Prince was most popular in the mid‑1980s, especially around the release of the album and film Purple Rain in 1984, but his mainstream peak stretched roughly from the early 1980s to the mid‑1990s.

Peak popularity era

  • Prince’s commercial and cultural peak is generally placed between about 1982 and 1996, starting with the breakthrough of 1999 and running through albums like Purple Rain and Sign o’ the Times.
  • Purple Rain (1984) turned him into a global superstar, producing multiple hit singles and making him one of the defining pop artists of the 1980s.

Before and after the peak

  • Before that peak, he was already gaining attention with late‑1970s and early‑1980s releases such as Prince and Dirty Mind , which built his reputation and early fanbase.
  • After the mid‑1990s, he remained influential and maintained a loyal audience, with later resurgences like the Musicology era in the 2000s, but not at the same across‑the‑board chart dominance as the 1980s.

TL;DR: When people ask “when was Prince popular,” they’re usually talking about his massive run from the early ’80s through the mid‑’90s, with 1984’s Purple Rain as the absolute high point.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.