11 Artists Who Perfectly Capture Prince's Timeless Influence

"That night with Prince, I was just in a trance. I don't remember anything after I walked through the smoke onstage. I was definitely Sasha Fierce that night, completely free." (Giant magazine)

"Man how does anyone compare to Prince, really? There’s so many layers to his artistry, you know what I mean? Writer, virtuoso and genius, really, when it comes to him being a musician… It’s cool for people to pick parts of him that they see in me because he is one of my hugest influences. I think it’s cool that you see it if you do, but I would never compare myself to him." (BET.com)

“Prince is a mentor, a friend and a musical hero of mine and he still is. Growing up, I always admired how he handled the business and gave other artists an opportunity to shine, and when he puts his stamp on someone it’s a special thing. He’s been in the industry for a really long time, he’s smart, and he’s constantly reinventing himself. I just hope when I reach that many years in the game I can still be as passionate as he and as giving to new artists as he is.” (Essence)

"You had artists like Prince who kind of created the standard for what R&B slow classics was, and there were songs like 'Adore You,' that was a staple. And even to this day, every album, I always create a record just like that, because that, to me, represents R&B history.

He exemplifies the true sense of R&B, not only in the way he sings but also in the emotion. There's something about the falsetto that I think women go crazy over. If you're able to hit that high, high note, they go crazy." (ABC News)

“Prince was always just pushing the envelope. Michael was doing that too, but he wasn’t as experimental. Prince turned experimental music into pop music. ‘When Doves Cry,’ the whole 'Purple Rain' soundtrack -- he was inspired by the Cocteau Twins and new wave pop and brought it into R&B when he first started, and then it became this cool, next-level, kind of hard-to-digest music. Which is what I felt 'House of Balloons' was. Image, lyrics, content, storytelling, cohesive body of work: That's Prince to me.” (Pitchfork)

“I discovered Prince before [Jimi] Hendrix, which is crazy, because when you research Hendrix, you realize how much Prince was influenced by him... Prince can do these funk jams, then these rock jams, then these beautiful ballads, then he can do these kind of piano songs -- this is just about music. It’s not about, 'I’m this type of artist and that’s all I can do.' He showed me early on, whatever you’re into, do it. Whatever you can do, do it." (Vogue)

“I was five years old. ‘I Wanna Be Your Lover’ had come out, and it was a big hit. When that album came out, it was just huge. He really, literally, was the talk of the town. Everybody was wondering, ‘Who is this guy? Is he a guy? Is it a girl?’ No one really knew who it was. I remember we had the album, and my brothers were just enamored by this guy. They told me, ‘He plays everything, he writes everything, he’s singing everything,’ so I was hooked from then on. I learned how to play every song on that album, note for note, at five years old.” (OkayPlayer)

“Prince, to me, is the ultimate artist. The thing that I love about Prince is he really makes his own rules, and I think that in creating something like music, you really shouldn’t have any rules.” (The Arizona Republic)

"You can’t help but reference it and make the association that I’m so like Prince, in my own personal opinion, in so many ways. I don’t mind that association. But no, it wasn’t directly or deliberately built off of his song. Quite frankly, more people should go back and listen to that and discover Prince for themselves, because right now, years later, that song is vintage. A lot of people don’t know Prince, who he was and what he did, what he contributed. He definitely inspired me a great deal." (Radio.com)

Jimmy Jam: “Prince really recorded differently than everybody else. He kind of wrote his own rules, but still, being in sessions with him also teaches you things to do that are a little out of the box. He called it 'visual records.' You always wanna make the record so that it takes people to a place, that they imagine a place."

Terry Lewis: "The 'Minneapolis sound' to me is the sound that Prince created. It's the sound that defines Minneapolis. All of us were influenced by the same music during that period of time, whether it be Sly Stone or whatever was happening in that era we were growing up. So we all have a lot of the same influences, James Brown, you know, that's all part of it. We got locked up in a cold city and there was nothing else to do but to play." (ASCAP)

"I think we influenced each other. I influenced him the same way he influenced me. When he came back to the Bay Area, I introduced him to my family, and he got to see me play with my family, with my dad, and play Latin jazz music, and he’d never heard it before. He was like, ‘This is just crazy. This is amazing.’ He loved it. We mentored each other, if you want to look at it that way. That’s the good thing about Prince: you can see how he was influenced by the people around him. I can hear and see it, because I got to live the influence that I had on him as well as the influence he had on me -- just being around each other, being able to record all the time and play, and do things that he had never done using live percussion instruments and recording all the time." (TIME)