Prince, Passes Away at 57.

AirThompson said:
I wish Prince collabed with him on Bad. I lowkey feel like Prince didn't care for him too much at the time.
Click to expand...

It was an ego thing. Prince didn't want to look like a chump, and neither did Mike, so it didn't pan out. Prince did send MJ a track that he reworked from the late '70s, but he passed on it. Prince took it back and gave it to one of the artists on his label. They were closer friends than people ever realized, and they knew that people would kill to have just one photo of them together. MJ's death hit Prince hard just like everybody else.
 
Last edited:
I think a big thing had to do with Prince not getting his just due..

Like they always talk about mj and mtv back in the day with how they didn't play black artist.. But sway spoke about it with another dude from mtv and they both were like how Prince was already being played on mtv before mj

Then Prince had the number 1 movie, record and song out all during the same week for purple rain
 
I really don't think Prince and Michael were that close. I'm sure there was some mutual respect, but Prince has spoken publicly about Michael plenty of times and never called him a friend, close or otherwise.

Anyway, this is probably my favorite live track of his:



Here's a video of the performance with lower audio quality. It's cool to see Larry Graham killing it on the bass. Finally, more people will see Prince's guitar heroics on full display.
 
Last edited:
Questlove finally penned something on Prince's passing...


As we continue to mourn the loss of Prince, the reactions have been consistently pouring in from far and wide telling stories of the Purple One’s impact and influence. Earlier today, none other than Questlove weighed in with a heartfelt note entitled: In This Life You’re On Your Own. It goes without saying that’s a great read that has Questo delving a little deeper on Prince’s innovation and how he marched to his own drum.

On a lighter note, since The Tonight Show was on break last week, they took tonight to pay tribute to Prince. Watch a hilarious video of Jimmy Fallon and Questlove sharing the story of when Prince challenged Jimmy to a game of ping-pong, under Questlovle’s essay.

When I first got Prince’s 1999 album, it was 1982. I was 11, newly in charge of my own record-buying habits. And I couldn’t resist the cover, with its purple field of stars, Prince’s name, the numbers, and all the hidden-meaning illustrations (is that a football or a smile? How phallic was that “1,” anyway?). My parents didn’t agree. They were born-again Christians at that point, and Prince — with his overt sexuality and profanity — was a bridge too far. Plus, when you turned the album cover upside down, the 999 went to 666, the mark of the beast.

My mom found the record and threw it away. Winter came. I shoveled snow until I had enough money to buy it a second time. That one went into the garbage, too. There was a third record that just vanished without a trace, and a fourth that got broken over my father’s knee. That fourth infraction came accompanied by a month of punishment. A little while after that, I got smarter, meaning sneakier. I found a friend to make me cassettes of Prince’s albums. At home, I loosened the heads of my drums and hid the contraband in there. I listened when I was practicing, playing something totally different on the drums so that my parents wouldn’t know what I was actually hearing.

Prince was in my ears and he was in my head. Starting then, I patterned everything in my life after Prince. I had older half-brothers, but Prince — unknown to me then, but not unseen or unheard, thanks to magazines, TV, radio, and my secret stash — was a guide to me in every way. I studied his fashion, I studied his affect. I studied his taste in women — carefully. And he began to mentor me in musical matters, too. I wouldn’t have started listening to Joni Mitchell without him. And that led me to Jaco Pastorius, who led me to Wayne Shorter, who led me to Miles Davis. I had a simple rule: if Prince listened to it, I listened to it.

In the wake of his death, as we all try to come unstunned, everyone is talking about his genius. That’s understandable. But most of the discussion is general. I like to think about the specifics. I like to think of the way he innovated even early on, the way he turned away from the traditional blueprint of funk and soul music.

Think about James Brown. Prince certainly did, as did every funk and soul artist of his generation. But Prince was brilliantly perverse in the way he absorbed James Brown. If James was about a tight crack snare and percussive horns as an extended rhythmic arm, Prince went the opposite direction — he made undeniable funk from a dud of a dead snare sound and the artificial horns of the Oberheim synthesizer.

James Brown’s magic streak ran between 1965 and 1975; anyone who was anybody in black music, for the next 30 years, borrowed from that period the most. Michael Jackson borrowed dance moves. Rappers borrowed samples. But Prince, perhaps James’s truest heir, looked to the period after that, when James was thought to be in decline.

In sound checks, Prince would make his band play “Body Heat,” a 1976 hit for Brown, and he would make them play it endlessly. They’d lock into the groove and stay there. It was like Prince was using the Revolution as a sampler, and he looped that groove so that he could play along with it — and, eventually, play around with it. And “It’s Gonna Be a Beautiful Night,” from Sign O’ The Times in 1987, is a brilliant reworking of Brown’s “Gravity,” from 1986. Who else was really listening to James Brown at that point, let alone listening sharply enough to put it through the replicator and remake it on the spot?

Prince’s relationship to hip-hop has been the subject of much scrutiny, and more than a little mockery. It’s commonplace to say that he couldn’t figure out rap music, and to point to the sometimes stilted appearances of rappers on his records in the early Nineties. But at heart, he was more hip-hop than anyone.

Think of 1999 again — or rather 1982. It was such a banner year for the use of drum machines, from Arthur Baker to Afrika Bambaataa. Prince’s programming work on 1999 was beyond anything I had ever heard, just as innovative as the best hip-hop producers in the years to come: the Bomb Squad, DJ Premier, Pete Rock, Dr. Dre, A Tribe Called Quest, J Dilla.

I have always felt that the true mark of a genius is to look beyond the hits on their records to what people uncharitably call “the filler.” 1999, like Thriller, was all killer, no filler, but it was on the second side where the album really took wing. A song like “Something in the Water (Does Not Compute)” told me that Prince was not a regular person, or a regular musician. He had removed the bass from the original demo (at the time forbidden in black music, an innovation that would pay off even more powerfully on “When Doves Cry”), added a dizzying snare/hi-hat combination and delivered his vocals in a kind of ice-cold, almost robotic manner. It wasn’t just one new idea — it was several, all together; you knew from that song and the album tracks around it (“Automatic,” “Lady Cab Driver”) that he was going to be the new breed leader.

Stand up, organize.

These are only some of the completely surprising, completely successful musical choices he made, and there are thousands more. But as I said, it was everything else, too. Prince was an outlaw. When he was giving interviews on the regular to Cynthia Horner in Right On! magazine, he was telling tall tales left and right. That was hip-hop. He built a crew, a posse, around his look and his sense of style. That was hip-hop. He had beef (with Rick James). He had his own vanity label (Paisley Park). He had parents up in arms over the content of his songs to the point where they had to invent the Parental Advisory warning. Hip-hop, hip-hop, hip-hop.

And then came Purple Rain, and the world changed. Before that, I kept my Prince obsession close to the vest. But the day after the video for “When Doves Cry” premiered, I was shocked to see that my secret was out. Everyone suddenly knew what I knew, which is that Prince was like nothing else, and that he was everything. Kids who liked music talked about the music. Kids who liked art talked about the visuals. And out on the basketball court, all they could talk about was the honey he was tonguing down. (This was still about a month and a half before the movie came out, so no one knew much about Apollonia yet. That would change.)

Later on, I got into the music business myself. I got to meet Prince several times. I roller-skated with him. I went to parties that he threw. But I always felt like a fan, never a peer. I remember once I was at Paisley Park. By this time, Prince was a Jehovah’s Witness, and he didn’t stand for cursing. I slipped up. It wasn’t anything too major. I think I said “****.” Prince had a curse jar; every curse cost a dollar. “But you’re rich,” he said. “Put in $20.”

“Hey,” I said. “You taught me how to curse when I was little.” People laughed at the joke, but I thought I saw Prince wince a little bit, too, and I walked away wondering if I just confirmed to him that he was justified in taking a hard line. Maybe he actually felt bad that he had turned a generation of kids toward foul language and impure thoughts. I hope not. I was just trying to get out of paying a fine that was justified, for cursing that was probably justified, learned from music that will forever be justified.

Prince was singular in his music. He was his own genre. That same singularity extended to everything. He went the other way in life, too. As he got older, the way he managed his career showed off that contrary streak. It came to the forefront in the way he mastered his records, in the way he handled reissues, in the way he used (or didn’t use) the Internet and online streaming services. In the summer of 2014, his old band, the Revolution, reunited at First Avenue in Minneapolis. They were all set up for him to join in and play. He drove right past. Prince was a great drummer, and he was always marching to his own beat.

In moments of extreme sadness, pop-punk psychology may not be welcome, but it sometimes seemed like his need to do things his own way, and only his own way, overtook him. Control was job one to him, which allowed for amazing things in the studio and onstage, unprecedented leaps of inspiration and synthesis and an energy so prolific it seemed like it would never be shut off. But it also suggested that there was a level of mistrust when it came to letting the outside world in.

There is a fictionalized version of this in Purple Rain, where one of the main points of contention throughout the film is whether The Kid (played by Prince) will listen to a song on a cassette given to him by Wendy and Lisa. Eventually he does, and it evolves into “Purple Rain,” and The Kid plays onstage, both as a tribute to his father and a way of making peace with the group. It’s an emotional moment for every character. In real life, it didn’t really happen that way. Sometimes I think that the thing that Prince shared with other geniuses — Ray Charles, Bessie Smith, and James Brown — is that they were abandoned, at some level, by their mothers. Many artists in black music were abandoned by fathers, but an absent mother creates a faultline that runs much deeper.

I don’t know. There’s so much we all don’t know. This is what I do know: Much of my motivation for waking up at 5 a.m. to work — and sometimes going to bed at 5 a.m. after work — came from him. Whenever it seemed like too steep a climb, I reminded myself that Prince did it, so I had to also. It was the only way to achieve that level of greatness (which was, of course, impossible, but that’s aspirational thinking for ya). For the last twenty years, whenever I was up at five in the morning, I knew that Prince was up too, somewhere, in a sense sharing a workspace with me. For the last few days, 5 a.m. has felt different. It’s just a lonely hour now, a cold time before the sun comes up.
Click to expand...


Jimmy Fallon & Questlove talk about Prince.
 
Chris Robinson (Black Crowes) covering Raspberry Beret. For you true music heads, Warren Zevon (RIP -Werewolf In London) had side project with members of REM years ago called The Hindu Love Gods that covered the song too. It's a great rock version that unfortunately due to copyright issues isn't available on the "youtubes"...





My in-law's ticket stub from his very first concert... :lol: $10.50!!!!

View media item 2008691
 
Last edited:
^ That's part of the genius of Prince Rogers Nelson. What's crazy is when the volumes of stuff that will come out from his legendary vault. He announced a couple of years ago that he would begin releasing stuff but nothing ever happened.

Die hard Prince fans rue the fact he erased the legendary song "Wally"... :\





I love how dude used to roll up on people to jam with them on stage...

Rolling up on a Q-Tip set in LA in '08 I think...





Effortlessly blending in & jamming with Sheryl Crowe when she was touring with the Lilith Fair Tour in '999 (Toronto) for her song Everyday Is A Winding Road... He looked like he was having so much fun on the stage...
 
Last edited:
Man, seeing all these videos coming outta the woodwork along with all the stories, one thing is clear:  Prince was a true boss.  

My man just saunters onto random stages, casually jams out and walks off to who knows where.  Nobody gets mad that they got upstaged.  Instead, everyone is grateful to have had him grace their stage.  **** is crazy when you think about the egos of so many musicians/performers.  My dude gave no dambs whatsoever. 
laugh.gif
  

Dude legit lived life on his own terms, which may be the thing I respect most about him.  Boss status.  
 
I love this quote from the Rolling Stone post below, "He had a level of pure genius that he expressed through music, and people think, 'Therefore he's a musical genius," Jones says. "No, he was a genius who expressed his genius through music, because he could express his genius through anything he wanted to."


[COLOR=#red]Prince, the Secret Philanthropist: 'His Cause Was Humanity'[/COLOR]

Activist Van Jones breaks down how the artist helped encourage urban youth to learn technology, live green and slyly bring politicians together

By Kory Grow April 25, 2016

It began with an anonymous check about 10 years ago. Environmental and human rights activist Van Jones was working on George W. Bush's Green Jobs Act when he received a $50,000 donation and no name attached to it. "I promptly returned it," he recalls. "I'm not taking anonymous checks for $50,000. It could be from anybody." But then someone sent it back, and he returned it again.

Eventually Jones received a call from a rep for the donor: "I cannot tell you who the money is coming from, but his favorite color is purple." Jones laughs. "I said, 'Well, now you've got another problem, because now I'm not going to cash the check, I'm going to frame it.'" The story got back to the man who wrote the check, Prince, who found it so funny he called Jones up and befriended him.

That's when Jones learned about Prince's secret other gig: philanthropist. Since Prince's death last Thursday, Jones has learned just how involved Prince was in philanthropic causes. In recent years, the artist – who worked with Jones on the organization Green for All, which creates green jobs in disadvantaged communities, and #YesWeCode, an organization that educates urban youth about technology – worked to raise awareness for movements like Black Lives Matter and sent money to the family of Trayvon Martin. Prince's ex-wife, Manuela Testolini, met him through doing philanthropic work for his foundation and he encouraged her to start her own charity; she's now building a school with her In a Perfect World organization in his memory. In a statement after his death, she described him as a "fierce philanthropist."

The artist had become interested in Jones' Green Jobs initiative when he saw news reports about young people of color putting up solar panels in Oakland and wanted to help. "He liked the fact that I was bringing it to the hood," Jones tells Rolling Stone. "He just thought it was an amazing way to create jobs. He was always about economic independence."

It wasn't easy to define Prince's politics. He was very concerned about poor people and black people, but he also believed in economic empowerment and uplift. "He wasn't red, and he wasn't blue," Jones says. "He was purple. With one sentence, you would think he was Republican, because he'd be talking about the economy, and with the next, you'd think he's a liberal Democrat, because he was talking about the need to fight racism. It was a flow of insights and inspiration. At the end of the day, it was purple politically."

Asked if certain causes appealed to Prince more than others, Jones just laughs. "You're asking if there was some pattern to something that Prince did?" he says. "I think my phone broke up. He was completely unpredictable."

He then focuses on Prince's mission. "His cause is humanity," Jones says. "He cares a lot about people. Nobody went to a Prince concert and said, 'I don't belong here. I'm not black. I'm not white. I'm not cool. I'm not straight. I'm not whatever.' His cause was empowering and uplifting people. That didn't stop when he walked off the stage or out of the studio. It was a current of genius trying to move the human heart."

As an example, Jones explains how the murder of Trayvon Martin inspired #YesWeCode. While people were debating whether the 17-year-old was a "thug or a victim" and whether George Zimmerman was a "racist or a hero," in Jones' words, Prince zeroed in on the hoodie Martin wore. "He said, 'Hold on a second: If a black kid wears a hoodie, you say he's a thug, and if a white kid wears a hoodie, you say it's Mark Zuckerberg. Why is that?'" Jones recalls. "And then of course, I say, 'Because of racism.' And Prince goes, 'Well, maybe. Or maybe we just haven't produced enough black Mark Zuckerbergs. Why don't we focus on that?' Complete genius.

"He's trying to create something that everybody can dance to," he continues. "Politically, poor kids putting up solar panels? Everybody can dance to that. Kids wearing hoodies in the hood, but they're learning how to upload apps, rather than download them? Everybody can dance to that."

Prince also helped bring attention to #YesWeCode, and break down racial barriers in the tech community. "We did hackathons across the country," Jones says. "We got Essence magazine to do the first hackathon in any major black gathering. All that is because of him."

In a recent interview with CNN, Jones suggested that many of Prince's pop-up concerts – such as the one he played last year in Baltimore in the wake of the Freddie Gray riots – were a cover for him to meet with politicians. While he was at such events, he would try to bring opposing sides together.

"A lot of times, he would do these tricky things, where people [in power] are coming because they think or assume or hope they're going to meet him," Jones says. "And then they get stuck in a green room for an hour with their worst enemy and wind up being friends. And they never met Prince in their life. He would do stuff like that to people all the time."

In the days since Prince's death, Jones says he now realized that the artist had reached out to hundreds of people with the aim of helping. He'd read about a negative event in the news ("He was a news nerd," Jones says) and then try and figure out a way to do something about it. "He would mobilize his network very quietly to weigh in on stuff," Jones says. "I didn't understand until he passed away how few people knew that."

He figures Prince kept the breadth of his philanthropy secret because of his faith and because flaunting one's good works would be gauche. "He had a level of pure genius that he expressed through music, and people think, 'Therefore he's a musical genius,'" Jones says. "No, he was a genius who expressed his genius through music, because he could express his genius through anything he wanted to."

Even if it wasn't readily apparent to his fans, social causes were an interest that permeated Prince's whole being, Jones says. "I think people misinterpreted him as being cool for cool's sake, or mysterious for mystery's sake, or aloof for its own sake," he says. "But that aspect of his personality was him trying to understand the world, the universe, God, people, everything. He was trying to understand the world so he could change it. He wasn't trying to change it so he could be famous or rich, he'd already achieved that by the time he was 20. So what do you do for the next 30-plus years?

"Just like he had a whole roster of musicians, he had a whole roster of intellectuals, a whole roster of political activists, a whole roster of change-makers," Jones continues. "Just like he was a bandleader on the musical side, he was a bandleader on the social side."

It's just something that came natural to Prince. "He just had a lot of insight into people," Jones says. "If he wanted to be a politician, he would have been king of the earth."
Click to expand...

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/n...hilanthropist-his-cause-was-humanity-20160425
 
As only NO (Treme no less) could do... Props to Trombone Shorty...


Thousands Celebrate Prince at New Orleans Second Line Parade

View media item 2008899Thousands of locals celebrate the life of Prince at the second line memorial parade on April 25, 2016 in New Orleans, Louisiana.
RYAN THERIOT/GETTY IMAGES
4/26/2016 by Lorena O'Neil

The Treme neighborhood of New Orleans was a purple sea of parasols, balloons, wigs and boas on Monday night, as thousands of people honored Prince with an exuberant "second line" parade — a traditional New Orleans celebration, lead by brass bands.

The event started at Oo Poo Pah Doo Bar, where singer-cellist Monica McIntyre read a poem written by fellow New Orleans musician Arsene DeLay. The bar is owned by Trombone Shorty's family and his brother, James Andrews, lead the second line with his Crescent City All-Stars band and Chief Alfred Doucette, who donned a purple "Prince of Peace" Mardi Gras Indian costume.

The musicians and dancers followed a hearse with a purple light on top and a horse-drawn carriage leading a casket draped in purple cloth. At one point during the procession, three men crawled on top of a rooftop to dance enthusiastically as the costumed crowd cheered below.

The Prince fans towards the back of the massive second line burst out into a rendition of "Kiss," drinking and smoking as they sang, carrying signs with the musician's image and parasols with his iconic symbol drawn on it. Mark Ruffalo even participated in the celebration, but he did so behind a mask, blending in with the rest of the crowd. Ruffalo shared a photo of himself at the parade following the event.

"When a musician of this magnitude passes its such a great loss for everyone," event organizer Martha Alguera told Billboard. "The one thing we really felt strongly about is being the musical city that we are, we have to do a second line."

"We really wanted it to be authentic New Orleans, that's why we set it up in Treme, to be in a place that really is one of the greatest music neighborhoods in the world," said Alguera, who planed the second line with Andrews. "We wanted to represent New Orleans and our love for Prince."

The second line finished where it began, with the sunset providing a gorgeous backdrop as the Prince fans sang "Purple Rain" in unison, many tearing up as they wished an emotional New Orleans goodbye to the legendary musician.
Click to expand...

http://www.billboard.com/articles/news/7348298/prince-new-orleans-second-line-parade


Janelle Monae has covered a couple of Prince songs live. She even struck up a friendship with him over the last couple of years. I read he had jam sessions with her, Lianne La Havas, & Andy Allo among others...
 
Last edited:
Morris Day was the only actual member of The Time that physically appeared on their debut album... Prince played all the instruments & he & Day were shared back up vocal duties... :lol:


D'Angelo & his all star band ft. Questlove covering The Time's Summertime Thang which was written by Prince... You know life will be good when you attend show seeing Pino Palladino's tall a** playing bass...
 
Last edited:
psk2310 said:
Morris Day was the only actual member of The Time that physically appeared on their debut album... Prince played all the instruments & he & Day were shared back up vocal duties...
laugh.gif

 
Click to expand...
I've had this bookmarked for a while.

Jesse Johnson breaks down who did what:
Prince Played Guitar (Actually played everything) On Get It Up!

I played guitar, bass, & keys on: "Bite The Beat" Vanity 6 (I wrote music on 4 track & Prince wrote lyrics. It was my first publish work. Played it on a purple metal flaked Morite guitar just like Sugarfoot & the original guitar player with the B52s. That guy was amazing)

I played guitar on "Gigolos"
I played guitar on "Live Version The Bird" Prince played everything on the studio version "The Bird" and it's sick!
(I wrote a 4 track version on 1999 tour, Prince kinda like the hook, he threw the rest of what I did in the trash can as he commenced to write and performed a straight heater)

Morris & I recorded a song name "Old & Ingnorant" in Mpls the next day M & I fly out to meet P. In LA, at Sunset Sound he dug it and the track was rerecorded, rewritten, and became "Ice Cream Castles"! And John McClain "I did perform all the guitars on Ice Cream Castles"[emoji]9996[/emoji][emoji]128079[/emoji][emoji]128079[/emoji][emoji]128079[/emoji]
(Prince kept telling me "It's so cool how you played the bass on the AND instead of the 1" great compliment even though at that time I didn't know what he was talking about...yeah of course I do now!)

"The Kid" is a strange and funny story. We were at Sunset Sound are engineer was always Peggy McCleary (Later married became Peggy Leonard) and she was absolutely an amazing engineer. She and later Susan Rogers (P's engineer), were to of the best engineers I had the pleasure of working with. They both endowed me a great deal of knowledge that I'm still utilizing today, thanks ladies[emoji]128068[/emoji][emoji]128068[/emoji][emoji]128068[/emoji]
Back to the story: Morris who is a very, very gifted drummer went in sat down to play "Kid", but he kept speeding up Prince tried it, he kept speeding up too! So we got this brilliant idea, when looking back at it now it's funny the P and I thought this was a really good resolution. Morris out of the three of us was the only one that had a drink now and again, or let me put it clearer, Morris was the only one that knew how to drink. P & I were real amateurs, honestly...real pu$$ys when it came to drinking. I still am just ask Terry or Jerome one drink and my ***** is through. To this day I still don't drink. Any, Prince & I drank a glass of wine or my case a glass of WHINE! (ohh my head the room is spinning, I don't feel well, etc, etc) will I'm playing the DRUMS on "The Kid" and of course all guitars.

Jungle Love- Saved my food $ the 1999 Tour came home bought a Tascam reel to reel 8 track recorder and came up with music for JUNGLE! Prince every word+melody and kilted it[emoji]128518[/emoji]

I was very honored to write with the Cat. He didn't eff around. You had to bring it, you had to earn it if you wanted get put on. P. Would call at all hours, he clubbed a lot and we would record after the clubs close regardless of what coast we were on. (I could never stay up with Prince & Morris. They were so seasoned & I was a complete newbie nerd light-weight)

I played guitar solo on "My Drawers" P played rhythm guitar + everything else! except drums, that's Mr. Day.

Morris Day on Drums:
"Cool" "The Stick" "Oh Baby" 
"The Walk" "Wild & Loose" "Girl" "Gigolos" "Bacon Skin" "Tricky" I
(I can't remember anymore it getting late...off t00oooo...zzzzz)

I hope this sheds light on some questions you may have had. It's the truth. Unlike a lot people writing books, I was there.

LovePeace,
Jesse cfffgggchzzzzzzzzz
Click to expand...
 
^ Yeah, I always heard more Santana in Prince's playing than Hendrix, especially when he plays solos...

Johnson toured with D'Angelo when BM was released, I wonder if he's still in his touring band? I wonder if he (Johnson) will be included in tonight's tribute on Fallon?
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.

Thread Gallery

View Full Gallery

The ultimate sneaker enthusiast community.

NikeTalk was created as a way of giving back to both the sneaker enthusiast community and to the greater global community of which we are all a part.

NikeTalk is NOT affiliated with Nike Inc. in any way, shape, or form. All opinions expressed herein do not necessarily reflect those of Nike, Inc.

© 1999-2024 NikeTalk.com

Share this page

Back
Top Bottom