Prince's Minneapolis

A Biography of Sound and Place

Rashad Shabazz

• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
• Year: 2026
• Print ISBN: 9781469690957, 9781469690940
• eBook ISBN: 9781469683256
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Historical Geography
• Index: History

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.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Preface: ’Cause I Was Your Boyfriend
• Introduction: This Is Not the Kind of Music That Comes from Minneapolis
• Part 1 • The Birth, 1850–1900
• Chapter 1. White Settlement and the Birth of the Minneapolis Sound
• Chapter 2. The Waterfall That Built a City
• Part 2 • The Growth, 1900–1950
• Chapter 3. Musical City
• Chapter 4. Segregating Minneapolis
• Chapter 5. Musical Apartheid
• Part 3 • The Evolution, 1950–1976
• Chapter 6. That Distinctively Dirty Minneapolis Funk
• Chapter 7. School Days
• Chapter 8. The Rooms Where It Happened
• Chapter 9. Planning, Punk, and Indie Rock Downtown
• Part 4 • The Rise, 1977–1987
• Chapter 10. Making a Different Sound, Part I
• Chapter 11. Making a Different Sound, Part II
• Chapter 12. 1984
• Chapter 13. Another Very Experimental Kind of Record
• Chapter 14. Masterpiece of Minneapolis
• Chapter 15. Moving the Minneapolis Sound
• Acknowledgments
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index