These are strange days for musical megastars. We want them to have a halo of unquenchable star-wattage, framed around an artistry that speaks across generations. Yet we also want them to show us their kids on Instagram.
They tackle this balance in very different ways. Beyoncé is permanently outward-facing and yet somehow unknowable, while Bruce Springsteen hardens his blue-collar image with increasingly ordinary music.
Prince, on the other hand, is totally scattershot with his public persona. One minute he's cordoned off from everyone else, the next he's using an unpronounceable hieroglyph as his name, and now he's sort of the frontman of all-female band 3RDEYEGIRL – except he's also still Prince.
He's approached the web with the wary fear and eventual airy reluctance of your grandmother. He clearly recognises the modern desire for the "real", but is delivering it in an old-school way rather than with a slick social media portfolio: by playing tiny, cheap live shows.
This is the start of a London series where you really can see the whites of his eyes, and not because the HD screens in the O2 have been upgraded. Instead it's in Camden's Electric Ballroom, which holds just over 1000 people but, despite epic queues, it hasn't been filled to unpleasant levels (he's set to tour around other venues in the capital over the coming weeks).
It's a wonderfully dissonant feeling: a galaxy-class showman playing like a band with a residency in their local bar. Laura Mvula, Lianne La Havas and Paloma Faith are some of the big musical names headnodding among the plebs.
Prince comes on dressed in a dark sleeveless jacket, and has picked his afro out. Cast in the shadow of the strobe light, he could be Sly Stone, Marc Bolan, or Hendrix, and draws a little from each.
There is the former's funk, but tightened up, and Prince's mix of strutting arrogance and soft, endearing humanity is just like Bolan. His blithe face when playing an impossibly labyrinthine passage seems to merely say "oh, look what we have here" but when he smiles a little toothy grin, it's almost bashful.
Then of course there's the virtuosity and noisy electricity of Hendrix. But where he was always searching for something, Prince sounds like he's found it and has come back to share it with you. There's a generosity to his playing that draws the room together, so different to the stentorian pomp of most other rock music.
3RDEYEGIRL, dressed like Tank Girl meets Cavalli, are perfectly tight yet heavy, and guitarist Donna Grantis goes toe to toe with Prince on a double solo for a gorgeously mournful I Could Never Take The Place Of Your Man. On Fixurlifeup, Prince plays queenly life coach, and at another point tells us to put our phones down in the least hectoring manner imaginable.
These are performances by one of the greatest funk-rock bands ever. Something In The Water is especially exhilarating, the crowd singing gospel backup as Prince weaves the tumult of the song with his guitar, building to a repeated top note of devastating clarity.
As these solos fill the room, there's that dissonant feeling again, with the grubby surfaces of the venue unsuited to such glitter. In the end, he balances earthly immediacy and heavenly art like no other musician.