Purple Rain

Prince told Warner Bros. it must finance a film starring him, with new songs as its soundtrack, or he would leave. Executives agreed, with a budget of $7 million. He wrote more than 100 songs and chose nine. Doctor Fink said the band had plenty of input, while Prince remained the main lyricist and melody maker. Fink, Lisa Coleman and Wendy Melvoin helped write Computer Blue, which borrows a section from Father's Song, an unreleased piece by Prince's father, the jazz musician John L. Nelson. Take Me with U was written for the Apollonia 6 album and moved over. The last three songs, I Would Die 4 U, Baby I'm a Star and the title track, were recorded live at First Avenue on 3 August 1983 and given overdubs in September.

Purple Rain entered the Billboard 200 at number 11 in July 1984, reached number one on 4 August and stayed there for 24 consecutive weeks. By 1996 it had sold 13 million copies in the United States. In the United Kingdom it peaked at number seven in March 1985. When Doves Cry and Let's Go Crazy went to number one on the Hot 100, Purple Rain reached number two and I Would Die 4 U number eight. At the 27th Grammy Awards Prince and the Revolution won for Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal, the album won Best Album of Original Score Written for a Motion Picture or a Television Special, and it was nominated for Album of the Year. It also won the Oscar for Best Original Song Score. The lyrics of Darling Nikki led Tipper Gore to found the Parents Music Resource Center, and the Parental Advisory label followed.

Kurt Loder compared Prince to Jimi Hendrix in Rolling Stone in 1984, and critics voted it the second best album of the year in the Pazz & Jop poll. Simon Price gave it five stars in the Guardian and called it "uber-pop perfection". Pitchfork ranked it number one on its list of the 200 best albums of the 1980s in 2018. The Deluxe reissue of 23 June 2017 added a disc of unreleased songs and, in its expanded form, a DVD of the Syracuse concert of 30 March 1985.