New EBONY article:

By Miles Marshall Lewis

Prince asked me to keep some secrets. I may still have a few, truth be told. This past summer, a call went out to a few music journalists to visit the purple rock, Paisley Park Studios in Minneapolis. Joshua Welton, 25, had a few words to share about producing his first Prince project, Hit N Run. The operative word being “few.” After 10 minutes of talk, Prince himself entered Studio A and took over the conversation for two enlightening hours, discussing everything from Jay Z’s Tidal streaming service to the origins behind “Purple Rain” and “The Beautiful Ones,” and the reformation of The Time. Bob Seger, Esperanza Spalding, Kendrick Lamar and beyond.

Our couple of hours raced by faster than the accelerated voice of Camille. Then Prince disappeared, pulling up later in front of Paisley Park in a Cadillac sports car to play his already finished, secret follow-up to Hit N Run. On December 12, Hit N Run: Phase Two arrived on Tidal for streaming and digital download. So now you know. The following is a feverish transcription of more of our August convo from the summertime, previously unpublished. There may be more; Prince is full of secrets.

EBONY: Do you ever see yourself writing a memoir?

Prince: You ever heard of checking your list to see who’s naughty and who’s nice? I just let people talk. I was talking to somebody about “The Beautiful Ones.” They were speculating as to who I was singing about. But they were completely wrong.

If they look at it, it’s very obvious. “Do you want him or do you want me,” that was written for that scene in Purple Rain specifically. Where Morris [Day] would be sitting with [Apollonia], and there’d be this back and forth. And also, “The beautiful ones you always seem to lose,” Vanity had just quit the movie. To then speculate, “Well, he wrote that song about me”? Afterwards you go, “Who are you? Why do you think that you’re part of the script that way? And why would you go around saying stuff like that?”

So we just let people talk and say whatever they want to say. Nine times out of 10, trust me, what’s out there now, I wouldn’t give nary one of these folks the time of day. That’s why I don’t say anything back, because there’s so much that’s wrong.

Read more here:

http://www.ebony.com/ente...z3v3mQ2Juo


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Miles Marshall Lewis is the Arts & Culture Editor of EBONY.com. He’s also the Harlem-based author of Scars of the Soul Are Why Kids Wear Bandages When They Don’t Have Bruises, There’s a Riot Goin’ On and Irrésistible. Follow MML on Twitter and Instagram at @furthermucker, and visit his personal blog, Furthermucker.

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Moderator comment (lange bleu):

1. Please do not copy and paste copyrighted material the length of an original interview such as this. Instead, please provide an abridged version of the article accompanied by credit and a link to the source of the published material.

2. The original source of this thread has now been removed by the publishers from the Ebony.com website. Some orgers have included links below to search engine caches iof the published interview, which might provide access

3. Continuation of discussion of the withdrawn interview here: http://prince.org/msg/7/420939

The religion stuff aside, this is one of Prince's best interviews in AGES.

Militant said:

The religion stuff aside, this is one of Prince's best interviews in AGES.

Agree!!

It's funny he deff saw the recent BBC THE VAULT DOCUMENTARY and was taking "shots" indirectly at Susan Rodgers...

1 more thing 2 add...

He said "hopefully" about remastering his older catalouge... Which means he hasn't even started besides the speculated Purple Rain Remaster which we still haven't gotten...

I doubt we will see remasters of his older work for a while, and that whole speculation thread about hit n run phase 3 and the next remasters, I think it's becoming more clear remasters are a thing in the way distant future for Prince.

So who's playing keyboards on Revelation?

Great interview eh? But did he say on one of the songs he only did a little keyboard - that confused me, tho, I'll concede that's not hard! Wish they'd asked if there were more phases!! Or might that have been alluded to at the beginning when they said maybe there are more secrets. And sounds like Phase 2 was complete and ready to press send a while ago - so fingers crossed another Phase soon. We're spoilt really, 4 albums in year...

I like what he says about "The Beautiful Ones".People were saying it was about Susannah Melvoin,but it's obvious that it was written for a particular scene in the movie.Ditto for "When Doves Cry".The rumor is that was written about his relationship with Susan Moonsie,but I think it was written specifically for the movie.

Most interesting interview he has given. It sounds very candid, like he was speaking to a longtime friend.

paulludvig said:

So who's playing keyboards on Revelation?

think its xavier

No more Shelby J,,yay..much prefer Liv

What a good interview. Definitely he talks about Susan Rodgers and even bandmembers. Too bad for us, but I don't think there will be any remasters at all, in his lifetime. But it must be very interesting in and around PP, he is recording and doing what he does best.

I allways think of him as a kind of Johan Cruijff, the best dutch soccer player ever. They're both the best in what they did and have very strong minds of their own. And sometimes nobody can understand them but even then you know they're right.

lwr001 said:

paulludvig said:

So who's playing keyboards on Revelation?

think its xavier

Yes, we were there at Paisley Park when they played on this track repeadendly. Honestly it was a very boring process...they played this instrumental at least 6 times. It was Xavier, Marcus, John Blackwell, and Prince came out for the solo.

That Rakim story was unique and sad at the same time

Possibly the most interesting interview I've ever read.

Certainly one of the most candid. Focussing on what matters the most, the music.

Thanks for posting!

was that a shot at Questlove talking about musicians and the vault..lolz,,P was in rare form here..Good to see he and morris gonna do something just he and P which is the time

This interview shows what a sad man Prince has become. Such delusions, utterly believing his own bullshit.

i'm glad i still enjoy his music as much as i do. now if i just never read any of his interviews

anymore i'm quite sure that won't change

BartVanHemelen said:

This interview shows what a sad man Prince has become. Such delusions, utterly believing his own bullshit.

Off topic comment deleted

langebelu - moderator

BartVanHemelen said:

love2thenines2003 said:

NorthC said:

love2thenines2003 said:

....or just a matter of perspective....u can call it Relativity. ..Off topic comment deleted - langebleu - moderator!

Off topic comment deleted - langebleu - moderator

Off topic comment deleted - langebleu - moderator

He without a doubt did not like the recent BBC documentary of The Vault.

What he said about Susan Rogers was pretty brash... Has their relationship been strained for a while, I thought she left at a mutual repsect?

"There was one engineer who said that their sole purpose in life was to get the stuff out of the vault, and get it copied so it wasn’t lost to the world. I’m trying to figure out if that’s illegal. Should I fear for my safety that you might need some medical attention? You want to come up in my vault and you feel like that belongs to you and that’s your purpose? You better find something to do. That’s scary."

Comments on Rodgers and religion asside - a good interview, Prince is actually quite revealing and says some interesting things.

feeluupp said:

What he said about Susan Rogers was pretty brash... Has their relationship been strained for a while, I thought she left at a mutual repsect?

"There was one engineer who said that their sole purpose in life was to get the stuff out of the vault, and get it copied so it wasn’t lost to the world. I’m trying to figure out if that’s illegal. Should I fear for my safety that you might need some medical attention? You want to come up in my vault and you feel like that belongs to you and that’s your purpose? You better find something to do. That’s scary."

I don't think she said that. Her purpose was to get everything that was laying around and unorganized, and put it one place, effectively creating "The Vault."