Purple Rain was musically denser than Prince's previous albums, emphasizing full band performances, and multiple layers of guitars, keyboards, electronic synthesizer effects, drum machines, and other instruments.

The music video for the album's lead single "When Doves Cry" sparked controversy among network executives, who thought its sexual nature was too explicit for television.

It is Prince's commercial peak, with total sales standing at 25 million copies worldwide, making it one of the best-selling albums of all time.

Other aspects of the music, especially its synthesis of electronic elements with organic instrumentation and full-band performances along with its consolidation of rock and R&B, were identified by critics as distinguishing, even experimental factors.

[9] The inclusion of that song necessitated cuts to the suite-like "Computer Blue", the full version of which did not earn an official release, although a portion of the second section can be heard in the film of the same name, in a sequence where Prince walks in on the men of the Revolution rehearsing.

[10][11][12] Prince wrote and composed the album's lead single "When Doves Cry" after all the other tracks were complete on Purple Rain.

Purple Rain was musically denser than Prince's previous albums, emphasizing full band performances, and multiple layers of guitars, keyboards, electronic synthesizer effects, drum machines, and other instruments.

[2][17] Prince configured at least two unique track listings of Purple Rain prior to setting the final running order.

The B-side "God" was often played, followed by a usual sequence of "Computer Blue", "Darling Nikki", "The Beautiful Ones" and "When Doves Cry".

Common to much of Prince's writing, the song is thought to be exhortation to follow Christian ethics, with the "De-elevator" of the lyrics being a metaphor for the Devil.

[21] A power ballad and a combination of rock, R&B, gospel, and orchestral music, "Purple Rain" reached number 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 and stayed there for two weeks.

[22] "I Would Die 4 U", the fourth and final Billboard Hot 100 top 10 hit from Purple Rain, reaching number eight on the chart.

Like Hendrix, Prince seems to have tapped into some extraterrestrial musical dimension where black and white styles are merely different aspects of the same funky thing.

Prince's rock & roll is as authentic and compelling as his soul and his extremism is endearing in a era of play-it-safe record production and formulaic hit mongering.

"[34] At the end of 1984, Purple Rain was voted the second best album of the year in the Pazz & Jop, an annual poll of American critics nationwide, published by The Village Voice.

However, the newspaper's chief critic and poll creator Robert Christgau was less impressed by the album, saying that while it is "quirky, dangerous, [and] unabashedly pop", it is also plagued by "despair" and, "for Prince ... ingratiatingly unsolipsistic",[35] although he would later call it "seriously gorgeous".

[40] Other aspects of the music, especially its synthesis of electronic elements with organic instrumentation and full-band performances (some, as noted above, recorded live) along with its landmark consolidation of rock and R&B, were identified by critics as distinguishing, even experimental factors.

[24] Stephen Erlewine of AllMusic wrote that Purple Rain finds Prince "consolidating his funk and R&B roots while moving boldly into pop, rock, and heavy metal", as well as "push[ing] heavily into psychedelia" under the influence of the Revolution.

[24] Erlewine identifies the record's nine songs as "uncompromising ... forays into pop" and "stylistic experiments", echoing general sentiment that Purple Rain's music represented Prince at his most popular without forsaking his experimental bent.

[24] In a retrospective review, Kenneth Partridge, writing for Billboard, described the album's opening track, "Let's Go Crazy", as "arguably the best intro in pop history".

[47] By 1996, the album had sold 13 million copies in the United States, making it certified 13× Platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).

He plays rock better than rock musicians, composes better than jazz guys, and performs better than everyone, all without ever abandoning his roots as a funk man, a party leader, a true MC ... for the 24 weeks Purple Rain spent atop the charts in 1984, the black kid from the midwest had managed to become the most accurate expression we had of young America's overabundance of angst, love, horniness, recklessness, idealism, and hope.

Had Prince run for president that year, he would have certainly carried his native Minnesota – the only state Ronnie lost – and he probably would've cleaned up most other places.

It was a massive seller wherever there were radios and people with pulses.Described as a "masterpiece" by the Grammy Awards, Ana Yglesias wrote, "Even after his heartbreaking passing, Prince will live on forever in our hearts, through his music, and even on the charts.

"[58] For The New Yorker, Ben Greenmane wrote, "Purple Rain may or may not be Prince's best record, but it came at the best time, propelling him from ordinary stardom (his previous album 1999 put three singles into the Billboard top 20) to supernova status.

It created his iconic look (ruffled shirt, purple jacket, motorcycle), formally introduced his most famous backing band (the Revolution), and included the lion's share of the songs most likely to appear in a capsule bio ('When Doves Cry', 'Let's Go Crazy', and the title track).

Gerard also praised "When Doves Cry" for being the "gateway" to the "Purple Rain universe: an album, a major motion picture, and a tour that dominated the pop culture landscape of 1984".

Personal and universal, familiar and challenging, romantic and narcissistic, religious and orgasmic, accessible to all and profoundly weird, Purple Rain rightly remains the cornerstone of Prince's recorded legacy, almost too obvious in its brilliance to even be worth discussing at length.

[66] In 2008, Entertainment Weekly ranked Purple Rain at number one on their New Classics list, the top 50 best albums of the previous 25 years.

[80] Information taken from Duane Tudahl,[81] Benoît Clerc,[82] Robyn Flans,[83] Michael Aubrecht,[84] and the album's liner notes.