This is blog version of the telephone game: A Prince story told by Taboo to my friend Animal Chan, who posted it to his What Is SGV site almost ten years ago, and now, through the power of the never-ending internet, The Good Problem is passing it on to you.
Hello.
Anyone who knows me knows that I’m a huge fan of Prince, and after the Grammys, we got invited to Prince’s house for some afterparty type shit.
At his house they had this jam session going. Basically, everyone was jamming out. Apl grabbed the mic and started freestyling, so I decided to get the crowd involved by getting them to cheer. I started saying, “Rock that shit!” And the crowd would say, “Rock that shit!”
Then, all of a sudden, Apl signals to me to get off the mic. He tells me that Prince doesn’t want me to be on the mic anymore. I asked why, and he told me that Prince doesn’t like people cussing in his house. I felt really bad. Prince is one of my heroes. So I waited ’til the party was over and talked to him.
Prince comes out of his room and says that he wants to talk to me one on one. He sits me down and starts preaching: “You know, brother, you’re oppressed. That’s why you use that foul language. You need to start praying and become one with your spirituality. You need to change. You’re oppressed.”
I’m looking at Prince thinking, “Damn, you got songs like “Darling Nicky,” “Sex,” “Head,” and all these songs about sex. There’s mad cussing in those songs.” It’s funny. Here’s this little man telling me not to cuss in his house, and it’s crazy because I totally look up to him.
Next thing I know Prince grabs my hand and says, “Pray with me. I don’t want you to use that foul language ever again.” I’m like, “All right.” So we sit there and pray for a long-ass time.
Finally, it came time for me to leave, and this is just after praying and giving me the crazy, long-ass speech about not cussing. So I lean over and give Prince a hug and I say, “A’ight Prince, you’re the shit!”
He looked at me and laughed, then he walked away.