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Prince's Minneapolis : a biography of sound and place / Rashad Shabazz.

JSTOR University of North Carolina ebooks 2026 Available online

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Format:
Book
Author/Creator:
Shabazz, Rashad, 1976- author.
Language:
English
Subjects (All):
Minnesota.
Prince.
African Americans--Minnesota--Minneapolis--Music--History and criticism.
African Americans.
Musicians--Minnesota--Minneapolis--Biography.
Musicians.
Popular music--Minnesota--Minneapolis--History and criticism.
Popular music.
African Americans--Music.
Minnesota--Minneapolis.
Genre:
Biographies
Biographies.
Criticism, interpretation, etc.
Physical Description:
1 online resource: illustrations
Place of Publication:
Chapel Hill : The University of North Carolina Press, [2026]
Summary:
"When nineteen-year-old Prince took the stage to perform “I Wanna Be Your Lover” on American Bandstand, those who watched couldn’t reconcile how Prince’s funky disco-pop sounds had hailed from a place like Minneapolis. But the Minneapolis Sound, Prince’s signature pop-musical fusion of funk, R&B, rock, punk, and new wave, did not emerge from a vacuum. The place and space of Minneapolis shaped the musical ecosystem that made Prince famous. And in turn, a complex array of social forces shaped the city’s soundscape. An expert on place, race, and culture, geographer Rashad Shabazz reveals the hidden history of the Minneapolis Sound, Prince, and Prince’s beloved city. More than a biography of Prince, this is a biography of the city and the world of sound from which Prince emerged. Shabazz traces the history of the Minneapolis Sound alongside the city’s history, from colonial contact through periods of Indigenous removal, white settlement, mass migration, industrialization, music education, suburbanization, and systemic racism. This complex history, combined with the exceptional talent cultivated in Minneapolis’s small Black communities, gave rise to a groundbreaking genre, the otherworldly legend that was Prince, and music that captivated the world"-- JSTOR.
Contents:
Preface : ’Cause I was your boyfriend
Introduction : This is not the kind of music that comes from Minneapolis
White settlement and the birth of the Minneapolis sound
The waterfall that built a city
Musical city
Segregating Minneapolis
Musical apartheid
That distinctively dirty Minneapolis funk
School days
The rooms where it happened
Planning, punk, and indie rock downtown
Making a different sound, part I
Making a different sound, part II
1984
Another very experimental kind of record
Masterpiece of Minneapolis
Moving the Minneapolis sound.
Notes:
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Online resource; title from PDF title page (JSTOR, viewed March 11, 2026).
Other Format:
Print version: Shabazz, Rashad, 1976- Prince's Minneapolis
ISBN:
9781469690988
1469690985
978I469683256
9781469690971
1469690977
OCLC:
1570338983
Publisher Number:
CIPO000330119
Access Restriction:
Restricted for use by site license

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