[JonInMiddleGA]

I was an early adopter on the music of Prince, among the first artists I felt like I "discovered" before everybody else.

Before "1999", before "Controversy" , even before "Dirty Mind", I managed to pick out his extraordinary talents from the first hit single (hey, I wasn't quite 13 years old, cut me some slack for needing a single). But it wasn't the hits that caught my attention.

This was no cookie cutter performer, he was a lot more than image or gimmick. He could play, and frequently did, pretty much any instrument on his albums ... but hand him a guitar and he really stood out. That's what set him apart for me.

I moved on from the rap and r&b niches not long after his popularity exploded. Metal grabbed me and held me from that point forward ... but there was no sense of guilty pleasure in enjoying Prince's work before or after, he was as legit as it gets. And there's a whole lot of performers in the rock niche that could stand to take lessons from him.