It’s been nearly a decade since musical icon Prince left this plane of existence, moving on to the eternal Paisley Park in the sky. And honestly, everything has only gotten worse here on Earth ever since he left. Luckily for us, his years of music and performances will never die. Now, an artist and Instagram user named Rudy Willingham has paid tribute to the Purple One with a truly amazing video. In this reel, he took 250 photos of stencils of Prince placed on rainy car windows, and created an animation of the legendary singer belting out his signature song “Purple Rain,” from the 1984 movie of the same name. You can watch this labor of love in full down below:
The artist who created this stresses that these are all real photos of paper stencils placed on different cars. In other words, he utilized no AI when creating this video, thank goodness. We can only imagine how long it took to create this piece of moving musical art. But the final product was well worth it. A Purple Rain-themed piece of art that needs actual rain to exist? Truly a stroke of genius. One we think would have tickled the ever-mercurial Prince.
This reel is truly a testament to Prince’s cultural longevity. How much does Prince persist in pop culture? After every Super Bowl, everyone says, “Yeah, that was good. But not as good as Prince performing ‘Purple Rain’ in the actual rain at the 2007 Super Bowl.” And they’re not wrong. The recent Stranger Things finale also reminded everyone of the genius of Purple Rain, using both the title track and “When Doves Cry” for the episode’s most emotional scene. And how many Prince-themed protest signs did people make in his hometown of Minneapolis? A lot. To quote the name of one of his albums, “Prince 4Ever.”