29/01/2025
I Wore a Raspberry Beret: Before I met Prince in 1995, I liked to think we’d had a moment. I think it was the year before, at some wrap party. So long ago. There was a rumour he was in town, but after several hours skulking around the room, waiting, with other hopefuls, I gave up and left. As I walked out onto the pavement, cursing, I suddenly saw him dart out of a side door. We both stopped: I am sure my mouth fell open.
He twinkled at me and then dived into a car.
On the day of our interview, I kept him waiting because his security wanted to frisk me and there was no woman to do it. When I walked through the door he grinned like a little boy and said ‘Yes, a black woman!’ No one can ever again tell me I am not black enough because PRINCE TOLD ME SO.
He smelled sweeter than any man I have ever been close to: patchouli. He was burning far too much incense. He moved on the balls of his feet, like a dancer. We sat on a sofa. Our knees touched. The room was a ridiculous Arabian nights parody: draped material in pinks and purples. I did not want him to think I was crazy. I wanted to be professional. I was 26 years old and I could not f**king believe I was breathing the same air in the same room as Prince.
I earnestly thanked him for the music and tried to ask my first question. He interrupted: What’s your favourite song? I said: Old Friends 4 Sale. He laughed: ‘Now where did you get that?’ This was when you could only get it on bootleg. I said, ‘C’mon now, Prince,’ and he winced. I said: ‘What do you want me to call you?’ He said: ‘My friends don’t call me anything.’ I rolled my eyes. I rolled my f**king eyes at Prince. He laughed.
He wouldn’t take his dark glasses off. As we sank into it, I complained. I told him I couldn’t see his pretty eyes, that I had been waiting on an island to see them, all my life. He shook his head, teasing me. So I looked straight at him through those glasses for the rest of the interview, so he would have the impression I was looking into his eyes. He realised what I was doing; became amused, restless. Wagged his finger at me: ‘You’re clever’. Took the glasses off. Sighed at my delight: like a strip tease. Put them on again.
He wanted to know about Jamaica. I told him we were listening to him. I told him I once dated a man because he was a Prince fan.
Prince: ‘Did you sleep with him?’
Me: ‘Yes.’
Eyebrow. ‘Because of me?’
Me: ‘No, I loved him!’
Prince: ‘That’s the right answer.’
He was so funny. We laughed so much. At one point, he laughed so hard, he fell into my lap. In. My Lap. And I couldn’t even be aroused, by this man who had aroused me for so many years, because I was so shocked.
Hours passed. There were other journalists outside, waiting and cussing, and Prince kept sending his frantic publicist away with a flick of his finger. He kept switching and changing topics: trying to confuse me, trying to control it all. Such a control freak. He was so kind.
I asked him if he’d ever f**ked Kylie Minogue. Just like that. He said: ‘Somebody wrote that s**t.’ He told me that he spent every Sunday at Rosie Gaines’ house and ate fried chicken, but nobody was writing about that and why not? I knew he was telling me that because I was a big woman sitting in front of him; I also knew he said it because he meant it.He told me that his next video [Most Beautiful Girl In The World] would deliberately include women of all colours and shapes, and that Warner never let him do that.
He cussed the music industry. He played me P***y Control and Gold from his then-unreleased album. He suddenly slapped my thigh and said: ‘I know you!’ and then told me about our wrap party moment: completely without prompting: ‘Girl, your face!’
He talked about his relationship with food; everything in that description sounded like bulimia, to me. He looked sad, shaken, thin, then. I touched the back of his hand. It was the moment of the interview: the most authentic. You learn that, as a journalist. When they forget the interview and talk like humans, then gather themselves and go off the record.
He was so political. He was so f**king black. He reminded me of every black man I have ever loved: brothers, lovers, friends. The publicist came in: I had been granted 20 minutes and it was over three hours. We were gazing at each other: nothing s*xual, I was just trying to hold him there by sheer force of will. And then I had a moment: Jesus f**king Christ, I’m talking to PRINCE. And my gaze wavered. And he wavered. And the cursed publicist beseeched. And then it was done. We were standing up; he was hugging me, this amazing, bruised, astonishing person and I believed everything, anything was possible.
But then he always made me feel that way. I could be light-skinned and black. I could be bis*xual and fine. I could be mischievous. Men could wear eye-liner and heels. Women could talk about s*x.
The first song of his I ever heard was I Wanna Be Your Lover. He gave me permission to feel the heat between my legs, man. With NO shame. I realise now that the very first time I saw Prince, I experienced him as a breathing embodiment of my own s*xuality. That was why it felt so profound and strange. Part of me always felt like a big-brown-eyed, high-heeled, shimmying, whip-thin boy. His existence validated my androgyny.
After the interview, I reeled out. ‘He liked that,’ one of his people smiled at me. ‘He said if all interviews were like that, he’d do more.’
✍🏽: Leone Ross
📖: https://mediadiversified.org/2016/05/19/i-wore-a-raspberry-beret/
