I remember it like it was yesterday. I was 10 years old,, it was July 27th 1984,, it was a Friday. My sister Semora, who was then 21, called my grammar school and told them there was a family emergency and I had to get an early dismissal. I thought something was wrong,, so the cry baby I am was ALREADY crying before she said ANYTHING.

She picked me up saying she had something to show me. She was dating a guy named Brian at that time,, they took me to the Roseland Theater on 114th and Michigan,, sat me right smack in the middle of the show with a bucket of stale popcorn, some raisinettes, and a fountain Pepsi... Lights went down and THAT DAY started my love affair with Prince and PURPLE RAIN,, fast forward 28 years,, WE'RE STILL IN LOVE....

I said all that to ask when did your love affair with "P" start? I love a good love story.....

Nice story 1981 when I heard him sing Do Me Baby on the radio. I was 9 and now im 41

Hearing Prince in the early 80's and then seeing Purple Rain ... that's when my love of the purple music started. Then after about a decade and a half I finally saw Prince play live. It is such a magical experience to see Prince perform, the passion only intensified from there. But I made Big Mistakes and I listened to a few.

Now no matter how much hate or negativity I see or read, Prince will always receive a free pass. No one, imo, that creates the kind of music that Prince does, and he is one of a kind will ever receive anything but love from me.

[Edited 6/15/13 13:29pm]

The Purple Rain movie in '84. My brother and I walked to a nearby movie theater to see it. I was 13 and he was 10 at the time. Those were the days when kids could see an R-rated movie without a legal guardian and typically wouldn't be asked about an I.D. or anything. I remember being shocked at the sexual content and all the bad language. I knew about Prince, but I was still a kid and didn't quite know what to expect from the movie. I also remember tearing up when he sung "Purple Rain" at the end.

As far as my favorite artist went, I walked in a Michael Jackson fan. I walked out a Prince fan. Prince became my number 1 artist and musician at that point, and that hasn't and will never change.

[Edited 6/7/13 21:18pm]

[Edited 6/7/13 21:22pm]

gold31 said:

The Purple Rain movie in '84. I was 14 when I saw it in the theaters. As far as my favorite artist went, I walked in a Michael Jackson fan. I walked out a Prince fan.

You preaching to the choir with that!!!!

PinkCashmere74 said:

gold31 said:

The Purple Rain movie in '84. I was 14 when I saw it in the theaters. As far as my favorite artist went, I walked in a Michael Jackson fan. I walked out a Prince fan.

You preaching to the choir with that!!!!

PinkCashmere74 said:

My sister Semora, who was then 21, called my grammar school and told them there was a family emergency and I had to get an early dismissal.

Wow! We used that excuse in 1988. My parents used the family emergency thing to get us out of school early so that we could drive from SC to Atlanta for the Lovesexy tour.

LOL! I bet that's happened with a lot of prince fans over the years to either see a show or be in line for concert tickets, or something like that.

There was a girl in my neighborhood named Brandy.

Her older step brothers were big Prince fans.

They were real stoners, and since Prince and drug culture are interchangeable, they got into Prince for that reason. Years later, I would meet people who were in to Prince and doing cocaine and ecstacy as well. No matter how you slice and dice it, two things will always color the 80s for me: Prince and cocaine, both being interchangeable concepts really.


Anyways, her brothers let her copy their Purple Rainalbum, and she played it for us the day after Christmas, mostly to show off her boombox to us. It was 'computer blue' which blew me away. I had never heard anything like it in my life. Purple Rain was an amazing album, and the perfect type of music to listen to when you're faded--hell, the backwards message and Darlin' Nikki are practically designed for tripping on acid. At any rate, the drug infused Prince of the 80s set the stage for my facination with him for several years to come.

when doves cry

chart countdown.i was 11

too young to be allowed to see purple rain at the cinema.....and that was the start of that love affair!

imago said:

There was a girl in my neighborhood named Brandy.

Her older step brothers were big Prince fans.

They were real stoners, and since Prince and drug culture are interchangeable, they got into Prince for that reason. Years later, I would meet people who were in to Prince and doing cocaine and ecstacy as well. No matter how you slice and dice it, two things will always color the 80s for me: Prince and cocaine, both being interchangeable concepts really.


Anyways, her brothers let her copy their Purple Rainalbum, and she played it for us the day after Christmas, mostly to show off her boombox to us. It was 'computer blue' which blew me away. I had never heard anything like it in my life. Purple Rain was an amazing album, and the perfect type of music to listen to when you're faded--hell, the backwards message and Darlin' Nikki are practically designed for tripping on acid. At any rate, the drug infused Prince of the 80s set the stage for my facination with him for several years to come.

gold31 said:

As far as my favorite artist went, I walked in a Michael Jackson fan. I walked out a Prince fan.

I heard When Doves Cry on the radio, after having already read about the upcoming Purple Rain movie in a magazine. After hearing that song one time I knew my days as a MJ fan were done. Then I saw the video of it and was completely sold.

Prince was perfect for me as a 12 year old teenager: exciting music, exciting image, plus my parents hated him for being too sexual (and possibly satanic)! What else could you wish for...

[img:$uid]http://i581.pho.../img:$uid]

PinkCashmere74 said:

I remember it like it was yesterday. I was 10 years old,, it was July 27th 1984,, it was a Friday. My sister Semora, who was then 21, called my grammar school and told them there was a family emergency and I had to get an early dismissal. I thought something was wrong,, so the cry baby I am was ALREADY crying before she said ANYTHING.

She picked me up saying she had something to show me. She was dating a guy named Brian at that time,, they took me to the Roseland Theater on 114th and Michigan,, sat me right smack in the middle of the show with a bucket of stale popcorn, some raisinettes, and a fountain Pepsi... Lights went down and THAT DAY started my love affair with Prince and PURPLE RAIN,, fast forward 28 years,, WE'RE STILL IN LOVE....

I said all that to ask when did your love affair with "P" start? I love a good love story.....

Great story! I'm jealous, though. I, too, was 10 in the summer of '84 but I wasn't allowed to see "Purple Rain."

In late summer of '83, I was standing in my front yard when I heard "Delirious" on my friend's dad's 'boombox'. I was 9 yrs old. I LOVED it, and said, "Who is this??" to my friend's dad. He said, "This is Prince. He's from here," (we live in Mpls). And I was a goner.

I bought Batman just because I was a batmaniac, on a day of July 1989. I was 12. I known a few Prince songs but I'd never really paid attention to him. Only I had to own everything Bat-related.

It wasn't an immediate shock but after maybe 2 months I realized I was listening to this album all the time. I kept doing so for months so a year later I bought Purple Rain to give it a shot and THAT was an immediate shock. From that moment on, I was doomed.

It's been 24 years and I'm still there...

nursev said:

Nice story 1981 when I heard him sing Do Me Baby on the radio. I was 9 and now im 41

Do Me Baby was one of the first songs I ever heard from Prince. I was about 18 and it completely blew me away. I was like WTF??

After that I couldn't get enough of the man.

it was last year,
my college professor teach us abt music in the school (my major is media communication) he talked abt prince, who had the huge impact on music history, with showing some of his early pics which really caught my attention.. so... i searched abt him in the internet..

n i only got the news abt he sued youtube, sued his no.1 fan, sued his own fan site, sued the mother..blabla.

i thought i've found such an interesting guy...i mean, who would sue his own fan site, lol...so i started the research..

ughh.. and how i regret to did that..

i saw some of his old tour footage and purple rain the movie, and the live performance too..

i just madly in love with him...oh gosh.. he's just like drug... i couldn't help myself..

u won't believe... i coudnt sleep at night.. his music plays in my head over n over..

i don't go to school just becuz i wanted to listen to his music the whole day without eating....

now i collected almost every stuff of him

i also have collected many n many rare footage of him, so sad i can't share these treasures with u guys cuz of the god damn sick purple policy.. youtube terminated my 3 accnts already lol

Purple Rain seems like the jumping off point for a lot of people, myself included. I got the cassette and a boom box for chistmas in 84 or so, and one song after another blew me away. The extended version of let's go crazy in the movie sealed the deal after that. I recorded it with an old school clunky tape recorder pressed up against the tv speaker. Technically I guess that means I was bootlegging at age 12.....

I was about 7 and I had found an unwrapped cassette copy of The Hits 1. Put in on the ancient 90's stereo and hit play. That swirling guitar intro to When Doves Cry followed by the hollow drum machine then the keyboard hook, that was it. I was hooked into the musical language of Prince, not even concerned about what he was trying to say at that moment. I listened to that whole cassette so many times, each song so diverse and interesting from the other which made sense since it was a greatest hits collection.

Because of that When Doves Cry is and always will be one of my favorite Prince songs, at the risk of sounding predictable. The music on that thing was unlike anything I had heard at that time. which was moslty country and Springsteen whom I still admire a lot.

Ever since then, I've been intrigued to no end by this guy.

[Edited 6/14/13 11:45am]

My uncle brought home the For You album and played Soft and Wet and I remember dancing to it. I was 9 years old. I was a fan then but didn't become a diehard until the Lovesexy album.

When I was 13 back in 2009 I remember waiting for a commercial on a Michael Jackson video to finish. That commercial was a commercial for LotusFlow3r. Confused at what I was watching, I asked my friend who that was and he replied: "That's Prince, he's like Michael Jackson but with a guitar." Sometime later in mid July, I was looking for new music to listen to and I remembered what my friend had said about Prince, so I ended up "borrowing" some Prince songs off limewire. The second I started Let's Go Crazy, I was hooked. There was something manic about the music that caught my attention, and it was SO 80's, which to me was the mark of a good song right off the bat. Some time passed and I acquired other songs like When Doves Cry, and Kiss (though I had known these songs, I never realized they were Prince songs). But up until now, I was hardly into Prince, I would listen to the few songs I had from time to time but still lacked over 5 Prince songs. Then halfway into 2010, after wanting to mix things up following my first breakup, I stumbled upon My Name Is Prince. I know that this song doesn't exactly get much love here on the Org, but this is the song that hooked me. I needed something bombastic and ego driven, and it was EXACTLY what I needed to hear when I needed to hear it. I got madly into Prince for a few weeks, and by the end of 2010 was becoming an even bigger fan. Then I saw Purple Rain, fell in love with Prince and have since collected all his studio albums, starting with Emancipation and LotusFlow3r. So I've been a Prince fan for only 4 years so far I suppose, but what a 4 years it's been

PinkCashmere74 said:

gold31 said:

The Purple Rain movie in '84. I was 14 when I saw it in the theaters. As far as my favorite artist went, I walked in a Michael Jackson fan. I walked out a Prince fan.

You preaching to the choir with that!!!!

You could have been me writing this post...

Thats exactly what happened to me..

1. Anna Stesia

2. Lovesexy

3. Alphabet ST.

4. I Wish U Heaven

5. Positivity

6. Dance On

7. Eye No

8. Glam Slam

10. When 2 R In Love

1981 I was 10 when I walked into my brothers room. He was listening to the Dirty Mind LP. I remember asking him who's that...Prince he's kinda new.

I asked him if I could borrow the record when he left and he also gave me the Controversy record. He said JUST DON'T BE LISTENING TO THIS when Dad's home...he wouldn't want you hearing some of this.

Well at 10 I was sold right there..ha. But playing them sealed the deal, I've been a fan ever since.

I can''t remember the exact moment.


I just remember that I played Sign'O times over and over and over again.


And was happy when the DJ would play the long version of I would die 4 you.

Or maybe it was that I lost my virginity hearing Purple Rain in the background?

It's been a long time.

It's a bit of a blur.

There was this boy who was a friend of my sister Brandy. This boy was a little "it rubs the lotion upon the skin" kind of guy. Anyhow, I let my sister borrow that Purple Rain album and all I know is that album cover came back sticky!

gold31 said:

The Purple Rain movie in '84. My brother and I walked to a nearby movie theater to see it. I was 13 and he was 10 at the time. Those were the days when kids could see an R-rated movie without a legal guardian and typically wouldn't be asked about an I.D. or anything. I remember being shocked at the sexual content and all the bad language. I knew about Prince, but I was still a kid and didn't quite know what to expect from the movie. I also remember tearing up when he sung "Purple Rain" at the end.

As far as my favorite artist went, I walked in a Michael Jackson fan. I walked out a Prince fan. Prince became my number 1 artist and musician at that point, and that hasn't and will never change.

[Edited 6/7/13 21:18pm]

[Edited 6/7/13 21:22pm]

Yeah, that was pretty much how it was for me too. But, it was my parents who "introduced" me to Prince music. Of course, they didn't do it intentionally. I was about 11 or 12 and was told that I could listen to any of their records, except for Prince's. Um, ok...so I snuck and listened to it. I turned on the record player (yes, record player) and turned the volume down as low as I could, so they wouldn't know that I had it on. Anyway, I was fine until Prince said "that he sincerely wanted to f*ck the taste out of her mouth". And, of course, I did what a child would do and asked my favorite auntie what he meant.

So to sum, it up....my musical innocence was lost to Prince.

[Edited 6/17/13 3:44am]

Nivivrus said:

When I was 13 back in 2009 I remember waiting for a commercial on a Michael Jackson video to finish. That commercial was a commercial for LotusFlow3r. Confused at what I was watching, I asked my friend who that was and he replied: "That's Prince, he's like Michael Jackson but with a guitar." Sometime later in mid July, I was looking for new music to listen to and I remembered what my friend had said about Prince, so I ended up "borrowing" some Prince songs off limewire. The second I started Let's Go Crazy, I was hooked. There was something manic about the music that caught my attention, and it was SO 80's, which to me was the mark of a good song right off the bat. Some time passed and I acquired other songs like When Doves Cry, and Kiss (though I had known these songs, I never realized they were Prince songs). But up until now, I was hardly into Prince, I would listen to the few songs I had from time to time but still lacked over 5 Prince songs. Then halfway into 2010, after wanting to mix things up following my first breakup, I stumbled upon My Name Is Prince. I know that this song doesn't exactly get much love here on the Org, but this is the song that hooked me. I needed something bombastic and ego driven, and it was EXACTLY what I needed to hear when I needed to hear it. I got madly into Prince for a few weeks, and by the end of 2010 was becoming an even bigger fan. Then I saw Purple Rain, fell in love with Prince and have since collected all his studio albums, starting with Emancipation and LotusFlow3r. So I've been a Prince fan for only 4 years so far I suppose, but what a 4 years it's been

"My Name Is Prince", I know thats right, the music especially the keys/synthisiers and lyrics are the bomb arn't they! I guess you've heard the different versions; a couple I like better than the album version.

mimi02 said:

I was about 11 or 12 and was told that I could listen to any of their records, except for Prince's. Um, ok...so I snuck and listened to it. I turned on the record player (yes, record player) and turned the volume down as low as I could, so they wouldn't know that I had it on. Anyway, I was fine until Prince said "that he sincerely wanted to f*ck the taste out of her mouth". And, of course, I did what a child would do and asked my favorite auntie what he meant.

So to sum, it up....my musical innocence was lost to Prince.

LOL! I can imagine the look on her face when you asked her that.

gold31 said:

mimi02 said:

I was about 11 or 12 and was told that I could listen to any of their records, except for Prince's. Um, ok...so I snuck and listened to it. I turned on the record player (yes, record player) and turned the volume down as low as I could, so they wouldn't know that I had it on. Anyway, I was fine until Prince said "that he sincerely wanted to f*ck the taste out of her mouth". And, of course, I did what a child would do and asked my favorite auntie what he meant.

So to sum, it up....my musical innocence was lost to Prince.

LOL! I can imagine the look on her face when you asked her that.

Yeah, can still see it! But because she loves me soooo very much, she never told my parents.