078 Purple Reign transcript (Prince)

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Amit: [00:00:00] Famous and gravy listeners. This is Amit Kapoor. If you've been following along, you know that Michael and I are working on the show Behind the Scenes. New episodes with the two of us will be coming out very soon. In the meantime, if you've been listening along, you've heard that Michael has lined up an all star list of guest hosts, including today's guest host filling in for me, Nichelle Carr.

Among other accolades, Nichelle is the host and producer of the Webby Award winning podcast Black Women of Amherst College. Think you'll really enjoy this episode with that. Here's the opening quiz to introduce today's dead celebrity.

Michael: This person died 2016, age 57. He won an Academy Award in 1985. I

Friend: know it's not Sidney Poitier because you've already done that.

Michael: Yeah. Not Sidney Poer.

Friend: Yeah. Oh my goodness. Betty White.

Michael: Not Betty White. Uh, not Betty White. [00:01:00] He won a Webby Lifetime Achievement Award in 2006.

Friend: What is a Webby?

Michael: It's an award for online excellence, but it's not important.

Friend: Peter Sellers.

Michael: Not Peter Sellers. His work inspired Tipper Gore, wife of then Senator Al Gore, to form the Parents Music Resource Center for the Deaf. which eventually pressured record companies into labeling albums to warn of explicit content.

Friend: Richard Pryor.

Michael: Not Richard Pryor. Oh, great guess, but not Richard Pryor. He was still a teenager when he was signed to Warner Brothers Records in a deal that included full creative control.

Friend: George Harrison.

Michael: Not George Harrison.

In 1993, he changed his stage name to an unpronounceable glyph, and for a while he was referred to as the artist formerly known as

Friend: [00:02:00] Prince.

Michael: Today's dead celebrity is Prince.

Prince: I was brought up in a black and white world, and yes, black and white, night and day, rich and poor, black and white. I listened to all kinds of music when I was young.

And, when I was younger I always said that one day I was going to play all kinds of music and not be judged. For the color of my skin, but the quality of my work.

Michael: Welcome to Famous and Gravy. I'm Michael Osborne.

Nichelle: And I'm Nichelle Carr.

Michael: And on this show, we want to know what celebrities can teach us about ourselves. So on each episode, we choose a famous figure. We go through a bunch of categories to review their life. And at the end, we answer two questions. One, would I [00:03:00] want that life?

And two, what might this person say to St. Peter at the Pearly Gates? Today, Prince died 2016, age 57. So today I am thrilled to be joined by my friend, Nichelle Carr. Nichelle and I first met a couple of years ago when we were working on the Webby award winning black women of Amherst college podcast. What is black women of Amherst college

all about?

Nichelle: Well, it was a limited series podcast. Like you say, we were very grateful to one, two Webby awards for it. It was in connection with the bicentennial of Amherst college. And it really was a celebration and an uncovering, I think of the untold stories of black women throughout the 200 year history of Amherst college.

It really focused on telling those stories that I think tend to be overlooked, especially in kind of elite liberal arts colleges like Amherst, really celebrating and uncovering and surfacing those stories.

Yeah. And of course I should say you were the driving force of that show. What did I [00:04:00] do on that show?

Michael: What was my role? Why was I there?

You, oh gosh, I, you were the producer, the director, my partner in crime. Like I, I feel like that podcast, we had a lot of help and a great crew for sure, but it would not have been period. And I wouldn't be proud of it even now, the way that I am, had we not worked together.

I felt like, you know, after we did a lot of that kind of prep work and research work and yeah, and I did all the interviews and we had some concepts down, but when it came to the episodes, it was kind of me and you just grinding, right? Yeah. And you also pulled a performance out of me. Like I, didn't know how to project my natural self into a microphone.

You know, most people, when they start to talk in a microphone, they want to sound official as opposed to just being themselves in it. And, uh, you really kind of got that out of me and like broke that habit for me.

Maybe [00:05:00] a year ago, I've said, you know, I really want to bring you on to Famous and Gravy at some point and a few weeks ago we were talking and I was like, are you ready to do this?

And you were like, yes, let's do Prince. Prince has been kind of hanging in there for a while and I'm, I'm nervous about Prince just because this is a tough figure, but he's also very compelling. So I'm excited for this one. Thank you for being the spark that lit the Famous and Gravy Prince episode. Uh, if you're ready, I think let's get to it.

Nichelle: Awesome. Can't wait.

Michael: Okay. Category one. Grading the first line of their obituary. Prince. The songwriter, singer, producer, one man studio band, and consummate showman died on Thursday at his home in Paisley Park in Chenahassen, Minnesota. He was 57. Oh. It feels a little underwhelming. 100%. 100%. I mean, it's, what's funny is it, it sort of feels like it's not supposed to because they say songwriter, singer, producer, one man studio [00:06:00] band, and consummate showman.

Great. But there's no, like.

Nichelle: It's like saying the Pacific Ocean is like a body of water.

Archival: Okay. Yeah.

Nichelle: It's blue, vast, cold. Right. But even the vast and the old, like that's, what's missing. The color's missing. One man's studio band, get out of here. He's one of the greatest musicians who ever lived. Like how can you take a man who played like 30 instruments better than most musicians who are trained to play than their whole lives.

Each individual is, instrument. He revolutionized music. No pun intended with the revolution. He is so above and beyond. Like he's revered by other musicians who we consider to be geniuses. They look at him and are like, we're not worthy. And you reduce that to a studio band. Like he's just some session player.

No, sorry. No, no. I

Michael: had the exact same Maria. I mean, virtuoso genius, genius, or, you know, pop icon. [00:07:00] This man is on a pedestal of one of the greatest guitarists of all time. There's like so much left hanging here now, to be fair, he died suddenly. They weren't expecting this. This is not one of those obits that was pre written.

So there's a little bit of grace there, but come on,

Nichelle: it doesn't do him justice. There's so much to say about him. He's absolutely, the term we use nowadays, which is goat, he is without a doubt. I know we're going to talk about it later, but he's one of the most famous people who ever lived. Yes!

Michael: And this just does not begin to capture that, right, at all.

Yeah, there aren't enough superlatives for him. Well, actually there's not even one superlative here, right? I need I need the most or the best or the greatest something rather than his linkedin resume, right? All right. I have my score. I think i'm gonna go three. I'm gonna go very low here I was gonna go four because there's an accuracy they do say I know what [00:08:00] they mean when they say one man studio band, but that's just such a weird way of describing Prince.

I do like Consummate Showman. Among his skills, I do think that as a front man on stage, like this man performed to crowds with an unbelievable amount of skill. But everything else falls way short. I'm giving it a 3 I'm very disappointed.

Nichelle: I'm giving it a two. Oh, all right. So we can swear, right? Because I'm not getting into this episode without swearing.

Okay. Yes. Transcendent is what they're missing. He was a transcendent showman. He was a transcendent musician. He was a transcendent creative. This is terrible. Okay. And the only thing I can say in their defense is, yeah, they weren't expecting it.

Michael: I love that you gave it a two, but just to say one more thing while we're dunking on this, uh, open, it doesn't capture the tragedy of it either.

Right? Like sometimes there's a word in here that [00:09:00] recognizes the devotion that fans feel towards a celebrity or an artist. And I don't see any of that in here either. And it kind of drives me crazy. All right. Three and a two. Let's go on. Category two. Five things I love about you. Here, Nichelle and I are going to come up with five reasons why we love this person, why we want to be talking about them in the first place.

Why don't you lead us off? Okay.

Nichelle: I'm going to start with his ultimate uniqueness. And you know, as I was kind of looking into him because I haven't listened to his full catalog. I have more CDs of his than I've actually listened to, to be honest. Yeah. Yeah. So my first thing is the ultimate uniqueness. So there's this concept of sickness and a lot of his interviews, he would talk about being sick and sick is a word that we used to actually say.

I feel like it was, uh, in college, we'd be like, Oh, that's sick. Oh, so sick. Yeah. It's a little, it's a little bit of a 90s slang term in a way. Yeah. Yeah. And for him, it seemed like he had been thinking about that even before then, because when he was young himself, which would have been in [00:10:00] the seventies and the eighties, he was trying to be sick.

And for him, sick meant daring to do what no other artist would do. And the story that stands out to me and my own experience for that is the song erotic city. It's one of my favorite songs, not my favorite by any means, because there's too many. But one of them, I can't remember when it came out, but I was a kid, I would still be driving in the car with my parents, right.

And the song would come on. And it would play on the radio uncensored. the song says, fuck, I don't know how the whole chorus is. Fuck. So pretty you and me. Right. And it would just play like no big thing. And I, I was old enough to know that you can't say that word on the radio. So I would be like, well, they, he must be saying funk,

Archival: you know?

Nichelle: And I think everybody just assumed that he was saying funk and the way that he pulled that Okie doke on everybody and had that song playing on the radio. through the 80s and the 90s. And this is after Darling Nicking came out. This is after Tipper Gore and the [00:11:00] parental advisory. This song was playing with the F word on the radio, like nobody's business.

Unbelievable. So that I was just like, only Prince, only Prince can do this. And it's not a thing like only in like, I want to say like the 2000s, did they stop playing it when they realized that And then the other thing about that song, I was hanging out with a friend of mine in college and we were, you know, listening to whatever music she had playing.

And I heard George Clinton singing Erotic City and I was like, Oh my God, that was a Prince was covering Parliament Funkadelic cause George Clinton's from P Funk. I was like, I had no idea Erotic City was a cover. I mean, Prince. it. He made that song his own. I would never know it was a cover on me and my friend were like, Oh my God, he's so amazing that he took this P funk song and made it so much his own.

No wrong. Prince wrote that song. George Clinton was covering him. Okay. The idea that George Clinton, the genius behind parliament funkadelic is covering Prince. That's sick.

Michael: I love that you [00:12:00] resurrected the word sick. I need to start using it again more regularly. So If one of the things we want to do with Famous and Gravy is say, well, you know, how do we see ourselves reflected in celebrities?

What do they have to teach us about themselves? I was really trying to like get myself to a place of relatability and more than that, desirability. And as I was thinking through that way, I came up with this one rise to the occasion. There's several stories that speak to this. First off, 1984, number one movie, number one pop album, number one song.

He owns that moment with Purple Rain and everything going on. The 2004 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, where he's playing with Tom Petty, and they're playing the Beatles song, While My Guitar Gently Weeps. And Prince has this three minute solo that is unbelievable.[00:13:00]

Then, of course, the Super Bowl. Probably the single greatest halftime Super Bowl performance of all time. If aliens came down to Earth and said, You need to nominate one person to perform to impress us, and we were like, God, who can rise to the occasion? Prince, like I trust him to rise to the occasion no matter what and that is desirable.

Like we all have these moments in our life where we got to show up and we want to bring the best versions of ourselves and we want to capture the crowd. He did that. I think maybe better than anybody ever has. That's number two,

Nichelle: uh, rise to the occasion, right? So thinking about the desirability characteristic of my number one, the thing that jumped out as you were saying that is fearlessness.

Like that's what fitness is about. And he was always fearless. This is a bold artist. Cause the reason why I think of fearlessness is because as a creative, you expose yourself so much, the writing, the singing. And one of [00:14:00] the things that really showed. Some stakes in that is when he was quite young and he was opening for the Rolling Stones and he was in his outfit of the day, which was a trench coat and speedos.

Yeah. And you know, the Rolling Stone fans who, let's remember Rolling Stone is the band of like Altamont, you know what I'm saying? So the Rolling Stone fans are losing their shit, throwing things at him. And he is finally kind of booed off stage. But thank God for the world. He doesn't stop. He keeps going.

And eventually, I mean, not that, not that this had anything to do with the Stones because they actually saw his talent, but you know, the famous critique where upon Prince's emergence. So I think it was, it was around the time when like, I want to be your lover came out. So still early, we hadn't even seen Prince full flower yet.

And this critic is like, somebody needs to tell Mick Jagger to pack up his penis and go home. It's done. Prince has arrived. You know what I

Michael: mean? Yeah, that's a really good quote. I'm going to start saying that to people. Like you need to back up your penis. [00:15:00] All right. What do you got next? What's your number three?

Nichelle: Can we talk about the Super Bowl performance at some point though? Because that is really easy. Yeah, go ahead and react to

Michael: it.

Nichelle: Yeah. And it was the same year that I saw him live. So I saw Prince live

Michael: twice. Did you really when you saw him the year of the Super Bowl? So he was like apex predator. Yes.

Nichelle: Yeah, it was amazing.

It was me. And I saw him before that, too. I saw him in 2000. And then I saw him in 2007. So the Super Bowl performance is so amazing. I just love the story of this, like the producer and the director of the show because it's live. Obviously, we're talking about how there was a forecast for rain that day.

And they were freaking out. And they called Prince and were like, it's going to rain. We, we don't know what to do. You know, he plays electric guitar. Right. And they'd seen the stage and his stage was the shape of the love symbol. And it's super slick. And they were just like, Prince, it's going to rain. He was like, not worried, not worried, all good.

And they were like, okay. Then they were thinking maybe it wasn't going to rain on the day. And then it just started pouring during the thing. And he keeps playing. He's got an [00:16:00] electric guitar plugged in. His dancers are in these like crazy five inch heels on this Super slick stage, not adapting or adjusting anything, just go into town like nothing.

And the director is dying. Like these people could break their neck at any point and die. Like I'm going to lose Prince on live television. He's going to be electrocuted on live television, you guys. And Prince is like, this is perfect. It's raining. Purple rain.

Michael: That speaks to my point. I mean, you know, to rise to the occasion in anything is to block out the elements is to block out whatever other distractions, because you could say, well, it's just not going to be as good. Cause the [00:17:00] forecast didn't work. And that goes against the idea of willing yourself to have a peak moment.

It's At the moment, you know, that it's picking your shot anyway. All right. So what do you got? You got the

Nichelle: next one. Okay. I'm going to go with this one. Cause I just love this so much, his charisma and attractiveness. And what I love is just a specific story about this. Like as much as he was androgynous, there was no question about his sexuality.

Archival: Early on in your career, the androgynous thing, was that an act or were you searching for a sexual identity? I don't suppose I was searching, really. I think I was just being who I was, being the true Gemini that I am. And there's um, there's many sides in that as well. There was a little acting going on too.

Just a tad.

Nichelle: You know, he has said, cause he likes to kind of tease journalists, and he wants to [00:18:00] be an enigma, and I totally get it. He's like, I will tell you any kind of crazy thing, and tease is the word he used. Journalists would probably call it lying. But he wanted to make sure that if you couldn't ever nail down who he was in his personal life and as a person, then you have to focus on the music.

So I actually think that was smart. He did that just to really hide the ball and be like, could you just focus on the music? Like, it doesn't matter how I grew up. None of that shit matters. Focus on my music. But as much as he was androgynous, His sexuality was never really in question, and just from my kind of outside observing view, I feel like he was straight as an arrow, and played with sexuality because it was fun, and he's fluid, and he's comfortable with all things, but he loved women, and women loved him.

So Prince was five foot two, let's be very clear. The man is a very short man. Yeah. A short king, I believe is the term these days. The original, right? He was challenging this to your face, like openly challenging gender norms and was winning people over because he was [00:19:00] just so great.

Michael: You're right. All right.

I'll give my number four. I'm going with the vault. There's a couple of places I want to go with this. So somewhere around 1986, Prince Bill's Paisley Park, this studio complex mansion that is now a museum outside of Minneapolis where he grew up. And he remained loyal and local, you know, his whole life, more or less.

Somewhere in the early eighties, he starts Collecting unreleased tracks and gets put in the vault and the vault takes on its own kind of mythology to this day We're still discovering some of the unreleased music that exists in there that Songs may be not finished or not ready or that he stored or whatever It's got its own kind of like lore and mythology The reason I have this on my list is because of what I think it represents In some ways, Prince is almost a, like, child actor.

He becomes famous at such a young age. He's his own producer, and at age 18, he inks a very [00:20:00] lucrative deal. Has all this power. I mean, he's still a kid at this point, right? And his rocket ship of stardom is just, you know, extraordinary throughout his life. But certainly those early years. I think that The Vault, in some ways, Is symbolic of his need to protect some inspirational core inside.

Like you don't get everything of me. I've got to protect some of this because the fame I'm, I'm, I'm experiencing and the effect I have on people is so much that it's not for everybody and whatever is in the vaults. I hope we get to hear it. His executors of his estate are still kind of going through it, but I love what it means to him as a creative.

I love the idea that anybody who is a creative should want to get their best stuff out there, but not get all of their stuff out there and that they're protecting some core part of their identity. [00:21:00] Sounds corny to put it this way, but the vault that's in him. You know that there's some part of me that is untouchable regardless of what I'm experiencing in this very dizzying world.

And I think that's essential for somebody like him who in some ways must have felt an unbelievable amount of pressure and self competitiveness. Yeah. I

Nichelle: was going to say, yeah, if there is any pressure, it would be with himself. So I'm glad you said self competitiveness because I think that's where he was.

And it's interesting what you say about the fault, because at the same time, Part of his biggest disputes with his record company is that they weren't releasing his material as quickly as he wanted. But I think both things are true. I think he did have pieces in there that he felt like weren't ready. He was still working on along with pieces that were completely done, but we're just there.

And then along with the stuff where he's like, get this out, get this out. This album's ready to go. This album's ready to go. That just shows how prolific. I mean, he said he hadn't kept count and it was like in the thousands, I think. And yeah, and his estate is still going through it and is still releasing stuff.

Michael: The more I learned about it and the more I thought about what it meant, [00:22:00] the more importance it took on in my mind in terms of understanding him. He is not an easy person to understand. He's such a presence and a magnetic performer, but in interviews he's so Subdued and he only ever gives so much. I never found one interview where I was on the edge of my seat Like what's he gonna say next?

At least that was my experience.

Nichelle: No, I felt like the interviews He seemed very comfortable with himself in a way that when people write about him or talk about him Don't really seem to acknowledge or capture they you know, they talk about oh, he's lonely and people came in and out of his life and they That is all true.

I do think that he is hard to understand. I do think and thinking about the vault concept you're talking about, he did keep things private. That was part of all the misdirection about his life that he would give to journalists, which is good and healthy. I'm sure

Archival: in

Nichelle: the interviews, he seemed much more comfortable with himself and much more mature, but he didn't start giving interviews very regularly until he was older.

I think you and

Michael: I actually agree on this. I found [00:23:00] him to be very self assured. Yeah. But I also felt that he was deliberative in what he does and does not reveal about who he is.

Archival: If you ask any artist, the music is a success upon creation. When you give it to somebody like a Rolling Stone or a Vibe and they start critiquing it, then your perception changes.

But that's looking through somebody else's eyes. So, again, we, um, we gauge success based upon What we feel in our hearts, you know, we've shut our minds off now Mine should be used for what they were made for filing cabinets. We think with our hearts.

Michael: All right, so let's round it out What's your number five?

Nichelle: My fifth one is his spirituality and even piousness. Interesting. I was wondering if you were gonna go there. Okay, say more. Just because it's so rare in kind of modern musicians And it's funny He reminds me of Stevie Wonder in that way. Those are the two musicians I can think of who make secular music, [00:24:00] hugely popular music, but are overtly religious in it.

If you listen to Stevie's work, especially from the seventies, like he has some songs. Some of my favorite songs are like fire and brimstone songs, you know? And Prince, I mean, he had a song called God, like every, every creative will tell you that they're spiritual, but it's different to be Kind of pious, not necessarily organized religion, even though Prince was active in various organized religions during his life.

Michael: Did you see the Jehovah's Witness story? Yeah. Where he becomes a Jehovah's Witness in 2001 or 2002. And there's a story about him actually knocking on somebody's door.

Nichelle: I think he's mentioned it. Actually in one of the interviews, he did mention Jehovah's Witness. He

Michael: does, but he also seems to sort of like expand and grow.

I mean, it sounds like he's Christian his whole life, but I think it takes on a whole and expansiveness and he does talk about a relationship with God, uh, you know, throughout his career. So I think that what the, you know, actual formal affiliations are, you know, weave a little bit, but there, there [00:25:00] is a through line in his whole story about a spiritual connection.

Archival: I mean, I was made to go to church when I was young and the most thing I got out of that was the experience of the choir, but, uh, as far as a message. was concerned. A lot of it was based in fear. You know, what will happen to you if you do something bad. And I don't think God is, you know, to be feared that way.

You understand what I'm saying? I totally understand what you're saying. I think He's a loving God. And I think He, um, I think He'll reward you for that, not punish you for your mistakes. God doesn't lift his child, he gives them time out. Amen.

Nichelle: And so you love that about him. I do. I like that, you know, of the two that I can think of who really have that overtly, him and Stevie Wonder, who are both what we casually call musical geniuses, right?

Like Stevie Wonder's a musical genius, Prince is a musical genius. And I gotta tell you, I don't know where that phrase came from, but the first time I heard it was in [00:26:00] Eddie Murphy's Delirious. They're the only two who we say that about. And they also happen to be the most overtly spiritual and pious musicians of this generation.

Michael: I tend to think that's not coincidental in a couple ways. One, I think it's not coincidental in that I do think this man was born with a gift. Prince was born with a natural talent. It's hard to put it any other way, God given. But I also think it is essential for just maintaining, I don't know, a sense of self to figure out some way to have a relationship with a god of your understanding in order to stay somewhat humble.

Because when you're that, I don't know, impressive, creative, prolific, powerful. Staying on the ground, I think, is hard. So I love that. I love that,

Nichelle: Nichelle. Yeah, and interesting thing, they were both prodigies, too, that might actually have some kind of correlation with this relationship with God, because they would have, they would have had that in them.

[00:27:00] How

Michael: else do you make sense of

Nichelle: yourself? Yeah, and what you're able to do when

Michael: you're

Nichelle: so young.

Michael: Especially with music, which, I mean, I don't know, I don't want to go off too much about it. It's just, it's, It's such a human skill, you know, it's, it's one of the things that differentiates our species, that we are able to produce and experience and have a neurological reaction to music, you know?

Okay. Uh, let's recap. So number one, you said sickness, uh, and also fearlessness. Number two, I said rises to the occasion.

Nichelle: Number three, I just said magnetism and really just I think I would call it sexuality because he was androgynous while also being magnetic and just challenged all of that in ways that are unique.

Michael: I'm very comfortable with magnetic sexuality. Number four, I said the vaults and number five, you said piousness and spirituality. Wow, what a list. Okay, let's take a break.

Amit: Are you looking at my books? I am. I'm actually looking at your [00:28:00] bookshelf. I wanna see if there is anything that I can give as a gift to somebody.

Michael: Uh, with my permission, I assume.

Amit: Well, no, I was just gonna take it off your shelf. Wait,

Michael: wait, wait, don't take it from me. I put time into this bookshelf. I actually want these books there.

However, if you're looking to get some of these books, know a great store you can go to. Half Price Books. They're likely to have this entire catalog in their bookstore. And if not in their bookstore there, they can order it for you.

Amit: But the thing is, I trust you. There's nowhere else that I can find a trusted bookseller to give me an equal recommendation.

Michael: Sir, I disagree. You can find a trusted bookseller at Half Price Books. Ask a Half Price Books bookseller if you don't know what to read next, or if you're looking for a gift idea. Really? Oh my goodness, yes. The Half Price Books booksellers are knowledge keepers. They're there to help you navigate their tremendous catalog.

Excuse me, I've got to go now. Oh, good. Because Half Price Books is the [00:29:00] nation's largest new and used bookseller, with 120 stores in 19 states. And Half Price Books is online at hpb. com.

Let's move on. Next category. Malkovich, Malkovich. This category is named after the movie Being John Malkovich, in which people can take a little portal into John Malkovich's mind, and they can have a front row seat to John Malkovich. His experiences, what do you got from Malkovich, Nichelle?

Nichelle: I didn't realize how big of a deal it was when it happened.

Cause I honestly didn't even notice the omission. There was recently a documentary about it that has made it back a topic of conversation. But then I realized actually it was a big deal even when it happened and he still kind of had to revisit it. It's not like, Oh, just because this documentary came out, we're all now thinking about it or whatever it is.

We are the world. Yes. The fact that he did not go. I would love to be inside his head, [00:30:00] but it's not even really a mystery because I think we kind of understand why he didn't go. I don't feel like he has anything really to answer for and not

Michael: well, so we should just lay this out. We are, the world is a very, very mediocre song that has every, hold on.

You love the mute song. We are the world. You need to stop. I'm sorry. I'm calling it a mediocre song. It's

Friend: beautiful. It's important. It's important. It's

Nichelle: important to me. You know what? I have not listened to it in a long time, but when it came out, I challenge you to listen to it all the way through.

Michael: I

Nichelle: loved

Michael: that

Nichelle: song when it

Michael: came out because I loved it.

I think it has more nostalgic value than actual quality in your mind. It's It's the classic. Is it great? Or were you eight? I was exactly eight. Yeah, exactly. I was exactly eight. I will say that. I mean, Michael Jackson was the driving force. And I mean, it's everybody. Dolly Parton, Cindy Lauper, Bob Dylan and Paul Simon.

I mean, it's everybody. It's amazing. [00:31:00] And it was for a cause. And Prince was

Nichelle: famously not there. Right. And to get to the story here, yeah, Prince was not there. And look, I think it comes out of the healthy professional rivalry that he and Michael Jackson had, which I absolutely respect. I love them both. I love that they both recognize their greatness to such an extent that they were like, Watch yourself, sir.

And so the idea that Prince would come to something that Michael, along with Quincy Jones, was lording over and was the driving force behind, he was there directing and arranging the thing. Like, he was in charge in the room. Yes. And Prince doesn't put himself subject to anybody in any hierarchy ever.

From his debut album when he was a teenager, he insisted on producing it himself and said to the big bag record company, I'm doing this or it's not happening at all. So yeah, there's no way he's going to walk in and take direction from those people. He's going to do his own thing.

Michael: It is a good Malkovich moment.

Cause you have to wonder, cause I think that he's very self assured. He's very confident. He's [00:32:00] at the top of the world at the same time, if he were to see who else was showing up, Lionel Richie, Quincy Jones, get the whole fricking list. And he's like, Like, that's actually, that's a power move, and I'm impressed, but I do wonder if there's not a moment of self doubt in there.

Like, maybe I should go. No, fuck that, I'm not going.

Nichelle: You know? I think that he would, the self doubt would have been, look, it's for a good cause. Like, I'm sure he considered going, because he would have cared about the cause. And wanted to do for that cause and contribute to it But then he also just kind of like he knows that he's not going to be best in a situation that he can't control especially when it comes to music and he's like So I make other contributions where I am best able to do so and he's a massive philanthropist Like did you know that he saved the joffrey ballet in chicago for me?

I did see

Michael: that and it

Nichelle: was behind the scenes It was uncredited. Yeah, and that's among many other things both political and non political

Michael: that he's done to contribute to communities

Nichelle: You

Michael: This is my Malkovich, Nichelle. Mm hmm. I want to know what was going through his mind [00:33:00] the first time he saw the Charlie Murphy true Hollywood story with, where Dave Chappelle impersonated him.

Archival: This bores me. Is anyone up for a game of basketball?

Nichelle: Laughter Sounds so great. So, um, one, I remember when I first saw it and I was like, Bullshit. Stop it. Bullshit. And it's so great how Charlie's like, challenge him.

Archival: I dare you to challenge Prince to a game of ball one on one. Challenge him! All right? And make sure your people is there to see the game, because you might get embarrassed.

Trust me.

Nichelle: When he said that, we hadn't learned yet how great of an athlete Prince was, you know what I mean? So no clue, but he was so good at basketball. At 5'2 right? Yeah, he was like all state or whatever. And the only reason he didn't continue to play more like [00:34:00] in high school and college is because he had a coach who was just like, No, I don't believe somebody 5'2 can play, so no.

But yeah, he is like an ace basketball player. You know, the coda to that story, right? On one of his recent albums, Artificial Age, I believe, there's a single called Breakfast Can Wait. And the cover for that single is a shot of Dave Chappelle as Prince with the pancakes.

Archival: All right, he beat you in basketball, and then what happened?

After it was all over, he took us in the house and served us pancakes.

Michael: My hunch is when Prince saw the cover, Dave Chappelle, Charlie Murphy skit. He thought it was funny, but I wonder. Yeah,

Nichelle: that, okay. I feel like Prince would have recognized himself from top to bottom in that sketch. It sounds true. It's exactly the mystique that Prince was creating at that time. Right.

Remember this was at the peak of Purple Rain. It's like 1984, 85. Totally. Which is

Michael: also like Eddie, it's hard to overstate how popular Eddie Murphy, this is Beverly Hills Cop trading [00:35:00] places. Yes. I mean, these are like the two most powerful men in Hollywood, right?

Nichelle: Exactly.

Michael: Yeah. All right. Category four, love and marriage.

How many marriages also, how many kids, is there anything public about these relationships? So there are two marriages. Maité Garcia in 1996, Prince was 37. She was 22. They had a child who died at one week old from a rare disease. Uh, they tried again. There was a miscarriage. They ended up divorcing in 2000.

Prince was 41 when they divorced. He remarries Manuela Testleoni, married in 2001. Prince was 42. They divorced 2007. Prince was 48. So there's a lot of other relationships behind the scenes, including with Madonna and Kim Basinger, but those were the actual marriages. All right. That's the data. What did you want to start on this?

Nichelle: I kind of wanted to go back a little bit because it's family life and I wanted to talk a little bit about his parents. Oh, okay. Great. Just because. You know, especially when it comes to, say, Purple Rain, right? People assume Purple Rain to be [00:36:00] autobiographical, semi autobiographical, but what does semi autobiographical mean?

You know what I mean? And here, it's much, much, much, much, much looser than one might even think. Like, both of his parents were Black, first off.

Michael: Yes.

Nichelle: And I

Michael: think everybody came away from Purple Rain thinking he was biracial because In the movie, his mother's wife. Exactly.

Nichelle: Both of his parents were black. And I think I want to point this out because I want to maybe correct the record here.

You know, he did suffer some level of either emotional, maybe sometimes physical abuse at the hand of his father. There was very much a difficult relationship there that was often on throughout his life as he became an adult. I mean, he moved out of the house and he was like 14 or 16, something like that.

Yeah. Yeah. And I wanted to point out the abuse because When you're abused, you know, and look, I'm not an expert on this, but my understanding is that as part of the coping mechanism, you may identify with abusers or the abuse, or you find other people to blame. And it seems that he told a lot of stories in his life, blaming his mother, [00:37:00] and he may have.

felt something where, you know, he wished his mother had been able to protect him more and protect him better when she was being beaten herself. But, you know, as a child, you're still looking to your mother to protect you. So he would tell these stories about his mother being like a nymphomaniac and just crazy drugs, alcohol, nymphomania, all these insane stories when she was in actuality, the The most upstanding social worker in schools had a master's degree in social work and was well respected and just a generally lovely woman, right?

And she loved him so much that when she was confronted with various stories, she'd be like, did my son say that? Okay. She would never deny what he said. She would always support him. And one of his best friends says, Oh yeah, Prince always blamed the wrong people in his life. You know what I mean? And maybe that comes out of the pain and the abuse and what have you.

But I just, I want us to know that his mother was a lovely, [00:38:00] upstanding black woman who did the best she could by him.

Michael: I'd expect nothing less than for you to stand up for black women in this show. You know, it's interesting. I mean, I, cause I do think you hear him talk about his dad with some conflict that he was a hard man, but he also seems very grateful.

The one that his father taught and encouraged music, but also I think instill the work ethic and a discipline. But I think the other thing it's, it's back to what I was saying when we were talking in five things. It is not so different from a child actor in some ways. In a way, it doesn't feel like all that much life happens to him and for him before he's catapulted into this world of pop stardom.

So there's like this tendency to want to dig into his biography, especially his adolescence and early years, to see like, How can we make any of this make sense given what he becomes as a creative force? And I think it's just really hard to know where to go with that. I think you've identified some of the right elements.

I do [00:39:00] think there is a loving mother. I think there's also a hard father and I think more than anything, there's just God given talent

Nichelle: to your point about the child actor life I think that's a great analogy because it is similar because remember his name his birth name is Prince Rogers Nelson is not a changed name.

That is his dad's stage name. So talk about foisting onto your child whatever you want for yourself. And then the dad tried to claim it. Like the dad for years said that he wrote purple rain and this, that and the other. And so, yeah, it very much does feel like a child actor kind of life, even though that wasn't actually what they were doing with him when he was that young, you know?

Yeah.

Michael: And then I think, You know, on the marriage front, this was sort of hard in a way to, to learn that he lost a child, obviously very, very painful. I think that there's also, I don't know, this came up a little bit in our episode on Carrie Fisher of all people of, if you are, [00:40:00] Experiencing a certain thing from a very young age, it's hard to know who your equal is, who your partner is.

Yeah, and he even talked about being celibate late in life, and saying like, I channel that energy into a different direction now, which is Sort of amazing for somebody who's like so associated with magnetic sexuality. To your point, number three, you know, it looks to me that there's not a lot of information here that there's some interest in having a family life and that it just didn't happen for tragic reasons, it was hard for me to make Much sense of the facts here.

Nichelle: Yeah, that really that just stays with me because I remember when he was excited about that baby. Like I remember the news because he would talk about it. Yeah, it was

Michael: on Oprah. And, and there's like a weird timing thing with Oprah where I think the child had died and they hadn't announced it on. It was like, it all happened around the same like week.

It was really, I dug into that a little bit.

Nichelle: Yeah. The child lived to be like, 10 or 11, I believe, 11 days old. Right. But what I remember from that [00:41:00] time is that when his wife Maite was still pregnant, you know, they do the ultrasounds and he had a recording of the baby's heartbeat and had put it into a song.

He was so excited.

Archival: Take a microphone and place it on.

Nichelle: I can't even imagine where that song would go afterwards. And I remember hearing, reading about scenes of him and like, you know, the hospital chapel praying and stuff like that during that time. And it just. was so heartbreaking. And the funny thing is, so for me, I'm not one of those people who cares a lot about the personal life of famous people, especially people who I feel like have contributed a lot and have given me so much joy because I still absolutely go nuts and lose my shit.

Whenever I listened to his music, like, of course I was listening to a lot of his music as we were thinking about this episode. And I still absolutely [00:42:00] get all the reaction, like heartbeat racing, like super excited. Can't stop. cursing. I'm like this motherfucker, right? Like I still react to how amazing it is.

And so for someone who gives me so much and has given the world so much, I want to know that they're happy in the way that they've given so much joy and the idea that he went through that kind of pain. Breaks my heart.

Michael: A hundred percent. I also think, like, you can put a chronology together here that does begin to give you some information.

You know, his parents split up at a young age. He kind of is with his father, then with his mother very early on, finds himself in a studio, signs a record deal. Next thing you know, he's Mr. Sex Symbol, then through the 90s, that which is around the time that he changes his name to an unpronounceable glyph, marries, loses a child, marries again, and that is around the time he comes out as Jehovah's Witness, and then starts to rack up these sort of reclaiming throne successes with the reclaiming throne.

Rock and roll hall of [00:43:00] fame and the Superbowl and even being remembered by Chappelle and so forth. Like I do see a kind of return to the vault in some sense. So return to his own creative center following some really difficult years. I mean, who the hell knows how that felt and what that was, but like if you just put these things in order, music was his connection with the higher power and how he got back to who he was.

So, all right, let's move on. Next category. Network. I have not looked this up yet. Have you looked it up? Yeah. Okay.

Nichelle: I'm happy to

Michael: give a guess. Okay. Yeah. Give me your guess. What's your guess?

Nichelle: I say it's at least a hundred million.

Michael: Okay. I went 50 million. I thought I was like definitely thinking higher, but I think that there were rumors at one point he'd lost it.

Wouldn't, and I think it's all concert money. So I'll be very curious to see. Prince's net worth was 163. 2 million. You blow me out of the water. Yeah. Well done. Okay. I mean I actually initially thought it has to be North of a hundred million, but then when I thought of record [00:44:00] sales after the mid nineties, okay, I was way the hell off.

I was way the hell off. So

Nichelle: let me, the reason why I'm like nap, nap, nap is you have to remember, and this is, I was looking forward to discussing this. His record sales didn't meet the level of his earlier work. But remember, because he owned his masters, owned his whole operation, he retained so much more so he could sell less records and make more money.

So he was comfortable his whole life once he started. You know, someone was talking about certain musicians today, very, very, very, very, very famous ones who are about championing owning their own masters and have fought real fights about that. And expert was commentating on it was like, that's the first person to do it since Prince.

Like they kept saying, it's not since Prince that you've seen someone advocating for musicians, owning their work and having more control over their careers and their futures. That's Since Prince.

Michael: I mean, he changed his name to a symbol, a glyph, right? As part of the protest. What a [00:45:00] power move. I mean, it is a

Nichelle: power move.

And I think that what we also forget is that remember Prince was not a stage name. That was his given name. I'm not going to use that anymore because this is how I feel about it.

Archival: But about the highest risk one would think someone who gets famous would take is to drop the name that got them famous. That was one of the things that I dealt with is that, uh, I really searched deep within to find out the answer to whether fame was most important to me or my career.

Spiritual well being and I chose the latter.

Michael: All right, I'm glad to be very, very wrong. I was off by over 100 million and I suspected I might be, but all right, so, uh, let's move on. Category six. Simpsons Saturday Night Live are halls of fame. This category is a measure of how famous a person is. We include both.

guest appearances on SNL or The Simpsons, as well as impersonations. So there's many impersonations of Prince on The Simpsons. It's not all that interesting. He was on SNL in [00:46:00] 1981 and is credited with dropping one of the few F bombs on live TV. Came back for their 25th anniversary too. He's in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

He's got an Oscar. He has a Golden Globe Award, an Oscar.

Nichelle: And Grammys, umpteen Grammys. This man was next level famous. Right, like I said, one of the

Michael: most famous people who's ever lived. It's funny because he's, I wouldn't quite call him an icon, well I don't know, this gets a little semantic. An icon? I think he's the definition of an icon.

Nichelle: You think so? Part of the reason why I feel so comfortable saying, so what do you mean? So why do you say that? Yeah, why I, what's your point? Yeah. Why I feel so comfortable saying he's one of the most famous people who ever lived is not just that, because you could say, well, he's just a musician. He was really big.

He had his moment. Everybody did. It's not like he is say the Pope or Mother Theresa or whatever, but in terms of recognizability, and he did have like. Massive worldwide fame.

Michael: Is this the difference between celebrity and icon though is impact on history? Because if that's the case then I think you could [00:47:00] also make an icon argument there.

Nichelle: Absolutely. Yeah I think that's that's why I feel comfortable saying he's one of the most famous people who ever lived because I think we will remember him the way that we remember Mozart. And he, I know he doesn't even really like the comparison to Mozart cause it happens all the time, but sorry dude, you're a genius and there's nothing you can do about it.

You know what I mean? So yeah, I do think that he really would stand up and holds up as one of the most famous people who's ever lived.

Michael: Among other things ahead of his time. Okay, let's move on to the next category. Over under in this category, we look at the life expectancy for the year somebody was born to see if they beat the house odds and to look for signs of graceful aging.

So the life expectancy of a man born in the United States in 1958 was 66. 6 years. Prince died at age 57. So about nine or 10 years under.

Nichelle: Wow. Is that the life expectancy of a black man? Cause you know, we have lower life expectancy. I

Michael: tried to get that data and I, like, I have not found the single definitive source.

I'll [00:48:00] just,

Nichelle: I can say this, that is closer than I, I would have thought if you asked me, I would have thought way under just cause I feel like he died young. And in terms of graceful aging, I love that because he planned to age gracefully. Like he's. Talked about how he's like, Oh, I'm going to keep doing this till I can't do it anymore until I can't jump off a piano.

So I can't, you know, he was planning on aging.

Michael: Like he was. And at 57, he looked like he was 32. I mean, the man was very attractive all throughout his adult life. I think the nature of his death is still a little. a bit of a head scratcher because he was kind of a teetotaler when it came to drugs and substances, but he had this hip problem that he developed in the 2010s and then had some sort of secret prescription where it really was all about the pain, but it didn't seem like it was addiction in the way we understand addiction in terms of like, man, get a drink in that guy and he's off to the races or anything like that.

He wasn't the kind of the old fashioned traditional musician turned junkie. It was a [00:49:00] surprise to everybody when they found out that fentanyl was implicated,

Nichelle: right? And it is It's like you say it was about the pain and he was starting to have numbness in his arms and things like that And so I mean if you're dancing in four to five inch heels every day all the time And jumping off of pianos and possibly playing basketball in heels don't know, you know You're gonna the wear and tear Anyway,

Archival: so they come out right?

And I look at them and, um, they still got on the same s t they be

Michael: wearing at the I think that's the point I was trying to make, actually, is that I understand addiction to be largely an emotional and, to some extent, spiritual condition, even though there is a physical component. It seemed like To the extent that he suffered from the disease of addiction, it began with the physical toll.

And it's not obvious that there was this [00:50:00] emotional component, although that can obviously come in later. Even though the cause of death was overdose, if that's all you knew, you would come away with a wrong interpretation of his emotional and psychological life. You

Nichelle: know what I mean? Yeah. No. And I, I agree a thousand percent.

It doesn't feel like addiction per se and the way that we think about it at all.

Michael: Right. Right. Exactly. Okay. Let's take another  . All right. Next category, man in the mirror. What did this person think about their own reflection? We basically already answered this. I assume we're on the same page here that he absolutely loved his reflection.

Nichelle: Yes. But I do think it evolved over time. Part of striving for sickness as he defined it, right. When he's young is about making a mark, getting noticed, proving what you can do, showing what you can do, pushing the envelope, which carries like a tinge of insecurity that there's something you need to show something you need to [00:51:00] prove.

And you could see that he kind of settled into not needing to do that. And that might be part of why people like to say and think that his music fell off because he was more comfortable and he wasn't pushing for things like Darling Nikki or when Doves Cry when he got older. But he felt like very strongly that his music got better and better.

So like I said, I saw him twice and when I saw him in 2000, he was in a moment where he really was not interested in playing his old hits at all. And so we saw him then and it was cool. But yeah, the audience was kind of disappointed. I think this might have been when he first became a Jehovah's Witness or was thinking about it because he also didn't swear.

So he was in that space. And then when I saw him in 2007, which was just a few months after the Super Bowl performance, it was basically a very similar show. The stage was shaped like the love symbol at that show. He relished in playing those old songs. Over and over again, he repeated. He'd be like, I got too many hits, y'all.

I got too many hits. And we would be like, yes, you do, Prince. Yes, you do. You know, so he was back into, like you say, reclaiming the [00:52:00] throne and loving it. So it evolves.

Michael: So I think we're agreed. He loved his reflection. And, but I want to zoom in a little bit on the face. So, uh, Like he has one of the most expressive faces of all time is his side.

Eye is top shelf It's so good

Nichelle: He can be doe eyed With those eyes like he could he could he could be a coquette and an ingenue with those eyes And then also give you side eye that will cut you down and murder you on the spot But I was gonna say on the topic of self assuredness, because we talked about it when he was younger, and that makes me think of the very famous first performance on American Bandstand with Dick Clark.

Yes. It really didn't have to be a thing, but Dick Clark was so moved by it, right? And so with Prince, I don't feel like I have a good read about how Prince felt about that. So just to lay it out, The first performance of prince does on American bandstand. I think it's around, I think it's, he's performing.

I want to be your lover. It's it's

Michael: it's like 78, 79. And we did Dick Clark and this actually [00:53:00] came up as Malkovich moment. Anyway, go ahead. Yeah.

Nichelle: This is why it's a thing because Dick never stopped talking about it. I'm a big Dick Clark fan. Oh, interesting. I didn't know that. Love him. Love him for a lot. So I grew up with him and also just love what he did for music and what he tried to do for black people at a time when other people weren't doing it.

It's not perfect. He's not perfect, but I'm a fan.

Michael: Episode 40 of Famous and Gravy. Anyway, continue. Yeah.

Nichelle: Yes, exactly. Please re listen. So in that, so what happens is he does his first performance. And Dick does the thing he does in American Dancer where he comes and talks to the artists afterwards and does a quick interview with them on the stage.

And Prince never says a word. Dick asks him all these questions and Prince responds the way that literally a four year old or three year old or two year old child was. He puts up fingers and he shakes his head and uses hand gestures, but he will not open his mouth. And the way that he keeps his mouth closed and the way that he responds does look like a child.

It looks like when you ask a child how old they are and they give you four years. fingers and, you know, you ask them questions and they, they won't use their words cause they just don't feel comfortable [00:54:00] with it or whatever, but they won't use their words instead they shake their head and they nod and it was that kind of endearing thing.

And that's what Dick noticed. And Dick says in the interview, he's like, Oh, well you're very shy.

Archival: And it's so sweet. You're very shy, modest. How many, how many instruments do you play?

Thousands. Moments will be with you. Thousands? No. Literally. Do you play all the instruments? Um, a lot. If that is the case, then, oh, I, no, if you're out traveling, then you've got to have backup people. Are these people the ones that travel with you? What are your plans for travel? Uh, we have a tour coming up, uh, in a few weeks.

Nichelle: But do you think Prince is shy? I think back then, this is why I'm talking about it, his self assuredness evolving over time. This was one of his first TV appearances, but like I said, I don't have a clear read on how Prince felt about it because some people have said, Oh, [00:55:00] Prince took that as a major fail and made sure that that was never going to happen again.

And he was going to be self assured. And it was a major life lesson for him. And Other places are kind of like, no, that was him again with the, you know, not revealing too much and wanting the focus to be the music. So I don't have a clear read on how he felt about it, but the way it marks Dick, because of all the artists that Dick, you know, would have interviewed over the decades, that this is the one that he liked to talk about.

This is the one that he showed clips of because he was just so something sticks

Michael: in his mind about that. Yeah.

Nichelle: Yeah. And just, so here's the thing. I feel like. Black people, generally speaking, this is a broad, broad generalization, but the stereotypes around us are so strong and so overpowering that we don't get the benefit of the doubt of those kind of vulnerable human emotions a lot.

Like we're seen as predators and threats, right? Especially a black man, right? seen as predators and threats, and women are seen [00:56:00] as threats in very different ways. And so, like, this is why it's so easy to shoot a Black person, because you don't identify with them like you. You don't see their humanity in the same way that you see your own humanity.

So the idea of this Black man who just, like, cavorted all over the stage, half naked, in the most self assured way ever, that Dick could look at him and instantly be like, you're very shy. You know, is just a benefit of the doubt that we don't often get, you know, I don't think we have a clear read on how Prince felt about it, but we know that it made an impression.

You know what I mean? And certainly there was clearly a progression for Prince over time because again, by the end of his life, he was giving these wonderful, very fluid interviews. You know and showing us a bit of his sense of humor and showing us a little bit more of himself as opposed to Literally not opening his mouth.

I

Michael: mean there is something that happens after the 90s where his status is a little just more clearly Established, you know, and and it really is something that happens ironically enough [00:57:00] after 1999 All right. Let's move on Control z. This is where we look for the big do overs the things in life. You might have done differently You I had two here.

Signing the contract with Warner Brothers, I think is pretty obvious, and I actually did have the Dick Clark interview, only I have questions there. I don't know, but we already kind of talked about it. I just don't see this as somebody who second guessed himself much at all. I do think if he could go back in time, he would not have Let the record companies have that power over him in the 90s.

So I don't have much more.

Nichelle: I don't know anything else I agree. He doesn't second guess himself. He has said he doesn't look back a whole lot. He prefers to look forward I do think that when you think about the idea that people moved in and out of his life I wonder if He might not feel like there are some relationships there that he could have taken better care of in his heart of hearts, you know,

Michael: this to me gets back to the child actor thing though, right?

As soon as he becomes so famous, like how do you know how to trust people when you [00:58:00] have that kind of impact on audiences? And I think

Nichelle: that could be part of it. But also, when it's people who knew you from way back when, like, I think about Andre Simone, who was his best friend, who then got relegated to just being his bass player.

And Andre was like, uh, no, you literally slept in our extra bedroom. Like I gave you a home, dude. Don't get brand new on me. Like not even. And then later on, so that whole thing happened kind of in the middle and Andre goes off and has his own wonderful music career, then interviews, you hear Prince referring, and these are interviews later in life, right?

So it would have been after the strife happened, because the strife happened early on as Prince was getting really, really famous and decided that everybody around him was his employee all of a sudden. Right. And then later on, he refers to Andre as his best friend. friend in interviews. And I'm like, huh, how, how does Andre feel about that?

Michael: Yeah. What'd he say? The same thing. It's a question. When you have that kind of talent and not to go back to the first line of the obituary, they say one man show what they meant. I think was he could play all the instruments better than [00:59:00] everybody else, including the band. And he had to show them how to do it so that they would fall in line.

And so I, I think you're on to something there in terms of when you're as talented as he is, how do you know when to step back and how do you know when to cede the space to others, you know? Yeah. And

Nichelle: I think, I think it might be the classic, you know, what everyone says that if your older self could speak to your younger self, what would they say?

And most everybody says they would say, relax, it's going to be okay. It's going to be okay. And I think the way that he was, over controlling back then when he was young is because he was still trying to prove things and it needed to be perfect and it needed to be right because this is his career. So he might have been super controlling and frankly off putting back then in a way that he had grown into not being as he matured and could work Relax and be more calm, which again, like that's a classic human thing that as you mature, you learn to let go of things and you just become a more mellow person.

And that's really kind of all of us. And even with the people moving in and out of our lives, [01:00:00] like that's true for regular normies like us mere mortals.

Michael: That's where, as, as you were talking, that's what I was thinking about is because the thing is, I obviously don't relate to this level of talent. But I do relate to needing to relax.

I think it's just the greater the talent, the harder the impetus to do exactly that and to see the stage, you know. All right. Next category, coffee, cocktail or cannabis. This is where we ask, which one would we most want to do with our dead celebrity? This may be a question of what drug sounds like the most fun to partake with this person.

Or another philosophy is that a particular kind of drug might allow access to a part of them. We're most curious about.

Nichelle: So this one is a tough one because what I would want in an interaction with him is to have a real human to human friend conversation. Like part of me kind of thought about cannabis because I know when I, the few times in my life of course.

Once or twice.

Archival: Yeah, sure. Yes.

Nichelle: When I partook of cannabis, I would have these long conversations with friends and we would be like solving the [01:01:00] world's problems, you know, like cannabis makes you smarter in your own mind, right?

Michael: There's a creativity that can be

Nichelle: unlocked. Right, yeah, like we would be solving the world's problems, got super creative, and had a great time, would be laughing our asses off, like truly.

But then I'm like, but I don't even know if I want to be in a mind altered space with him ever again. at all. So maybe it's just coffee because I don't think he needs that to have a great, creative, amazing, deep conversation. That's why this one was hard for me because I don't know if any of them are necessary.

Coffee might be boring. You know what I mean? So it feels a little pedestrian and I don't even drink coffee. But what I would want is to have that deep friend conversation where you just sit around and kind of like chop it up. Yeah. For without any time limit on it without any what would you ask

Michael: about what would you want to talk about?

Would it be about self reflection? Would it be about music? Would it be about his fluidity? I don't know I mean, what what's sort of most

Nichelle: interesting to you? I think the music it would be a lot about music [01:02:00] I think and then about How he sees the world because he doesn't talk a whole lot about politics He tried to be kind of apolitical but then the few things that he said You Sounded somewhat political and then

Michael: pretty involved with black lives matter as that was rampant up It sounded like

Nichelle: it's really interesting in some of the ways before the black lives matter era So when he was maybe just a little bit younger so like talking but not towards the end of his life and not towards black Lives matter, but when he would talk about race What it reminded me of is how i've noticed A lot of musicians or let's say famous people who are black talk about race and famous people who got famous at a relatively young age.

And it just felt to me like their ideas about race were rather rudimentary. You know what I mean? And I really attribute that to because I've seen it in other kind of folks who got famous when they're relatively young and basically skipped college. What it pointed out to me is college is the time where you get to, learn about those ideas where [01:03:00] you get to stress test them, discuss them, you get to hear what thinkers are thinking about them, what the philosophy is around those, you know

Michael: what the canon is, you know what the literature is with the history, right?

You

Nichelle: know what the literature is. You're not reinventing the wheel, trying to figure it out. figure out and discover it yourself because people like James Baldwin are articulating W. E. B. Du Bois are articulating it in a way and you're like, yes, yes, you know, and so then when you have that, the ideas can kind of settle and they become part of the bedrock and the foundation.

So what you say doesn't have to express those basic terms, doesn't get stuck on those. Like, cause when I talk to my friends, there's a shorthand and we're moving much, much further beyond those notions and those structures because It's already settled in our minds, and it's part of a language that we share, and a shorthand that we share, so we can move forward, rather than having to say, oh my god, it wouldn't happen, this is Black people, like, you know what I mean?

Like, the most obvious, overt concepts, we don't even [01:04:00] need to discuss those anymore, and I feel like I hear them coming from prints and people like that, because I think they just didn't have the opportunity to sit. with it in the same way.

Michael: That makes a lot of sense to me, Nichelle, and therefore a conversation about music, which is his expertise and where he does have vocabulary and sense of history and so forth, would be richer, right?

Would there be more for you to learn?

Nichelle: Yeah. And I, but I don't want to say that I wouldn't want to talk like I wouldn't say shut up. You don't know what you're talking about. It's not that I wouldn't want to talk to him about it, but I'm curious to hear. what he thinks we should be doing in the world, how he approaches it.

Cause he definitely comes from a standpoint of love. I would think that maybe I would hear something completely out of the box and totally different that I hadn't thought of. Another reason why I wish that him and folks like him would have the bedrock of all the known ideas and the known philosophies, so they can take us to that transcendent place even further.

Cause they've already, you know, you know, the rules so you can break them. I would want him to be able to take us even further. So I kind of want him to have that bedrock already in him.

Michael: Yeah. It's a lot to ask of a, of an artist, but I, [01:05:00] I hear where you're coming from. And

Nichelle: that's also why this would be like some private conversation.

Like, I'm not asking him to become an activist or a leader. This is just me being like, so what do you think? Like, you know, and just, just getting another point of view on stuff. I didn't know how to answer this one either.

Michael: Uh, I thought about coffee as well, because I would want to be sort of present, vibrant and lucid.

There is a part of me that does want to go cannabis. Only because, you know, I don't play a lot of music, but I can keep a rhythm and I would love to play music with prints to just observe, right? And to just try and connect on that wavelength because I not Sure, I could learn anything through a conversation that would clarify anything for me.

You know, we keep kind of coming back to this idea of God given talent, and that, that would be the thing I'd want to observe slash participate in. I think that would be fun, first of all. Just a simple three chord structure song, and just watch him solo, watch him bend the [01:06:00] strings, watch him work his fingers up and down the neck of the guitar or whatever.

I think something gets communicated in music that doesn't get communicated any other way, through any other sense. I feel like I might be able to learn something about myself. If I could just sit down at gym with Prince for like three minutes, it doesn't need to be that long. Yeah.

Nichelle: Wow. Interesting. I, you know, to that point, I love that.

And I think I would probably like to watch him just write a song, like see him when he sits down to think about writing a song and what that looks like. How it comes to

Michael: him, like what the moment of inspiration is where it's like, I've got something here. Just see that come to fruition.

Nichelle: Can I just say that?

Massive credit and cojones to you saying the words, I would like to play music with Prince. This whole show is a

Michael: thought experiment. Let's be clear.

Nichelle: Right, right. And I'm not even saying for myself, cause now that you say that, I'm like, yeah, actually I would love to take some voice lessons from, you know what I mean?

Or I would love to take a guitar lesson from, or a drum lesson. I think

Michael: he'd be a great teacher. He even [01:07:00] talks about like moving into kind of a teacher role. Like, it's like, if I didn't do this, I don't know what else I'd do, but probably teach,

Nichelle: right? Yeah, but I just want to say, because there are many musicians who would never utter those words and would run from the room before they would sit down and attempt to play music with Prince.

So, kudos.

Michael: I'm here to get schooled. That's fine. I'm here to learn my lesson. All right, our final category. The Vanderbeek, named after James Vanderbeek, who famously said in Varsity Blues, I don't want your life. Nichelle, based on everything we've talked about, do you want this life? I don't think so. I don't think I do.

Wow. Okay. Wow. After this has been felt like such a Prince love fest, I was sort of surprised to hear you go there.

Nichelle: Yeah. Let me unpack how I'm thinking about wanting the life and what that means. Right. And why I think I, I'm not a hundred percent sure there's a spectrum here, so I could maybe be talked out of it.

I don't know. But I think for me, I think. Prince's behind the [01:08:00] scenes life. And again, my interest in people personally is that I want them to be happy when they've given so much joy to the world. Like that's true that I don't, I don't have any judgment or any kind of view on their personal life other than that.

I hope they are happy in it. Right. But I feel like with Prince, I'm not sure in the behind the scenes life. how happy he was most moments of the day. I think with that whole, you know, that practicing music stat, even if it's only close to true or ballpark, it means a lot of time. And I'm sure he did when he was young, a lot of time spent by himself, practicing his fingers to the bone.

I am, I'm a classic extroversion are two different things. But I, I don't. No, that that's what I would like. And the idea that most people around him felt. or were treated like employees is tough. I like being around peers. I, I, I [01:09:00] don't need that kind of hierarchy. He even said that he preferred to be alone often because he recognized that he makes everyone else feel small is what he said at one point.

And that is true. He was so larger than life, which is amazing. And I'm sure it's super exhilarating to be on stage and to be entertaining folks. But I think we've learned. A lot. And we hear more and more about how celebrities can be quite lonely because like you were saying earlier, who do you trust?

It's hard to have peers when you're peerless. Right. And so I don't know if it makes for a happy everyday life.

Michael: No, I think you've said it well. I mean, the expression relational wealth is really coming to mind for me. I don't see a lot of evidence of relational wealth. I think it is. possible to be shy and introverted and to replenish yourself and restore your soul in moments of reflection and solitude, and I'm all for it.

But I also believe that we are [01:10:00] fundamentally a social species and that even if you are a solitude seeking introvert, you can still have relational wealth in your life. And, and you just don't see a lot of evidence for it. I think that there's relationships with siblings that may or may not have been important or people you grew up with, but it's a little bit of the child actor problem.

Like if your life and your career takes off at that young age, when in adolescence, when you're just like 18, It's still kind of a kid, you know, and you're still like sorting shit out and learning about how to be in relationships Whether they're friendships, whether they're partnerships, whether it's platonic, whether whatever the hell it is I mean, I think there was sort of like so much opportunity for him to experiment with his skills and his talent and so little opportunity to experiment with Relationships with other people, even if you are creating relational wealth for others, which is what you're doing if you're a performer like him.

And that's what audiences get. They feel a sense [01:11:00] of connection with each other to him, but not necessarily in proximity to him. There's still this kind of like he is on stage. Has that division? Yeah, but I'm glad to have been reminded of that relational wealth quality because I do think I want to believe that next level god given talent can still Exist and can still be cultivated in a life that has that quality as well I just think it's hard.

I think that the burden becomes really hard. I think I don't want this life either

Nichelle: Yeah, it's, it's tough because it's, it's an amazing life.

Michael: Yeah. It's important, but that's a different question.

Nichelle: Yeah.

Michael: It's different from

Nichelle: how it feels on

Michael: the inside. Yeah. Or how we

Nichelle: imagine it

Michael: to feel on the inside.

Nichelle: And it goes back to this whole idea of him giving so much and contributing so much and him creating relational wealth for other people, but not being able to take part in it.

Cause he's just on that, like literally on stage and figuratively on another [01:12:00] plane, on another level, just. Distant from that, you know, even it's so funny cause I think he did maybe try to kind of get at that when he would say, I don't like to call fans fans cause it's short for fanatic. I like to call them friends.

Yeah. Yeah.

Michael: And that, you know, that's funny. I didn't know that. But when you say that There's something sad about that. Only in that there is that need inside and you can hear a kind of need and for friendship there.

Nichelle: Well, yeah, but that's the thing. So for me, it's less sad because even though it may have come from a need, right?

Because their friends seem to be the spotty, you know, like relationships. on and off kind of throughout his life. But for me, when he says he calls him friends, it's not necessarily that he's saying that he is in need of friends, but that he wants to have a peer to peer relationship as much as he can. He wants to have a human to human relationship and not be on a pedestal.

And so it's not that he's lacking friends, but he feels like they should be around him. Part of that category, [01:13:00] as opposed to putting him on a pedestal and having that sort of distance. Like, I think in my mind, it felt like he just didn't think that was necessary or useful.

Michael: Yeah. Before we do the pitch, thank you for making time for this wonderful as always to see you.

Thanks again for bringing me into the black women of Amherst podcast, and I'm looking forward to the next thing you and I get to work on. This episode and beyond.

Nichelle: So. Absolutely. So great. Thank you for asking me. This is super fun. I totally would love to do more because this is fun. Just having a chat, like a conversation about an interesting topic.

I love this.

Michael: We didn't even talk about purple enough. We didn't talk nearly enough about purple. I was,

Nichelle: one of my five favorite things was his taste. Purple's my favorite color. It's his favorite color. It's a regal royal color. He

Michael: has his own purple. According to, uh, yeah, I had to look at, I didn't know what pants until I was like, he has his own color.

Uh, amazing. All right.

Nichelle Carr, [01:14:00] you are Prince. You have passed away and ascended to the pearly gates. Standing before you is St. Peter. The Unitarian proxy for the afterlife. You have an opportunity to make your pitch. What was your great contribution to the stream of life?

Nichelle: All right. I think if I were a prince, I would just say, dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to get through this thing called life, electric word life.

It means forever. And that's a mighty long time, but I'm here to tell you there's something else. The Afterworld, a world of never ending happiness. You can always see the sun day or night.

Michael: Thanks again to Nichelle Carr for making time for this episode. If you are interested in the web, a award-winning Black Women of Amherst podcast, we will link to it in the show notes. Nichelle and I are very proud of that work. Famous and Gravy listeners, we want to hear from you. We need people to participate in our opening quiz where we reveal the dead celebrity.

You can [01:15:00] email us at hello at famousandgravy. com. If you're enjoying our show, please tell your friends. You can find us on TwitterX, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Threads. Our handle is at Famous and Gravy. We have a newsletter you can sign up for on our website, famousandgravy. com. Famous and Gravy was created by Amit Kapoor and me, Michael Osborne.

This episode was produced by Megan Palmer. Original theme music by Kevin Strang. Thank you so much for listening. We'll see you next

time.