I'd heard my uncles and aunts listening to "I Wanna Be Your Lover" and "Controversy" when I was a kid, but when I was in 5th or 6th grade, I heard 1999 and Little Red Corvette then love came to me with the radio on

I got my first taste of Prince through my older bros. My dad is a old-school pentecostal pastor and actually threw away the Gett Off single I had borrowed from my brother!!! As a teen in the 90's I was an on and off listener but I have to admit I sometimes didn't want to let on to my boys that i was a P fan. Oddly enough, it was the "clean" prince that turned me back on to the old school stuff. sometime in '03 I came across the ONA DVD and immediately fell right back in love and soon bought the rave CD and DVD, and older LP's off ebay. One day while driving my father somewhere, I purposely played the "The Work",live version, which i had burned from the ONA DVD onto CD. He was bobbin his head, and when he heard P call out "MACEO!" He smiled and asked who it was. when I told him it was P he almost wrecked the car! Anyway, now I myself am a minister and a bigger fan than ever, my family, friends, and fiance are sick of it. I even turned a young, very talented drummer onto prince and now he is in love with P and John Blackwell.

After I saw "Partyman" video. Man, it was like - WOW!...

The way i made "contact" with Prince was maybe the strangest moment of my life, i still don't have explanation, because it didn't involved to hear his music...back in late 1984 (maybe October) i still didn't know he existed. One day i went to the dentist and i was sitting there in the waiting room. There were a lot of magazines on a table for people to read. I picked one (a kind of "TV Guide") and after some minutes, on the music news section, there it was a very small article talking about the new American rock star "Prince & The Revolution", whose last album "Purple Rain" was number one for 10 weeks in a row in the US album charts, selling an average of 500,000 copies A DAY. Well, i can't explain.. on that moment i felt, i knew, deep inside my being, that this artist would be the musical idol for the rest of my life. I don't know how i could feel this only by reading his name and the name of an album. It was a feeling coming from i don't know where, really something mystical, something beyond the physical laws that rule this universe...lol...as soon as i got ready from the dentist i rush into all record shops till i found the LAST copy available of "Purple Rain" in my small city at that moment (i live in Portugal, Europe). From that moment on the rest is history, i bought all his old albums (difficult thing to do at that time in this country, they have to be imported) and i always bought all his new albums....lol...at that moment back in 1984 my favorite artist was (and still is, on the same position as Prince) Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark.
PS: i still have that small article on him, i took with me the page of the magazine were it was, it's in my Prince archive...

I bought The Gold Experience album for £2.49 from the bargain bin just because I thought he was weird, and I liked the fact that he called himself by a Symbol.

I was only about 10 at the time and remember pressing the pause button on the stereo when my mother used to come into my room, so she wouldn't hear me playing "Pussy Control."

My parents hated Prince then.

Since then I've been getting into him. More and more so as time goes on. Went into obsessive overdrive in the last four years or so.

My parents love him now.

So does my wife and anybody who's lived with me.

osmosis.

Probably eight or nine, watching Purple Rain for the first time with parents and hearing and see him perform "The Beautiful Ones" did it for me. I'm just nineteen but I've always favored him as an artist, now I'm a fanatic.

I bought 1999 when it was first released
because Warner Bros. ran a deal on the cost.
At that time a double album would normally cost $8.99.
Warner Bros. sold 1999 for $6.99.
Basically I got into Prince because I'm cheap
& it looked like a good bargain.
Then I got addicted tp Prince
& the cost has been steadily increasing ever since.

TheOrgerFormerlyKnownAs said:

I thought the same thing.....

I recall being knocked off my feet by LET'S GO CRAZY the very first time I saw the TV trailer for Purple Rain. From then on, I was hooked.

It turned out I'd liked some of Prince's stuff I'd heard my sister play for years. I just didn't know who he was.
[Edited 1/28/05 9:50am]

In 5th grade I remember hearing my friend blast "Kiss" from her boombox on the playground. I always liked the "popular" (i.e. radio play) Prince, but I became a hardcore fan when my (then) boyfriend took me to Prince Night at Berlin in Chicago. From then on, we were there practically every month and I've been obsessed ever since. =)
(BTW if you ever have the chance to go to Prince night in Chicago I highly recommend it.)

I remember hearing Little Red Corvette on my Walkman while on a family vacation. We were driving through L.A. and I thought "Did he just say Trojans!?!?!?" I was about 13 or so at the time so the song had been out, I just hadn't heard it. I was a very casual listener for a long time. I'd turn up the radio when a P song came on, but I did buy any albums.

Then I met my husband. He is a GIANT P fan and got me really hooked on the Gold Experience. He made me a mix tape and I learned all the words to "Now" so I could sing it int he car on our date and show him how much we both liked P music. I know, total !