It may remain impossible to believe, but it also remains true:
The entertainment world and the world in general continue to wrestle with this tragic fact.
Especially because the death of this multiple-time Grammy Award winner and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee remains a mystery.
Did drugs play a role? Was he suffering from a chronic illness?
Did he have some idea that the end was near, prior to his collapsing in an elevator in his home in Minnesota on Thursday morning?
We should find out a lot more after the medical examiner comes back with a full report.
For now, however, all we can do is look back on a unique, talented, eccentric, inspiring, entertaining life that was lived exactly as Prince wanted to live it.
He was one of a kind, as the following photo gallery helps depict:
It’s difficult to remember any celebrity death that has matched this one in terms of the sheer impact it has had on others in the industry.
Consider what Will Smith had to say about Prince and then read through these moving tributes:
Prince was surprisingly camera shy for such a magnetic presence, carefully picking and choosing when he would make a television appearance.
But he blew us away at halftime of the Super Bowl in 2007.
And he cracked us up on New Girl many years later.
Here’s a look back at nine times Prince made a memorable appearance on the small screen:
As shared above, countless celebrities have sent along their condolences and their memories of Prince, mostly over social media platforms.
But Lin-Manuel Miranda led the cast of Hamilton in a different kind of tribute, one special enough that we felt the need to give it its own space:
And the same goes for Jennifer Hudson and the cast of The Color Purple:
God bless you, Prince.
Allow us to send a Kiss to heaven and for us to Party Like It’s 1999 in your honor this weekend.
If we see Kim Kardashian on stage anywhere, we’ll even give her the boot. Just for you.
