Today marks 1 week since Prince died.

 I was sitting in class during a final review, browsing Facebook. About halfway through the class, I see a picture of him with the caption “R.I.P. Prince”. Immediately, my stomach dropped. In that moment, I wasn’t a student in class. I was one of the countless people in disbelief over his death. One of my musical idols disappeared, but in the coming days after his death, it really showed just how many people he had touched. Since his death, fans have flocked to his music purchasing over 638,000 albums world wide, and the numbers are expected to climb in the following weeks. Fans have also purchased 2.8 million songs, pushing some of his hits back onto top charts. I myself bought his album titled The Very Best of Prince, a soundtrack that I fondly remember growing up with.

 Fortunately, I came to be a Prince fan when I was a kid. One year at Christmas someone had given my dad an album collection of his greatest hits and videos. We all gathered around to watch them and I remember very distinctly asking, “Which one is the guy and which one is the girl?” I didn’t understand that at the time but I think now that, though they meant that as a joke then, that has been one of his most admirable qualities in my eyes. His sense of style was only the iceberg, but he inevitably helped thousands of people feel comfortable and identify not as simply a man or woman, but as themselves. Prince had the great quality to be exactly who he was, no more and no less, as all artists do, but none of them quite captured that ability to dress in leather and fur while out for a bike ride because they felt like it. Through his apparent weirdness, he was able to capture us all like flies to a bright light. There has never been a time when Prince was not cool, and I don’t think there ever will be.

 As for his music, there is so much to it. Intentionally, he could make you laugh, cry, dance, be in awe and feel yourself all at once because he felt the music so deeply and made that clear for music lovers at all levels. I Would Die 4 U has been my favorite Prince song since I was 8; before I had really formed any musical tastes besides Barney songs and cartoon intros. This song has stuck with me through elementary rides home from school with dad, to intermediate school when we made our first MP3 playlists, to high school when we imported songs to our touchscreen phones, now in college where we mourn the loss of a true artist and visionary.

 The only song I ever felt emotionally close to before Thursday was Prince’s “I Would Die 4 U”. The last time I sang that song out loud and really connected with it was during karaoke night at the Corner Bar and Grill during September. It was September 30th on a Wednesday night, to be exact, 2 days after my 21st birthday. My friend Cristian and I went ham on that song and killed it. We had the feeling that none of our peers had heard it before because there was only a small group of older gentleman in the back cheering us on. But we didn’t care, we rocked it and really channeled our inner child for that performance. Since Thursday, I’ve been trying to wrap my head around who he was and what kind of legacy he will be leaving. I may not have been there to witness his entire career unfold, but I have felt so much through his music, lyrics, guitar solos. Prince was and forever will be so hard to capture and put into words. Nothing will do him justice, and nothing will feel just right. He was just something that we had never seen coming.

 “I’m not a woman / I’m not a man / I am something that you’ll never understand.”