It might be more than 10 years since the world lost Prince, but thanks to regular posthumous music releases and frequent remembrances from those that knew him, it can sometimes feel like he’s still around.
To illustrate these points, the latest Prince album, Timeless, was released just a couple of weeks ago – not without a little controversy, it should be said – and now R&B star Jill Scott has been telling the slightly surreal story of the time that Prince and Stevie Wonder came into her dressing room after she’d played a show at The House Of Blues on Sunset Strip on 2011.
The gig had already been a memorable one for Scott, as she’d performed a new song, And I Heard… (Do You Understand), that she’d written the day before when it came to her, fully formed, in a dream.
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“It woke me up and I sat straight up in the bed,” she tells Scott Evans. “I got some paper, and I just started writing, and it didn’t stop. I didn’t have to question. I didn’t have to go back and erase. I didn’t have to do anything. It came out as a fluid, 100% fact.”
So taken was she with the song that Scott decided to play it at her House of Blues show, teaching it to the band at the venue. It sounds like it went down a storm; the biggest thrill, though, was still to come.
“I was in the dressing room after the show and Prince comes in in a white pant suit,” Scott remembers. “It looked like it was made out of angel hair.”
“I’m talking to Prince and the people who are in the parking lot outside of the House of Blues are still singing [the new song],” Scott continues, “and then who should walk in but Stevie Wonder.
“And he’s like, ‘What’s going on?’ and Prince says ‘Jill sang a song tonight – it’s a new song.’ And Stevie Wonder was like ‘Oh, how does it go?’”
According to Scott, Prince immediately started singing the song, with Stevie providing rhythmic backing.
“Stevie Wonder is beatboxing and Prince is singing this song verbatim. What? How? How?” wondered Scott. “Prince is singing the words that came to me last night like they came to him. He is singing it word for word. Stevie Wonder’s beatboxing and Prince is singing this song. I think I just had my mouth open. Like, this is amazing.”
The night didn’t end there, though: after everyone had left, Scott got a call from Prince’s assistant saying that he wanted her to hang out with him. At first, she turned him down – she had to travel to the next show – but Prince then ended up calling her personally.
“He calls me himself and he’s like ‘I want you to come dance with me,” says Scott. “So, I go to the Roosevelt Hotel and he has rented out this disco room in there. And that man twirled me around like I was nothing. When I say smooth, I mean so smooth. I danced with Prince until four o’clock in the morning.”
Scott described the evening as “the best night of my life,” and, to be fair, it does sound like it would take some beating. She would later release tAnd I Heard… (Do You Understand) in its live incarnation – check it out below.
