Editor’s Note: In November 1999, Billboard contributor Gil Kaufman interviewed Prince for the defunct web music magazine Addicted to Noise. This is Gil’s recollection of their very brief chat and the long-lasting impact it had on his life.
“Five minutes.”
You start to think about just how cramped an amount of time that is to do anything.
“For real. You get five minutes.” I was in town from Cincinnati to do another interview that same weekend, so I took whatever I could get.
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It’ll take half that just to stutter out the questions and say hello, make the Midwestern connection, all that bullsh–. I thought. When does the clock start? After that filler, you hope. It just feels real tight. That’s what the emails said: “Five minutes.”
Usually when they tell you five minutes, it’s more like seven or nine. Still not nearly enough to get even one decent answer on a follow-up question, but you take it hoping it’ll turn into… a conversation, and he’ll wave off the publicist for an extra couple. He’s notorious for keeping things short and making you work hard for it. So probably no bonus minutes on this one. You have to try, though, right?
I was there for 1999’s (yeah, that 1999’s) forgettable, late-mid-period Prince album Rave Un2 the Joy Fantastic. Exactly. “The Greatest Romance Ever Sold” Fantastic. The one with Eve and Gwen Stefani? Yup. But, c’mon, it’s Prince. The Prince from the movie and the red corvette and my 1980s prime MTV years. The Prince you’ll almost certainly never talk to again.
I had arrived 35 minutes early, walking into the lobby of a five-star hotel in Manhattan buzzing with an Easter-colored array of guests in suits and gowns filing into a ballroom off one of the entrances. The assistant publicist met me at a bank of elevators and made me wait 45 minutes to go up. Then, she and the main publicist held me in a hallway outside the suite. A massive dude was standing at the door, sunglasses on indoors, biceps the size of Christmas hams, arms crossed. The usual.
Then the shushing nod as the door opened slowly, splayed hand up (yeah, five minutes, I get it!) and we walked in. It was loud. Really loud. A nicely high-end stereo was just crushing the walls with bass as I rounded the corner. It was “Hot Wit’ U” featuring Eve. High-sheen funk with a good robotic George Clinton groove.
No one else was in the room, so I was clearly next. But I had to wait for this dude to … stop dancing around the coffee table with Prince. Man, they were both pretty into it. “It’s really not a great dance song,” I thought more than once as the boogeying just went on, and on. Once you started it, it seemed like it would have been hard to just stop.
It was all pretty goofy. The publicist whispered the guy’s name and affiliation into my ear as I stared down at my long list of questions and notes, reminding myself to be cool. Not sure why she did that. But… man, the dancing. I just couldn’t see myself doing that. It’s a calculated choice you make. Dance and maybe you get that extra, extra couple of minutes. Don’t dance and you potentially score one to two stock answers before getting yanked or your clock freezes at exactly five minutes and there’s no chance to go into bonus time. I didn’t dance. I sort of nodded my head a bit, respectfully, but not too much.
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Like that scene in every ’80s movie where the needle scratches and the room goes dead silent, the volume dropped hard and Prince looked over at me.
“You don’t like this one?” he said, implying that my non-dancing was an offense of the highest order. He wasn’t exactly scowling, but it didn’t feel like a smile either, just a hard, “say something motherf—er” look.
Mind you, we haven’t met yet, I’m more than likely shaking imperceptibly (I hope) from the whole thing, and he’s Prince. He’s in an all-yellow jumpsuit cut to his almost hairless navel, signature Love symbol swaying from a long gold chain, matching yellow scarf pushing up a swell of hair in front. Well-crafted goatee. Matching high-heeled yellow boots.
I’m… me.
“It’s not my favorite one, no.” Didn’t think about it at all. Just said it. It was out there. He was waiting. The other guy, tall and pretty awkward, wearing an ill-fitting sweater and now sweaty and probably equally uncomfortable, looked at me blankly. If Prince had been holding that makeup pencil he used to write “Slave” on his cheek during the Warner Bros. battle, I might have grabbed it and scrawled “Dummy” on my face.
This was a guest-heavy (Sheryl Crow, Chuck D., Gwen Stefani, Eve) Arista Records attempt at putting some jumper cables on in the same way label boss Clive Davis had done earlier that year with Santana‘s monster Supernatural. It was good Prince — always solidly better than most of what was being pushed on you at any given time, in its own Prince-ly way — but not great Prince. Not Controversy.
Either way, I must have listened to the promo CD 60 times to get prepped, noting the rubber bass line and teasing, draggy beat in “The Greatest Romance,” appreciating the weird Mellencamp-meets-Minneapolis swing of “Baby Knows” with Crow. You feel like he has mountains of this stuff propping up coffee tables at home, piled behind studio doors, just oozing out of his fingers too fast to even capture.
I had to say something. My five minutes was shrinking to four and change. Small change, including the handshake and maybe some more ear-bleeding listening sessions. Sh–.
“Man O’ War.” Was that it? Yeah, that one. It hung there for a second. It was the least flashy, just a slow-grindy, yearning gospel plea for peace in the bedroom and the world. “And the title track, because it’s like weird space funk.” I actually said that. I know because I had written little notes next to the songs to remember their genre-specific vibes. That one had the laser keyboard thing and snaky “Purple Rain”-ish guitar. Legitimately funky. Lower-to-middle high-end Prince.
“Oh yeah?” He was either mad or intrigued. Hard to tell, but there was a bit of a sly smile.
“We done?” he asked the sweaty private dancer, turning the music all the way down. The guy tried to give him a magazine and then the publicist was right there showing him out. In my head, I heard the clock start. Without a digital recorder or camera (no recording devices allowed, Prince’s orders), I either had to try to keep eye contact and scribble shorthand or just maintain eye contact and commit every word to memory. (And I have a crap memory.)
We made some quick small talk introductions and I jumped in with questions about Arista, the guests, Davis, Santana, all the genre switching, something about “eclectic.” Doesn’t matter. He started talking about the divine and feeling inspired, the Creator. It’s like in Charlie Brown cartoons when adults talk and all I can hear is “wah, wah, wah, wah wah.”
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You get lost in his gaze, which never leaves your face. He’s measuring you, sizing you up and poking to see if you’re for real. He’s also just 8 inches away, so close you can almost grab that stiletto heel on his Big Bird-colored boot. You let the talk of the divine ride as the sweat accumulates under your shirt and you fear it’s all slipping away into nothing.
And then the wrap-up finger motion. Round and round, then more urgently.
The high sign is only in my sight line, but he can surely sense it and see it too. I look at my notebook, and I already can’t read any of it. And it’s over, just like that. Six and a half minutes, maybe seven and change. I pretend I have a follow-up and squeeze in the third out of nine questions I had unrealistically prepared. He bites and winds out a 90-second response. When it’s really over, I look down at my watch and I see that it’s past 11 minutes.
Prince gives me that classic look like he knows something about me that I don’t, and within a minute, I’m back at the elevator bank, then in the lobby.
I have a minute to slow my pulse and still have no idea what he said or what I’m going to tell my editor the story is about. And yet I’m strangely elated. I stood my ground, cut him off a few times when I sensed I could get more from another direction as time raced away. And most of all, I didn’t dance.
I didn’t choose to not dance because I wanted to prove something, or because the other guy did. I didn’t dance because of some foolish notion that I’d somehow gain his respect in those five minutes and get invited to one of his legendary private 3 a.m. shows later that night. I didn’t dance because that wasn’t my song. I wasn’t feeling it and couldn’t pretend to. You have to really feel it to make it real. It has to move you in a way that’s undeniable.
Prince never faked it, and for those 11 minutes anyway, neither had I. Wasn’t that the point of all of it anyway?