10 Reasons There Won't Ever Be Another Prince

Prince is a rock star. Prince is a pop star. Prince is also an R&B star, a funk star, and a jazz star, depending on the particular song you're listening to. To put it plainly, it didn't matter which genre he was dipping into at the time. Baby, he was a star.

Although he began his career as a funk artist coming hot on the heels of disco, he grew to move between genres so effortlessly that he eventually shirked all musical boundaries. By the time the 80s came to a close there was practically nothing Prince hadn't done, so there was nothing Prince couldn't do.

His best albums found a way to incorporate a little bit of everything that he did so well. The album 1999, for instance, led off with darker dance music ("1999"), straightforward pop-rock ("Little Red Corvette"), eight-bar blues ("Delirious"), and some new wave-influenced synthpop ("Let's Pretend We're Married"). And all of them went on to become hits.

His crossover success was especially surprising considering the generally risqué content of his songs. But at the end of the day, Prince's tunes were just too damn infectious to be kept off mainstream radio.