Prince

Nothing can be said with any degree of finality about prince Rogers Nelson. His legend is as tricky as one of his guitar solos, his image as carefully applied as his make-up. Only two things are sure: he is small, and he is strange.

Prince has been recording since 1977, when his first album, for you, was the subject of mild amusement by virtue of its lyrical content. A credit to God on the sleeve seemed pretty out of place among some fairly blatant tributes to the sexual acts. However paradoxically, sex and religion appear to have no problem co-existing on a Prince record. Between them they have constituted nearly all of his inspiration and a peek at his stage show will confirm that he draws equal pleasure from both.

His present superstar status -the only two non-political black Americans as famous as him are like Mike Tyson and Michael Jackson - is not the transient affair that most rock stars enjoy. There seems no question of Prince ever becoming obsolete. There is probably no way he'll even be out of date. And one look at his prolific output since 1983, when the double album 1999 opened the commercial floodgates, suggested that he isn't even close to running out of ideas. What seems much more likely, if he is to fade from limelight, is that internal traumas and massive self-doubts will be the causes. For, at the moment, prince-quite simply- seems to believe that he is God.