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Sun 30 August 2026 21:45, UK
Prince was never afraid to constantly change his style and sound, which came to the excitement of many but the frustration of others.
There were major inconsistencies in his music, as he was always keen on switching up everything attached to him. With each new album, it was hard to predict what sort of direction he would go in, as there was rock, electronic, funk, and all things in between, and it was this unpredictability that made Prince such an exciting musician, more innovative than anyone on the planet.
Questlove, arguably the biggest Prince fan in the world, spoke about how it was so obvious to him that Prince was a musician unlike any other.
“A song like ‘Something in the Water (Does Not Compute)’ told me that Prince was not a regular person, or a regular musician,” he said, “He had removed the bass from the original demo (at the time forbidden in Black music, an innovation that would pay off even more powerfully on ‘When Doves Cry’), added a dizzying snare/hi-hat combination and delivered his vocals in a kind of ice-cold, almost robotic manner. It wasn’t just one new idea; it was several, all together.”
Questove also stayed close with Prince, and so began to understand that his chaotic output was very much a result of the art that he surrounded himself with, different movies and music, both of which moved him and influenced him. Towards the end of his life, when he went to visit Prince, he was surprised to see that the latter would firmly plant himself in a pocket that contained just two movies, both of which pretty heavily contrasted each other, whenever he was trying to come up with new ideas.
It turns out, Prince called the space he occupied between these two films his “aquarium”. “When he was alive, whenever you’d go to Prince’s house, two things were always on TV,” said Questlove, “[the 2003 animated film] Finding Nemo and Black Orpheus, this beautiful Brazilian film from 1959. He would have those on a constant loop: ‘Yeah, it’s my aquarium’.”
And he didn’t just surround himself with art when he was creating as well. He was always listening to new music, trying to work out what exciting steps people were taking within the industry and what it might mean moving forward. A lot of people, when they get past a certain age, stop looking for new things to engage with and rely solely on what they already know, but that wasn’t Prince. In fact, one of his favourite songs of all time was released in 2015, just one year prior to his passing away.
Further reading: From The Vault
“Kendrick Lamar’s whole To Pimp A Butterfly album,” said Prince, “He just has something he has to say. It’s pure. And with Thundercat on the album? Come on. You’re not taking ‘Alright’ off my playlist!”. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that Prince was a big fan of Kendrick Lamar, as, similar to Questlove’s praise, Lamar isn’t afraid to rip up the rule book and try something new. On To Pimp a Butterfly, the Compton rapper flows over a hip hop beat crossed with free jazz, something which should be impossible, but he makes sound borderline easy.
Prince is no longer with us, but the innovation he championed continues to survive. Lamar says so himself on his verse on the Future ‘Mask Off’ remix: “Said she broke down when Prince died / It’s alright / Bitch my hair down, Prince lives through me”.
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