Even in many of Prince’s raunchiest songs, religious messages creep in. At the end of “Darling Nikki,” the following is played in reverse: “Hello, how are you? I’m fine ’cause I know that the Lord is coming soon.” His song “Let’s Pretend We’re Married” begins with a hot come-on — “Excuse me but I need a mouth like yours, to help me forget the girl that just walked out my door” — but it ends with heaven: “I’m in love with God, He’s the only way, cuz you and I know we gotta die some day.” It’s as if his focus on the faith is so tenacious that even when he’s writing about sex, he’s still thinking about the next life.

You can remember Prince as one of the most sexual artists of all time, and you would be right, but he was also one of the most important religious artists of all time. He put the thought of an inescapable Judgment Day and a vision of a glorious afterlife into the ears of millions of people. And Prince’s musical ministry was not about preaching to the choir like most gospel artists. He was outside the church, in the proverbial street, preaching to people who didn’t realize he was putting spiritual messages in their heads.

It’s as if Prince introduced himself to us by talking about his dirty mind and how he was all about controversy, and once we got intrigued by him, because he’d told us how much hot sex he was having, then he said, well, now that I’ve got your attention, let me tell you about my lord and savior, Jesus Christ.

This wasn’t posing, or marketing. Prince knew early on that he had an extraordinary musical gift. Music flowed through him at all hours, in an outpouring he could barely control. He created constantly, completing a song a day at his peak. The way he explained his musical gifts to himself, friends say, is to believe that he himself was blessed. That contributed to his Jesus complex, but it also made him certain that his music must have a purpose. That purpose became spreading the word of God. Sure, he deviated from that path when he wanted to, but for him there was no need to separate the things we do on Saturday night from the things we do on Sunday morning.