early career albums and films that cemented Prince as a musical icon and the ways he pushed against industry constraints. Draper interrogates multiple aspects of Prince’s life and work, including Prince’s choice to change his name to a glyph that merged the symbols for male and female, his struggle to be released from his record deal with Warner Bros, his often-androgynous look, his sex-positive music, and his time as a Jehovah’s Witness.