Welcome to Pop Pantheon, the podcast where we completely overanalyze all of your favorite pop stars and then rank them in the official Pop Pantheon.

This, of course, is your host, DJ Louis X.

And before we get into everything today, don't forget to rate, review, and subscribe to Pop Pantheon, wherever you're listening to it right now. We're on social media at Pop Pantheon Pod, and I'm at DJ, L-O-U-I-E-X-V on Twitter and Instagram. We have merch available at Poppananthionpod.com. And our Patreon channel,

Pop Pantheon, all access, where we produce at least three bonus episodes of this show per month,

is available at patreon.com slash pot pantheon. Also, gorgeous, gorgeous L.A. is happening on Friday,

September 29th at Resident in downtown Los Angeles.

This, of course, is my queer pop party where I play all your favorite pop music all night.

And if you want to come to that, you can buy tickets at the link in the show notes of this episode,

or I'll post the links in our bio on social media. And finally, we have our first live show coming up in Pasadena on November 2nd at the Crawford.

This is in conjunction with LAIS and we'll be talking about Britney's memoir, her music and her legacy.

I have an incredible panel of guests joining me there, and we're going to do a little Britney dance party, gorgeous, gorgeous install after the show. So if you want to come to Pop Pantheon Live, Britney's Memoir Music and Legacy at the Crawford on November 2nd in Pasadena, you can click the link in the show notes of this episode to buy tickets for that. All right, so this is the final installment of our Epic Prince trilogy. This has been such an incredible journey. I hope you guys

have been enjoying these episodes. In this particular episode, we're going to be covering all of

Prince's work in the 90s, 2000s through his death in 2016. We're going to be talking about

his label drama, his name change to a symbol, the glut of music he produced some of the

highlights, some of the low lights, and what his legacy

and influence means. We're going to spend some time talking about how Prince impacted pretty much

every pop star in some way that has come after him and discuss his legacy. So without further ado,

here is the final installment of our Prince series.

On his 35th birthday in 1993, Prince told the world he was changing his name to an unpronounceable symbol, quote, whose meaning has not been identified.

His new visual moniker was a combination of the gender signs for man and woman, but Prince

was not changing his gender identity. He was hoping to change the music industry, or at least

change his own record deal. The previous year, he'd signed a new contract, touted as the biggest

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