When he called me later that evening, I asked him, “Are you dating Carmen?”
“No, no. She has a crush on me,” he said. He was so good at this. One could easily take a very cynical view of the way he was with women, but for the most part, you gotta admit, the women weren’t complaining.
It was a one-time hang with Carmen. I didn’t see much of her after that. She was sent off on tour to promote her album, even though the reviews weren’t great. Something I eventually learned: Prince’s top girlfriend was always in Minneapolis. When you came to Minneapolis, you were the girl on her way in. When you left Minneapolis, you were the girl on her way out.
This would have been a valuable piece of information for me to keep in my own hip pocket.
My first show with Prince was at the Tokyo Dome in April 1992. I was incredibly grateful and excited to be part of it. Before the show started, I peeked out at the Jumbotron. Playing on a continuous loop were ads for Carmen Electra’s forthcoming album and Prince’s single “Sweet Baby,” then the symbol that would later become his name landed on the screen, followed by “Introducing Mayte,” with footage of me walking in Cairo.
Before every performance of New Power Generation—or any version of Prince that I was around—we all gathered in his dressing room to pray. No matter what else was happening, we came together and joined hands. He’d ask for God’s hand on us, that He would give us strength and send angels to protect us from injury, that the Holy Spirit would lift up the music, that the audience would be blessed and happy and safe from harm. It was a powerful ritual, centering, and we never took the stage without it.
The Tokyo Dome was filled almost to capacity—an audience of forty-eight thousand—and the torrent of energy that came from the crowd made me feel like a fork in a light socket. I’d spent two-thirds of my life onstage, but this was a whole new level of performance high. The show started with a stirring rendition of “Take My Hand, Precious Lord” and ended with “Peter Gunn” and visited some of his hugest hits along the way. For two hours, Prince sang, danced, shredded guitars, and played the piano, when he wasn’t dancing on top of it or leaping off it to land in splits. He knew how to read the crowd, and he gave everything, which made all of us want to give everything right along with him.
I started the show out of sight below the huge love symbol set piece that rose up in the air to reveal me standing there in my belly dancing outfit made by Madame Abla. Wardrobe made Prince a yellow and purple outfit to match it. Both were gorgeous one-of-a-kind creations, but his could be dry cleaned. Because of the hand beading on mine, it required special care. So they both got progressively more shopworn, but mine was getting seriously ripe as the tour went on.
One night as we headed for the stage, he said, “Getting sick of that outfit yet?”
“It could walk out there on its own,” I said. “I could be taking a nap.”
He laughed and nudged me, elbow to elbow. “You’re funny.”
Every night, I’d feel a rush of adrenalin as the giant symbol set piece lifted up over me and the roar of the crowd hit me like a hurricane. I danced to “Thunder,” and then I dodged offstage for a quick change to a chiffon dress with ballerina tights and pointe shoes while the roadies whipped down a piece of Marley flooring for me to dance on. I danced to “Diamonds and Pearls” and then I had forty-five minutes to change again, touch up my makeup, drink some water, and get back onstage for “Cream.”
We were in Japan for a week, and while we were there, we filmed “The Continental” music video, which has footage from the Cairo trip with Randee along with live concert footage from the Tokyo Dome, some B-roll shot on the bullet train in Japan, and a whole lot of bedroom footage I had nothing to do with. Many of his music videos came together in this sort of collage, which is why we never questioned dressing up or standing on a bridge or riding around on a carousel. I don’t think he knew himself when a lot of these images might come in handy; he just knew they would. If you watch the “Sweet Baby” video, you see me walking around Minneapolis, riding a camel across the desert in front of the Great Pyramids, and goofing around on a carousel with Prince, but it all makes sense somehow in the story of a girl going out into the world to find herself.