Prince (Music Production)

Prince presents an award on stage during the 31st Annual People's Choice Awards. (Photo: Kevin Winter / Getty Images)

Dynamic, innovative composer and performer, dubbed the "Sultan of Seduction" for his sexually explicit lyrics and erotic stage vignettes, whose best-selling albums blend rock, jazz, funk and rap and have confirmed him as one of the most influential forces in contemporary popular music. Sinuous and charismatic, a versatile musician who plays a wide array of instruments and has written a great deal of music for himself and other performers, Prince has enjoyed a great deal of success performing in concert and in videos. His forays into film have been somewhat less fortunate; he made his screen acting debut in the semi-autobiographical "Purple Rain" (1984), for which he earned an Oscar for Best Song Score, and went on to direct, star in and score two highly stylized, narcissistic flops, "Under the Cherry Moon" (1986) and "Sign O'The Times" (1987). In 1993, Prince changed his name to a visual mark which combines the symbols for male and female, which led concert tickets and other printed and verbal references to often resort to calling him "the artist formerly known as Prince".