I like the Diamonds and Pearls album

TMBGITW.

I don't know about a "gateway drug" (unfortunate phrase) but the first Prince song that I got into was "I Wanna Be Your Lover" which I heard on the radio.

Crack.

1999 was my first joint, When Doves Cry was the smack that got me hooked!

Purple & gold... nah..

I knew someone who was into him around controversy, I didn't latch on until Purple Rain, it was & still is like nothing i'd ever heard before. I knew from then on he was going to be a legend.

funkaholic1972 said:

1999 was my first joint, When Doves Cry was the smack that got me hooked!

Same!

Lovesexy - the whole album. The first time I felt the funk was while listening to Alphabet Street.

[Edited 4/24/20 12:53pm]

"I want to Be Your Lover", 1979, on the late-night Midnight Express TV show.

Paisley!

Sly and the Family Stone

I remember falling in love with Prince's voice and the song International Lover, that I used to hear being played loudly by the local neighborhood bars, and on the radio. I was a teen back then. I think the first time that I saw what he looked like was on the For You album, when he had the afro, and I instantly fell in love, and stayed in love with the man ever since!

MTV

Sly & The Family Stone, Isaac Hayes, Barry White, Earth, Wind & Fire, Rick James, Parliament, Stevie Wonder. First Prince song would be Controversy- dancing to it at the clubs.

The Purple Rain film.

I'd been enjoying the album for a few weeks, but it all came together when I saw those songs brought to life up on screen, in the context of the story.

listening to a radio broadcast the night he died of music he wrote and performed. realizing how much this man wrote and produced by himself. it was like a whole world opened up

jjam said:

You'll take note of the middle of side one. I still have two copies of this record, too. I bought my original at a very Minneapolis store, Target. (K-Tel was Minneapolis based, too.)

1999

Purple Rain the film.

Summer of 1984. I was 12. I sent away to get one of those 8 records for a penny things, and I got 1999. Sides 3 and 4 reallly blew my mind. Automatic, Something in the Water, Lady Cab Driver, All the Critics Love U in New York. I had no idea where the ideas for that music came from or how it was created. The drum machine on Critics sounded so hard. The gated guitar solo and break down at the end of Automatic, the screaming... I was so stuck by the originality of everything and just kind of became of obsessed wtih it. Purple had alrady been out for a few months, but I hadn't even heard it yet.

funkaholic1972 said:

1999 was my first joint, When Doves Cry was the smack that got me hooked!

-

same same

but with a different mind

-

I remember liking 1999 and Little Red Corvette when they would come on MTV. It was popular, but I was only like 10 or 11, so didn't have any strong feelings at that point.

Then whenI was in 7th grade, Purple Rain came out. To be a kid in the mid-80s was awesome! Every school dance and roller skating party was basically the Purple Rain soundtrack. I would say it was around this time that Prince took over my main music obsession.

Growing up South of Detroit, I was lucky enough to have The Electrifying Mojo on the radio, so that just solidified my love of Prince.