It’s been 28 years since Prince Rogers Nelson recorded his first demo, and the son of jazz pianist John Nelson is still recording new music and touring the country. He is one of few musicians with a career spanning nearly 30 years, but his image is still among the most mysterious.

“He’s always been his own person,” says David Stuart, associate professor of music. “The sort of sensuality of what he’s about — there’s some androgyny there. Like with David Bowie, that same kind of situation, where it’s clearly very sensual, but you’re not sure what’s going on. … He pushed envelopes, and he probably still does.”

Stuart says Prince has an inventive style that did not follow the trends back in the late ’70s and early ’80s.

“I’ve always thought that Prince was very much of an innovator, at least in the beginning,” Stuart says. “There was almost a disco-esque kind of sound that was happening, but there was a whole lot more complexity to the music. It was interesting, because he’s doing this stuff at the same time, in the Minneapolis scene, that The Replacements and all these other groups are coming out with this completely different hardcore punk kind of stuff.”

However, Stuart says, the way musicians get their start has changed a lot since Prince’s early days.

“Someone would come up with this really cool musical innovation or write just a dynamite tune and perform it, and it would become a hit and this person would become famous,” Stuart says. “Now we have producers and moguls taking a person who looks good and then factoring that person as a celebrity and doing the best they can to get that person to be an adequate musician. There’s nothing wrong with that, but what the difficulty is, is when this is being presented as what music is.”

Stuart says he sees a problem with how journalists and the public are becoming more interested in musicians’ personal lives than in their music.

“I saw a couple of interviews on TV, and it was really fascinating, because the person kept over and over again trying to get Prince to talk about his life and who he was and what he did,” Stuart says. “And he said, ‘I don’t want to talk about that, I want to talk about my music.’ But that wasn’t interesting. The interviewer let Prince say three or four sentences about the music and then asked him about his current relationship or a former relationship or what he was doing now, because that seems to be the perspective of what people are interested in.”

Stuart says Prince’s name changes could have been an effort to fend off prying media.

“The whole business about changing his name, some of that is, I think, just a way of doing what he’s doing now with interviewers,” Stuart says. “Saying, ‘I don’t want to talk about myself.’ How do you describe somebody who you can’t describe other than The Artist formerly known as Prince?”

Ann Nelson, a pianist and manager of Rieman Music, 409 Douglas St., says she has enjoyed Prince’s music since he released his first album.

“I’ve liked him ever since he came out,” Nelson says. “He was edgy and different.”

Unfortunately, Nelson says, she hasn’t been able to see Prince live, and won’t be able to at Hilton either.

“I’ve never seen him in concert,” Nelson says. “I would love to, but the tickets were just too expensive. It kind of made me mad how much they cost.”

Stuart says Prince’s use of electronics, rhythm and melody are excellent. He says he also has the ability to put out good videos.

“I loved the movie ‘Purple Rain,'” Nelson says. “I just think he’s interesting as a performer, and his music has a nice variety to it.”

Stuart says Prince was also one of the first to address topics people didn’t want addressed in a very subtle way.

“‘When Doves Cry’ is not a particularly happy tune,” Stuart says. “But if you’re not really paying attention, you don’t notice until you dig deeper.”

Nelson, who has followed Prince’s music since his beginnings, says she can see his influences in today’s rap and hip-hop music.

“He was provocative onstage way before any other artists were doing things like that,” Nelson says. “Unless you count Elvis and his hip-grinding.”

Stuart says it’s hard to say if Prince was a strong force in the formation of what is now known as hip-hop. He says in the early days of Prince’s career, rap was much different.However, it is possible Prince had some influence, especially in his sensual representation of himself.

“People will sort of Patrick Henry-ish defend, to the death, their right to have what they want, be the definition of a certain category of music,” Stuart says. “But, as Billy Joel said, ‘It’s all rock ‘n’ roll to me.'”