The Beautiful Ones - Prince

The Beautiful Ones

By Prince

  • Release Date: 2019-10-29
  • Genre: Biographies & Memoirs
Score: 4
4
From 129 Ratings

Description

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The brilliant coming-of-age-and-into-superstardom story of one of the greatest artists of all time, in his own words—featuring never-before-seen photos, original scrapbooks and lyric sheets, and the exquisite memoir he began writing before his tragic death

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST MUSIC BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW AND ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE WASHINGTON POST AND THE GUARDIAN • NOMINATED FOR THE NAACP IMAGE AWARD 

Prince was a musical genius, one of the most beloved, accomplished, and acclaimed musicians of our time. He was a startlingly original visionary with an imagination deep enough to whip up whole worlds, from the sexy, gritty funk paradise of “Uptown” to the mythical landscape of Purple Rain to the psychedelia of “Paisley Park.” But his most ambitious creative act was turning Prince Rogers Nelson, born in Minnesota, into Prince, one of the greatest pop stars of any era.

The Beautiful Ones is the story of how Prince became Prince—a first-person account of a kid absorbing the world around him and then creating a persona, an artistic vision, and a life, before the hits and fame that would come to define him. The book is told in four parts. The first is the memoir Prince was writing before his tragic death, pages that bring us into his childhood world through his own lyrical prose. The second part takes us through Prince’s early years as a musician, before his first album was released, via an evocative scrapbook of writing and photos. The third section shows us Prince’s evolution through candid images that go up to the cusp of his greatest achievement, which we see in the book’s fourth section: his original handwritten treatment for Purple Rain—the final stage in Prince’s self-creation, where he retells the autobiography of the first three parts as a heroic journey.

The book is framed by editor Dan Piepenbring’s riveting and moving introduction about his profound collaboration with Prince in his final months—a time when Prince was thinking deeply about how to reveal more of himself and his ideas to the world, while retaining the mystery and mystique he’d so carefully cultivated—and annotations that provide context to the book’s images.

This work is not just a tribute to an icon, but an original and energizing literary work in its own right, full of Prince’s ideas and vision, his voice and image—his undying gift to the world.

Reviews

  • Very nice tribute

    5
    By Ggirl12
    Was an interesting read
  • Unsatisfying

    1
    By bussie110
    I've read many musician books. This one was the worst. While there were glimpses of insight, the book was short, disorganized and left a lot to be desired.
  • 👎🏽

    1
    By norab
    Save your money and buy a People magazine Prince tribute issue.
  • Incomplete

    1
    By LostinStars
    The publisher is basically trying to sell a one chapter first draft written by Prince as a memoir. What Prince wrote is great, but this is not a book, especially after all the hype in the introduction.
  • To short

    4
    By Food at
    An abrupt ending. Just what you would expect post mortem. Too short which was disappointing, but very interesting just the same.
  • It won’t download

    1
    By CoolCoolRamon
    It won’t download after I preordered it
  • Refreshing take on his life, from his own take.

    5
    By Joezzzzay
    Enjoyed reading this book and definitely recommend. People that tend to impulse low rate it because it’s not a “tell all”, should be paid no mind, as Prince did during his life. The expectation is set that it’s not all written directly by him but there’s definitely enough insight from him directly from what his co writer collected.

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