Drawing from this rich legacy, by the late 1970s Prince would help to invent what became known as the Minneapolis Sound: a blend of horns, guitars, and electronic synthesizers supported by a steady, bouncing rhythm.
While Prince has often been classified as a rock musician, his work is much more complex in the way it fuses elements from rhythm and blues, pop, rock, funk, punk, and country. The singer also boasts a wide-ranging vocal ability which includes a growling baritone, a full tenor sound, an elegant falsetto, and a piercing shriek. The multifaceted nature of Prince's music and singing helped earn him a wide and diverse audience throughout his career, allowing him to crossover the racial boundaries that tended to dominate the music scene before his arrival.
In April 1978, Prince released his first album, For You, on which he played most of the instruments and overdubbed his voice to heightened effect. While the album was a modest success, his next release, Prince (1979), sold over one million copies, producing the hit singles "I Feel for You" and "I Wanna Be Your Lover." The two albums that followed, Dirty Mind (1980) and Controversy (1981), were highly influenced by 1980s new wave and punk music.
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