Music Features

Remembering Prince, Who Dissolved Gender and Redefined Star Power

A Prince tribute airs tonight in honor of the four-year anniversary of the icon's death.

Prince was born on June 7, 1958 in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

By the time he died exactly four years ago today, he'd released 23 albums, redefined the color purple, and ingrained himself within the legacy of pop music forever.

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Grimes Lil Peep

Photo by JUSTIN LANE/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock

Grimes' forthcoming album Miss_Anthropocene is an attempt to shock people into caring about climate change by giving it a human face.

But her most recent release is about a different yet similarly pressing topic—the loss of the super-talented Lil Peep, the emo Soundcloud rapper who died of an opioid overdose at 21. The song places emotive guitar over a beat that Lil Peep himself might've used to create one of his devastating tracks. "Delete Forever" is reminiscent of stripped-down emo and acoustic-pop songs of old, but it has Grimes' signature electric sheen.

"It's a pretty bummer song," she told Zane Lowe. "I'm so bad at talking about this song. I guess it's kind of about the opioid epidemic…I've had quite a few friends pass away, in particular, one friend when I was 18 passed away from complications related to opioid addiction. Artists keep dying and stuff so I wrote this song on the night Lil Peep died."

The opioid crisis has been tearing America apart for years, thanks to chronic overprescription and a complex aggregation of additional factors, including ongoing coverups and ad campaigns spearheaded by massive pharmaceutical companies. Anyone can be affected. To learn how to administer NARCAN (narcalone), a spray that can stop an overdose, check out this link.

Listen to "Delete Forever" here: