Prince dead at 57 a week after playing Atlanta concerts

According to Carver County Sheriff Chief Deputy Jason Kamerud, deputies responded to Paisley Park at 9:43 a.m.

Last Friday morning, Prince, 57, was briefly hospitalized in Moline, Ill., after his private jet made an emergency landing there as he was returning home from his two performances at the Fox Theatre exactly a week ago.

Prince had postponed the Atlanta shows from the week prior because he had been battling the flu.

On Saturday, he performed a brief concert at Paisley Park and assured fans he was fine.

“Wait a few days before you waste any prayers,” he said.

No cause of death has been given.

Prince, born Prince Rogers Nelson on June 7, 1958, was a man bursting with music — a wildly prolific songwriter, a virtuoso on guitars, keyboards and drums and a master architect of funk, rock, R&B and pop, even as his music defied genres. In a career that lasted from the late 1970s through an arena tour this year, he was acclaimed as a sex symbol, a musical prodigy and an artist who shaped his career his way — often battling with accepted music-business practices.

Prince’s Top 10 hits included “Little Red Corvette,” “When Doves Cry,” “Let’s Go Crazy,” “Kiss,” and “The Most Beautiful Girl in the World”; lbums like “Dirty Mind,” “1999” and “Sign O’ the Times” were full-length statements. His songs also became hits for others, among them “Nothing Compares 2 U” for Sinead O’Connor and “I Feel for You” for Chaka Khan.

With the 1984 film and album “Purple Rain,” Prince told a fictionalized version of his own story: biracial, gifted, spectacularly ambitious. Its music won him an Academy Award and the album sold more than 13 million copies in the United States alone.