Prince played twenty-seven different instruments on his debut album For You, completely producing, arranging, and performing the entire record by himself at the wildly obnoxious age of nineteen.

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Prince played twenty-seven different instruments on his debut album For You, completely producing, arranging, and performing the entire record by himself at the wildly obnoxious age of nineteen. He essentially treated the recording studio like a personal playground, locking himself in for months and refusing to let traditional industry producers dilute his aggressively funky vision. It is the kind of staggering, once-in-a-generation musical prodigy behavior that immediately makes you reconsider your own life choices and utter lack of tangible skills. While most teenagers are struggling to pass algebra or figure out how a washing machine works, this flamboyant Minneapolis teenager was single-handedly inventing a new genre of pop music out of sheer stubborn brilliance. The fact that the album barely made a dent in the commercial charts upon release just proves that the mainstream music-buying public rarely recognizes absolute genius until it is wearing purple velvet