king.

words. 

"Antagonism has always been one of music’s animating forces. It runs through history: the cutting contests of Storyville jazz musicians, Bronx street corner battle-rap showdowns, Mozart versus Salieri, Beatles versus Stones, Whitney versus Mariah. But Prince may have been the most tenacious musical competitor of them all. His ambition was outrageous: With every song, every note, he aimed to be the best, the baddest, the most wizardly, the most unimpeachable. He seemed to have swallowed an encyclopedia of music history and developed world-historical ambition to go with it. He was a one-man band extraordinaire, the world’s best rhythm section and the world’s best background vocal choir. He could sing like Al Green or, if the mood struck, John Lennon; he could work a bandstand as fearsomely as James Brown and play a guitar as well as Jimi Hendrix. His death came as a shock because he had strode into his sixth decade in apparently undiminished form, with the waistline and hairline of a man half his age and the stamina of a man even younger than that. His hitmaking days were behind him, and his pop-culture profile waxed and waned, but whenever he resurfaced, he served notice that he was indomitable: He could still sing, dance, play instruments, write songs and produce records better than everyone else..."

THE NEW YORK TIMES: Prince and the Competition

SEE ALSO:

VULTURE: Earth Was Lucky to Get 57 Years of Prince