Esta es la historia de superaci n y ascenso al estrellato de un artista irrepetible. Escrita de su pu o y letra, y acompa ada de fotos in ditas, dietarios y apuntes ntimos, incluye tambi n el conmovedor testimonio autobiogr fico que Prince comenz a elaborar poco antes de su inesperada muerte.

Prince era un genio de la m sica, uno de los creadores m s queridos, vers tiles y respetados de nuestro tiempo. Fue un visionario tremendamente original, con una imaginaci n capaz de recrear universos enteros, desde el para so prometido a ritmo de funk de «Uptown hasta los paisajes m ticos de Purple Rain, pasando por la psicodelia de «Paisley Park . Sin embargo, su creaci n m s ambiciosa fue convertir a Prince Rogers Nelson, nacido en Minnesota, en Prince, una de las mayores estrellas del pop de cualquier poca.

The Beautiful Ones nos cuenta c mo Prince se transform en Prince: su relato en primera persona nos muestra a un vido joven que decide empaparse primero del mundo que le rodea para luego moldear un personaje, una visi n art stica y finalmente una manera de vivir, mucho antes de que sus primeros xitos y la fama lo constri an y pretendan redefinirle. El libro est dividido en cuatro partes. La primera es el testimonio autobiogr fico que Prince escrib a antes de su repentina y tr gica muerte; son p ginas que nos llevan al mundo de su infancia a trav s de una prosa l rica y personal. La segunda presenta, a trav s de diarios y libretas de recortes, los a os formativos de Prince como m sico, previos a la publicaci n de su primer disco. La tercera nos muestra, en sinceras im genes, la evoluci n de Prince hasta llegar a la c spide, a su logro art stico m s grande, que descubriremos en la cuarta parte del libro: el tratamiento original y manuscrito de Purple Rain, sin duda la conclusi n del proceso de crearse a s mismo emprendido por el artista, que en esta pieza da a las tres secciones previas forma de viaje heroico .

El editor del libro, Dan Piepenbring, completa el retrato con una introducci n fascinante y conmovedora sobre c mo fue colaborar con Prince en sus ltimos meses de vida, en un momento en que el artista medit profundamente sobre c mo pod a revelar al mundo m s detalles de s mismo y de su manera de pensar sin perder el misterio y la m stica que tan cuidadosamente hab a tejido a su alrededor. Tambi n son de Piepenbring las notas que dotan de contexto a las im genes del libro.

ENGLISH DESCRIPTION

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - The brilliant coming-of-age-and-into-superstardom story of one of the greatest artists of all time, in his own words--featuring never-before-seen photos, original scrapbooks and lyric sheets, and the exquisite memoir he began writing before his tragic death

Prince was a musical genius, one of the most beloved, accomplished, and acclaimed musicians of our time. He was a startlingly original visionary with an imagination deep enough to whip up whole worlds, from the sexy, gritty funk paradise of "Uptown" to the mythical landscape of Purple Rain to the psychedelia of "Paisley Park." But his most ambitious creative act was turning Prince Rogers Nelson, born in Minnesota, into Prince, one of the greatest pop stars of any era.

The Beautiful Ones is the story of how Prince became Prince--a first-person account of a kid absorbing the world around him and then creating a persona, an artistic vision, and a life, before the hits and fame that would come to define him. The book is told in four parts. The first is the memoir Prince was writing before his tragic death, pages that bring us into his childhood world through his own lyrical prose. The second part takes us through Prince's early years as a musician, before his first album was released, via an evocative scrapbook of writing and photos. The third section shows us Prince's evolution through candid images that go up to the cusp of his greatest achievement, which we see in the book's fourth section: his original handwritten treatment for Purple Rain--the final stage in Prince's self-creation, where he retells the autobiography of the first three parts as a heroic journey.

The book is framed by editor Dan Piepenbring's riveting and moving introduction about his profound collaboration with Prince in his final months--a time when Prince was thinking deeply about how to reveal more of himself and his ideas to the world, while retaining the mystery and mystique he'd so carefully cultivated--and annotations that provide context to the book's images.

This work is not just a tribute to an icon, but an original and energizing literary work in its own right, full of Prince's ideas and vision, his voice and image--his undying gift to the world.