At the risk of being a little narcissistic, it helps me to be able to tell someone who gets where I'm coming from.

When I was in the fourth grade, a kid in my class was looking at an album cover. I asked him what it was and it turned out to be the 1999 LP. For a couple of fourth grade boys, it was a trippy experience examining and deciphering all of the unique images it contained. I was interested, but oddly enough never asked about getting together to hear it played.

A couple years later, I was setting up a tent to sleep out in my backyard when my friend from across the street came by. He just said, "I have a song you have to hear." and played When Doves Cry. He didn't tell me who it was or the name of the song, he just said I needed to hear it. We ended up staying up almost the whole night rewinding and listening to that song over and over. We didn't have any liner notes to read since he had recorded it on his boom box from the radio.

Having grown up hearing my parents classic rock, this was something pretty different. I didn't know exactly what I was hearing, but I knew I liked it. And I never knew just how impactful this new to me artist would be in my life.

Thanks for sharing

PPResident said:

At the risk of being a little narcissistic, it helps me to be able to tell someone who gets where I'm coming from.

When I was in the fourth grade, a kid in my class was looking at an album cover. I asked him what it was and it turned out to be the 1999 LP. For a couple of fourth grade boys, it was a trippy experience examining and deciphering all of the unique images it contained. I was interested, but oddly enough never asked about getting together to hear it played.

A couple years later, I was setting up a tent to sleep out in my backyard when my friend from across the street came by. He just said, "I have a song you have to hear." and played When Doves Cry. He didn't tell me who it was or the name of the song, he just said I needed to hear it. We ended up staying up almost the whole night rewinding and listening to that song over and over. We didn't have any liner notes to read since he had recorded it on his boom box from the radio.

Having grown up hearing my parents classic rock, this was something pretty different. I didn't know exactly what I was hearing, but I knew I liked it. And I never knew just how impactful this new to me artist would be in my life.

Cool story bro. Thanks for sharing. I was at a friend's house and we were in his living room playing video games on his TI-99 Computer in 1981 and 'Cool' by The Time (aka Prince) was on the radio. I was into bands like KISS and Rush so it was also very different for me too, but stuck with me. It is still one of my favorite songs and always will be.

Very cool story!

I love stories like this. When those of us who got into Prince's music at very young ages, when we supposedly "didn't even know what real music was yet" damn sure KNEW what it was, the first time we ever heard Prince and against all odds, grew into adults watching the rest of the world, often slowly at times but surely none-the-less come to realize that too. Whether they wanted to or not. That was the true power and artistry of who Prince was and what he created.

Thank you guys for sharing as well. It's always interesting the hear the details of how people first became aware of Prince and the music. Another funny story was around my senior year of high school. I just got really busy with school, work and college prep that I wasn't in the record stores as much and sort of lost track of new releases. Someone had mentioned that Lovesexy had hit stores and I ran right up to the mall to pick it up from Record Town. They had the big poster of the cover above the shelving holding the cassettes and CD's. As soon as I saw it, I stopped in my tracks. I had not heard anything about the cover art. Was I really going to take this naked Prince to the cash register? I did and was glad I did. I went with the cassette. CD's were still out of my budget and I couldn't wrap my head around not being able to skip tracks. One more thing, I can't figure out how to break text down into smaller paragraphs. Spaces aren't working. Can anyone help?

I love them too, my story and my flirtations with Rapsberry Beret and Alphabet street and then the Video for Cream just sealing the deal for me, are all over the org. But I like your WDC experience, even now I just can never get sick of that song, like I do with Purple Rain and 1999.