Alan Light, former writer for Rolling Stone, editor-in-chief of Vibe and Spin magazines, and author of The Holy or the Broken, "gets inside Prince's mind palace in Let's Go Crazy--a history of the making of his historic, semi-autobiographical musical masterwork, Purple Rain" (Vanity Fair).

Purple Rain is a song, an album, and a film--widely considered to be among the most important albums in music history and often named the best soundtrack of all time. It sold over a million copies in its first week of release in 1984 and blasted to...