I describe why in this week's music section.

Prince's artistic badassery during the early '80s can't be overstated. To understand the depth and breadth of it, you need to remember the particulars of the musical landscape as the '70s turned into the '80s—specifically, the odious backlash gathered under the banner "Disco sucks," which provided a convenient if lazy way for white pop, rock, and country music fans to rebel against the reign of disco during the (admittedly oppressive) Saturday Night Fever era. It also encouraged some truly ugly behavior. As Robert Christgau wrote about the militant disco-sucks watchdogs in his essay for the 1978 Pazz & Jop Critics' Poll, "These assholes are such fanatics that they seize upon the first hint of synthesized percussion or rhythmic strings or chukka-chukka guitar—hell, the first lilt—as proof that anybody from Bowie to Poco has 'gone disco'... They turn the fatuity, monotonousness, and wimpoid tendencies of the worst (or most monofunctional) disco into an excuse for rejecting all contemporary black music...One hesitates to cry racism. But this is certainly a good imitation."

Along with latent racism, the anti-disco backlash was propelled by explicit homophobia, the belief that dance music was "faggy," with all these factors feeding into the awesomeness of Prince's artistic flowering. Faced with the task of making records doomed to be judged by some as music for blacks and fags, Prince stripped his black self down to a G-string, slapped on some ladies' stockings and a trench coat, and got to work making dance music even rock fans couldn't deny.

Read the whole thing here.