In a rare interview for the June 2014 issue of ESSENCE, Prince pulled back the purple curtain on his legacy, gave his tackle mentoring and shared why music made him feel so rattling good.

It’s a warm March afternoon in southern California, and word has just hit the road that Prince is doing an impromptu “secret show” on the Hollywood Palladium. Tickets are $100 money, on a primary come, first served basis, in a venue so intimate you possibly can practically touch the hem of his purple garment.

Fans have already began lining up on Sunset Boulevard, a full 4 hours before the show is even on account of start at 8 P.M. That’s, if the show really starts at 8 or 10 and even midnight.

See, that’s the thing about Prince. He’s removed from a flake; he’s very meticulous about his business. But at the identical time, he has his own algorithm and his own sense of time. He could come onstage at 8 P.M., or he might wait until 2 A.M. Immediately world-renowned photographer Randee St. Nicholas, photo and fashion editors, and I, a reporter turned screenwriter, are waiting backstage for Prince to start his ESSENCE cover shoot. It’s all been prearranged, after all, but in the case of the elusive Prince Rogers Nelson, nothing is ready in stone until it actually happens.

St. Nicholas, who has been shooting still photos and music videos for Prince since 1991, knows the drill well. It’s no different from being in his band: You simply need to be prepared to maneuver at any time. Ready, set, go! “He’s all concerning the moment,” St. Nicholas says, establishing her Hasselblad camera on a tripod in a dressing room with fading wallpaper. “If he seems like shooting, he’ll. If he doesn’t, he won’t.”

It’s the identical in the case of Prince’s live show. The Mighty Mite from Minneapolis might turn up in London to rock Her Majesty’s kingdom two nights in a row; the subsequent night he might feature one in every of his power female acts, Liv Warfield or third Eye Girl, play a few jams and bounce—or not perform in any respect. If the thrill today is to be trusted, Prince desires to play. Several tweets and a number of radio stations give out the word, and folks clamor for the prospect to see something that’s about as unusual as a rose blooming in a snowstorm: true, uncut, analog musicianship.

Prince, you see, is the rarest of all creatures—someone who hasn’t aged a day. Mind you, there are the slightest wrinkles across the eyes. But he’s the identical size, concerning the same weight and has the identical voice as he did 30 years ago when multiplatinum album Purple Rain turned pop music the wrong way up. At a time when other artists need hair replacements, Prince, who’s turning 56 this month, sports an Afro larger than the one he had on the duvet of his 1978 debut album, For You. And at a time when other artists need Auto-Tune to repair their voices and monitors to recollect their lyrics, Prince is spirited, ready and in game shape.

Together with his recent trio, third Eye Girl, as his backing band, he’s done scorching hit-and-run sets that will do The Kid—his petulant Purple Rain character—proud. For instance, following last 12 months’s appearance on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon, he played a fully mind-blowing version of his 1979 song “Bambi” on a vintage 1961 Epiphone Crestwood guitar belonging to The Roots’ musician “Captain” Kirk Douglas. Then Prince threw it within the air after his performance and broke it—but that may need been his point. The guitar would never sound the identical after what Prince had just done to it. He slammed it when it was done, to paraphrase Rakim, and made sure it was broke.

Michael Jackson, rest in peace, is not any longer with us. Madonna, appearing at this 12 months’s Grammys as a part of a wedding ceremony celebration including heterosexual and same-sex couples, doesn’t move like Madonna anymore. The last of the 1980’s giants, Prince, remains to be onstage, still vibrant, still doing things his way, still a wonder, still an enigma.

The music industry that he rallied against (famously writing the word “Slave” on his face and temporarily calling himself The Artist in a bid to nullify his multi-album Warner Bros. contract within the mid-1990’s) has imploded. The Web and iTunes killed the CD, which in turn cut record label profits. Tower Records and Virgin Records Megastores, once ubiquitous, have folded. Streaming services like Pandora and Beats Music are all the craze, and SiriusXM’s satellite radio is pushing out older radio models. More kids get their music from YouTube than another source. Singles, quite than albums, power the marketplace, and only artists with deep catalogs and the power to tour have continued to survive.

Increasingly, product placement in commercials and flicks and licensing deals are the one consistent ways for artists to earn money (unless they occur to be the Rolling Stones, U2, Jay Z, Beyoncé, Justin Timberlake or the handful of performers who can fill arenas). Which leaves Prince—one in every of the last artists who truly thrives in a live setting; who has the hits, the stamina and the spark; who, three years after his 21-night stand on the Forum in Los Angeles, placed on the last concert anyone still talks about. Prince is finally in a position to release records any way he wants. He can negotiate any deal he wants.

“Prince owns Prince,” explains Antonio “L.A.” Reid, chairman and CEO of Epic Records. Once the house of Michael Jackson, Epic, in a nontraditional deal, will release only one song by Prince.

“Prince and I are friends. Our deal is a handshake. And that’s how we work. My thing is putting out music fast. He asked, ‘What’s fast?’ and I said, ‘Hand it to me. After which exit to your automobile and switch on the radio.’ That’s what fast is to me.”

Reid continues: “The good music industry is one which’s nimble and quick. And the antiquated music industry is one which’s like an ocean liner—just slow. The general public is moving at a special pace than that, and I feel the way in which each Prince and I work is being affected by youth culture. Kids who multitask. Kids who’ve short attention spans.”
Kids who, due to Twitter, Instagram and scant radio announcements, show up on the Hollywood Palladium, together with a number of old heads, for a probability to see genius up close and private.

Prince’s guitar arrives before he does. It’s a multicolored thing with a girl’s face on it. It’s now 8:35 P.M. Brothers wearing leather jackets and silk scarves arrive. Upstairs in rehearsal, there’s the sound of trumpets, saxophones and trombones. Then female voices joined in mellifluous four-part harmony.

Christopher Tropea, the guitar tech, holds the instrument aloft, weighing it in his hands. “Prince keeps this with him in any respect times,” he says. “I normally get it a half hour before showtime.”

And identical to that, with no word of announcement, Prince appears within the Palladium’s dressing room, where the ESSENCE photo shoot is ready to occur before the show. His Afro is ideal, and he’s wearing a maroon turtleneck jumpsuit, a gold chain and gold-tipped boots and walking with a diamond-studded scepter. His two bodyguards, a pair of NFL-offensive-lineman-size brothers, never stand farther than five feet away from him, their heads on a swivel on the alert for anyone attempting to take an image or crowd him in any way.

Prince walks up and greets St. Nicholas with a smile. After picking a Roberto Cavalli coat off the rack, he gets in front of the camera and stares right on the lens. Then off to the left. His poses are natural, nonchalant. He’s been doing this for years. He takes his hands out of his pockets. One other photo is taken. He switches jackets. Now there’s a black-and-white one. And a leather one. He puts on mirrored sunglasses and, for a moment, strikes a pose that immediately evokes his Purple Rain look.

Moments later Prince is taking a look at the digital shots which can be available on a 27-inch computer monitor. With a magnifying glass he examines every detail. Romeo, his principal bodyguard, stands behind Prince to be sure that nobody else stands next to him. He speaks quietly to St. Nicholas after which starts posing again. He’s concurrently in front of the camera and behind it, all the time on top of things, ever the perfectionist.

“You reach a plane of creativity where every song that has ever existed or will ever exist is correct there in front of you.”

The bass shakes the partitions as a DJ on the opposite side of the stage plays old-school hip-hop and funk for the waiting crowd, with the distinct sound of human beatboxing coming from guest Doug E. Fresh. “Hello,” Prince says, extending his hand, taking a look at me for the primary time. His handshake is firm and supple. “When’s the last time we saw one another?”

Quietly, the musicians begin to maneuver down the hall toward the doorway. Donna Grantis, Hannah Ford and Ida Neilsen of third Eye Girl—all leather, boots and glamour—pose for a number of photos before making their way onto the stage. Then there’s the bald and fabulous singer Shelby J. and her vocal powerhouse sister, Liv Warfield. The energy is calm but twitchy, no different from a locker room before a giant game. They’re excited, raring to go.

After the band has walked onstage, Prince lingers for a moment. It’s a number of minutes past 10 P.M. The DJ has began playing Prince songs, a subtle announcement that the show is about to begin. “Adore” comes on and the group cheers loudly. The song is 27 years old, older than a few of the members of his band and a few of the people within the room. But it surely sounds brand-new each time you hear it.

“This song never gets drained,” I tell him. My mind is flooded with memories of the song—and I’m frankly bugged out that the person who made it’s standing inches to my left.

“Yeah,” Prince says. “I wish I wrote it.”

“Whoever wrote it’s a genius.”

Prince shrugs matter-of-factly. “Welp,” he says, smiling, as if to say, If the genius title matches, I’m not going to correct you. Without one other word, he walks onstage. “Where we at? We’re within the Big City. Hollywood!” And for the subsequent 4 hours, still wearing one in every of the coats from his photo shoot, he kicks the doors off the place.

With an 11-piece horn section and third Eye Girl at the middle, Prince pushes the band through a smorgasbord of his hits, from such favorites as “1999” and “Let’s Work” to “Take Me With U” and “Raspberry Beret” to lesser-known tracks like “Mutiny,” “Dark” and “Days of Wild.”

As a veteran of many a Prince show, I’ve observed that he has typically been at the middle, along with his signature stagemelting guitar solos—beautiful, soaring wonders of feedback melded with the DNA of Eddie Hazel, Buddy Guy, Carlos Santana and Jimi Hendrix, and infused with a flair for melody and presence only Prince can create. This was true for shows all over the place from his Paisley Park Studios and Las Vegas to the now legendary Inglewood Forum sets.

This time around, nonetheless, Prince appears to be more into his band, reimagining himself as James Brown—wearing the band like a cape, getting off on watching his saxophone player solo on “Purple Rain,” or reveling in the frilly horn arrangements, or smiling proudly as singer Shelby J. belts out “Nothing Compares to U,” or harmonizing along with his recent protégée, Warfield, on his version of the Soul Children’s “The Sweeter He Is.” Or riffing with the band on Michael Jackson hits like “Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough” or Janet Jackson’s “What Have You Done for Me Currently?”

“Prince continuously goes, and is continuously interested by the subsequent thing,” says Warfield, who has been a Latest Power Generation member for five years. “His energy is infectious, and I intend to make him proud and in addition preserve the live-music element. He’s shown me the way to try this right, and if he’s watching me, I hope we’re doing something right.”

At the highest of the third straight hour of playing, between inspired versions of “The Bird” and “Jungle Love,” hits immortalized by The Time, Prince blurts out: “Who wrote that? Who wrote that? Y’all ain’t ready for us!” They’re not. He hasn’t even played piano yet. And there’s still an hour to go.

He sits down solo, letting the band collapse and get better, and does spare versions of “How Come U Don’t Call Me Anymore,” “Sometimes It Snows in April” and “Diamonds and Pearls”—sounding like he recorded them the day before.

Finally the guitar comes out. By the point he does a slow-groove version of “Let’s Go Crazy,” erupting with soaring riffs, you realize he’s not laying back within the cut because he’s getting older or can’t sustain anymore; he’s laying back because he’s done all of it. He can finally afford to take a look at what his musical children are doing and appreciate them—but allow them to know, every time he wants, he’s still the king.

He smiles throughout the performance, from the opening moment until the ultimate notes, even after a rousing version of “Funknroll” that closes the show at almost 3 A.M.

Backstage, he’s refreshed. “What did you’re thinking that of the show?” he asks.

“It was incredible,” I say.

“Do you will have energy? Come to the hotel. We should always talk.”

It’s 4:45 A.M. in Beverly Hills, and Prince’s expansive hotel suite is packed, and there’s a number of laughter and activity. Dave Chappelle is sitting behind the piano, playing Thelonious Monk’s “‘Round Midnight” so well that folks turn their heads. Lianne La Havas is there, laughing with a friend. Janelle Monáe is in one other a part of the room, chuckling. Marsha Ambrosius, having just arrived, sits down and introduces herself to one in every of the Latest Power Generation backup singers.

“Numerous things I don’t do anymore and a few things I do more of.”

Everyone’s drained, but nobody wants to indicate it. Many of the band is here. Everyone’s talking concerning the concert, music, life normally. Prince walks to the front of the room and everybody looks up.

“I actually have an announcement,” he says. The room goes silent. “Don’t do anything, otherwise you’ll be on Dave’s next show.”
Everyone laughs. He comes and sits down next to me on the piano bench with Chappelle, who casually mentions that anyone who went to Washington, D.C.’s Duke Ellington School of the Arts can dabble in piano.

“Watch this,” Prince says, taking a look at La Havas, who’s sitting a number of feet away from the piano bench. “Watch what she does.” He flippantly tickles the keys, playing a part of a melody. La Havas turns her head and appears up. Prince laughs. “See,” he says, the 2 sharing an inside joke because it’s a song he’s written for her upcoming album. “I got you.”
Prince turns to me. “Would you wish to go somewhere and talk?” We go into his other suite and shut the door.

Essentially the most surprising thing about Prince is that, in private, he’s not shy in any respect. He’s actually engaging. Passionate. And mellow. Like hanging-out-in-a-barbershop or chilling-at-a-barbecue mellow. Past the bodyguards and the mystique, there’s still loads of the actual Prince Rogers Nelson left over.

So here we’re on this little lonely room. And Prince starts talking concerning the author and historian John Henrik Clarke, since he exclaims he’s into reading deep thinkers, “the form of guys you don’t debate.” He’s invoking Clarke and African thought when trying to elucidate why he’s ageless. “Even the concept of what a birthday is, is different,” he says. “In ancient African societies, your birthday isn’t the day you got here out, it’s the day your mother first considered having a baby.”

I’m scribbling like crazy, because Prince doesn’t like recorded interviews. I’m lucky. Within the old days, he didn’t even mean you can take notes.

“We got here to America and got colonized,” he explains. “They taught us time. In Africa, time didn’t exist. Or no less than not this idea of it. See, the one reason people invented time was due to repetition, in order that whenever you did the identical things over and all over again, you wouldn’t go crazy.”

Which results in what keeps him timeless. It’s not only clean living or the proven fact that he’s been playing and composing nonstop for 4 a long time. It’s also that he has learned to maintain things spontaneous and fresh, a lesson he learned in the course of the 1984 Purple Rain world tour.

“Ninety-nine shows and the seventy-fifth show almost broke me,” he says. “It wasn’t that the tour was grueling. That’s a part of the sport. It was that the show didn’t change. The identical songs. Played the identical way. Each time.” Prince continues: “I needed to [perform them that way] since the movie was out, the album was out and I assumed that folks desired to hear the songs in the precise way they were recorded.”

The experience modified him. It modified the way in which he thought of music and himself. After that, it was about not repeating himself. Every album after Purple Rain was a reinvention. Latest bands and recent members offered different challenges.

“An actual musician is all the time in creative mode,” Prince says.

He picks up a butter knife and starts cutting the air with it. “That’s what I used The Revolution for,” he says, making a cutting motion. The implication being, they were sharp. Fearless. The baddest, best-rehearsed band within the land.

“But ask them to do what we did tonight? To improvise? There could be an issue. That’s what I really like about this recent arrangement. The energy. They’re within the moment.”

He pauses. “I’m not putting down The Revolution, regardless that people would like to see us together again. I owe an amazing debt to them. But I’m doing something else.”

His desire to maintain things open and fast and sharp is what led to his beef with Warner Bros. Records. He had an excessive amount of music to release and didn’t wish to adhere to the pace, structure and ownership the music industry then required.

“What’s successful?” Prince asks me. “All of the terms those gangsters got here up with for songs: hits, bullets, smashes. It’s all violence. Every thing they taught us is inverted.

“Each time I confer with the heads of enormous corporations, they’re all the time on the beach. Middle of the afternoon. What are you doing? ‘Oh, I’m on the beach with my kids,’ ” Prince says with an off-the-cuff California air in his voice. “So we’re working to send their kids to varsity. And to the beach. We’re not imagined to accept that.

“I’m pleased. I do know exactly what Pharrell is talking about.”

On the opposite side of the door, another person is on piano. And the people within the room are harmonizing. Marsha Ambrosius. Janelle Monáe. Latest Power Generation backup singer Saeeda Wright. They’re singing Stevie Wonder’s “All I Do.” Prince smiles. “I wish I could call Stevie immediately. We probably shouldn’t wake him up.”

I ask Prince about something that his bodyguard Romeo said before he got here into the room, when he asked everyone to not curse. What about “Head”? What about “Sexy M.F.,” “Darling Nikki,” “Erotic City”? Long before rappers, Prince was one in every of the primary artists to check the boundaries of profanity on records. “All you do is grow and alter,” he explains. “Numerous things I don’t do [anymore],” he says, “and a few things I do more of.” A few of that stems from him becoming a Jehovah’s Witness. Larry Graham, the legendary Sly and the Family Stone bass player, was not only a musical inspiration to Prince but a spiritual one as well, forcing him to query his use of profanity in his music and his personal life.

“Did you ever hear Muhammad Ali curse?” he says. “Would you curse in front of your kids? To your mother?

“Marsha, Lianne, Janelle, Donna, Hannah, Ida, Liv, Shelby—they’re all my sisters. We shouldn’t curse at them. We’d like to treat all of them, and all people, like royalty.”

Prince smiles again.

“Janelle. She has a lot power. She could stop a complete generation from cursing. Could you imagine a complete generation not cursing?”

That’s what excites him. Youth. Like his band, which he likens to one in every of his favorite basketball teams, the Oklahoma City Thunder (OKC). He can push them in any direction, because, like OKC, they’re too young to not consider the proven fact that they’ll’t do something. “You may’t stop Kevin Durant,” Prince says. “He doesn’t know he’s not imagined to be great.”

Young people and the long run are continuously on Prince’s mind. Which is why when Van Jones and ESSENCE reached out and asked him if he desired to be a part of #YesWeCode—a national initiative to assist 100,000 low-opportunity youths learn to code computers—he was all for it. “Once I met with the children, I told them: If you need to be great, get a sidekick. Whoever’s your best rival, whoever you’re most afraid of, put them in your band. You’ll push one another. After which once your sidekick gets a sidekick, things will change.”

So here he’s. Exactly where he desires to be. He owns his music. Does what he wants when he wants. The rooms he plays on the last minute may not be filled to capability—they’re not for that. It’s concerning the electric feeling you get whenever you play in front of a crowd. Most times, the audience isn’t conversant in the brand new songs—they only wish to hear “Purple Rain” or “Pop Life” or “Little Red Corvette” or “Kiss.” It was something he used to resent—but now he’s at peace with it.

“With no recent releases, you will have to depend on your catalog,” Prince says. “It really helped me appreciate what I’ve already done.”

Which comes back to the joke he made about not writing “Adore.” He didn’t write it. Well, he did, but that’s not what he meant. Songs come to him the way in which that respiratory air involves you or me. The source of his inspiration? How he does it? Even probably the most creative artist within the history of creative artists has an issue explaining it.

“I’ve tried to reply that query the entire time I’ve been on earth,” Prince says. He leans forward. Fascinated with it. “Put it like this: Once I’m onstage, I’m out of body. That’s what the rehearsals, the practicing, the playing is for. You’re employed to a spot where you’re all out of body. And that’s when something happens.

“You reach a plane of creativity and inspiration. A plane where every song that has ever existed and each song that can exist in the long run is correct there in front of you. And you only go together with it for so long as it takes. Like tonight. You may tell me I used to be onstage for 4 hours, nevertheless it doesn’t feel like that to me. We were all out of body on the market. Sometimes it isn’t until we’re within the automobile after a jam where I feel my leg tighten up. After which I’m not out of body anymore.”

The voices elevate on the opposite side of the door, the harmonies too good to disclaim. Now the singers are trading verses on Jill Scott’s “The Way.” They’re jamming. Prince smiles.

“I’m pleased,” Prince says. “I do know exactly what Pharrell is talking about.”

The entire room is buzzing with harmony. Now they’re singing The Isley Brothers’ “For the Love of You.”

“You wish to go see what they’re doing?” Prince asks.

“Let’s go.”

We do. They keep singing. There’s a knock on the door; waiters are available in carrying a slew of trays. There are pancakes and berries and occasional and juice. Whatever anybody ordered.

“Excuse me, everybody. I did order the lamb chops,” Dave Chappelle says.

Prince laughs.

Cheo Hodari Coker is a co-executive producer of Showtime’s drama series Ray Donovan and a showrunner for Marvel’s Luke Cage. Coker won the 2013 NAACP Image Award for Best Writing in a Dramatic Series for his Southland episode “God’s Work.” He lives in Los Angeles along with his family.