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Andrea Swensson

30 years later, why you should care about 'Purple Rain'

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'Purple Rain'
'Purple Rain'
Album cover

Wednesday marks the 30th anniversary of the release of "Purple Rain," Prince's iconic album.

To mark the anniversary, MPR's The Current is playing a track from the album each hour.

Andrea Swensson, The Current's local music reporter, joined The Daily Circuit to talk about the significance of "Purple Rain" and Prince's legacy.

Ahead of the anniversary, Swensson spoke to Revolution drummer Bobby Rivkin, known on stage as Bobby Z:

"The Minneapolis Sound is very simply Prince," Rivkin says. "And the discovery he made of synthesizers doing horn parts--taking synthesizers and giving those horn stabs like what James Brown used to do with horns. When you think of the '80s, the horn stabs and the punches were done on these Oberheims and all these cool new synthesizers. Everybody else started imitating it. And that's what we know now as the Minneapolis Sound: Prince in the studio by himself with drum machines and synthesizers."