Prince

Brilliant musician, charismatic performer, and bizarre personality, Prince has, remarkably, transfixed the pop-music world for over 20 years. Not since the Beatles has an artist's music so gracefully crossed the boundaries of nearly every popular musical genre, earning the universal admiration of musicians, the critical establishment, and the record-buying public.

Whether the multi-faceted musician will succeed in making the marketing and distribution muscle of major labels obsolete remains to be seen, but he has managed to do away with all restrictions on his creative output — and turned a profit in the bargain. The "two-thousand-zero-zero" he sang of is underway, but for now it seems the party's nowhere near over. In May , he announced that he was reverting back to his birth name of Prince, stating, "On December 31, 1999, my publishing contract with Warner-Chappell expired, thus emancipating the name I was given before birth — Prince — from all long-term restrictive documents. I will now go back to using my name instead of the symbol I adopted to free myself from all undesirable relationships."