Prince would have turned 62 on Sunday, June 7, and as his estate reminded fans on Twitter over the weekend, he remained devoted to "speaking out against injustice, advocating for black excellence, and spreading the message of 'Love 4 One Another,'" until his death in April 2016.
In honor of the late artist's birthday — as protests against racially biased police brutality and the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery and more black Americans continued around the world — the estate posted two timely statements from the late star.
The first, a handwritten note encapsulating Prince's thoughts on the dangers of "intolerance," was something "he kept in his personal archives," the estate tweeted, calling it "a message that still resonates today."
It reads: "Nothing more ugly in the whole wide world than INTOLERANCE (between) Black, white, red, yellow, boy or girl. INTOLERANCE."
The second post was perhaps even more poignant.
Sharing the music video for "Baltimore," the protest song Prince wrote after police killed Freddie Gray in 2015 and Michael Brown in 2014, the estate shared another powerful statement from the Purple One.
"The system is broken. It's going to take the young people to fix it this time. We need new ideas, new life," the tweet reads, borrowing a Prince quote from the end of the video. "Prince wrote 'Baltimore' in 2015 following the death of Freddie Gray at the hands of police, in support of Black Lives Matter. #nojusticenopeace."
The powerful video includes footage from protests that erupted in Baltimore and Ferguson, where Gray and Brown were killed, and beyond, following their deaths, according to SPIN.
The track comes from Prince's 2015 release, "HITnRUN Phase 2," his final studio album.
"Nobody got in nobody's way / So I guess you could say it was a good day / At least a little better than the day in Baltimore," he sings in the opening. "Does anybody hear us pray? / For Michael Brown or Freddie Gray / Peace is more than the absence of war."
As the song comes to a close, Prince sings the refrain, "If there ain't no justice, then there ain't no peace."
The legendary star also held a Dance Rally 4 Peace inspired by Gray's death in 2015, in the artist's hometown of Minneapolis, the same city where, almost exactly five years later, Floyd was killed in police custody after an officer pressed a knee into his neck for nearly nine minutes as he begged for help.