At dress rehearsal the day of the show, he pulled me aside and said, “Tell everybody not to go full-on during the rehearsal. The censors are watching to see if we do anything offensive.”
He nodded toward a woman who was sitting out front. Narrow eyes. Straight mouth. Uptight. Definitely had the look of a censor. We rehearsed the whole thing, modifying the moves or just standing there during the parts that might have been deemed borderline. We left out the part where the backup dancers whipped off their panties, but she did not look like she was buying it.
Before we took our places for the live broadcast, we gathered in ’s dressing room to pray, as we always did, but as everyone else headed for the stage, he caught my wrist and said, “Hold up.” Opening his ever-present black bag, he pulled out a huge wad of cash and handed it to me. “Stuff this in your bra. I want you to pull it out and count it. You’ll know when.”
“Hmm.” I took the cash and tucked it into the front of my shirt. “Do I get to keep it?”
“Nope.”
Nona Gaye introduced him, reading the inscription on the award he was about to receive. “He has proven himself the ultimate showperson. A daring composer/lyricist, an electrifying singer/performer, an outstanding arranger/musician, master of more than two dozen instruments, a visionary producer, creator of fourteen platinum albums, a motion picture star, and entertainment entrepreneur…”
Hard guitar chords opened the door for the dancers’ company. (And Carmen Electra! I almost forgot.) Everybody was all out there, panties to the breeze. After a medley of Prince hits, there was a light change. The backdrop was lettered in gothic print:
Prince 1958—1993
A woman’s voice: Welcome to the dawn. You have just accessed the gold experience.
A man’s voice: On June 7, 1993, Prince departed from this earth, his name changed legally to an unpronounceable symbol. Ladies and gentlemen, the Artist Formerly Known as Prince.
People went nuts when they saw him dancing at the top of the staircase. It took them a minute to realize that it wasn’t him. It was that ingenious moment of reveal he always crafted for a live show. He’d actually been lying flat on the floor with a black sheet over him. He’d been brought on, hiked over the shoulder of one of the dancers earlier in the medley, and because the move was repeated by several other dancers, no one noticed. He sat up abruptly, swung his leg around into a split, scissored up to his feet as if gravity ain’t no thang, slicked his hair back, and launched into “Billy Jack Bitch”—and he did all this with a nonchalant, gum-chewing savoir faire that had the whole place screaming with adoration. Epic reveal. People still talk about it.
I met him on the grand staircase for “ Hate U,” and the choreography was all lyrical romance until “Take off your clothes.” Then I stripped off my skirt, and by the time it was all said and done, I’d poured water down my shirt, beaver-shot the crowd with a little peekaboo between my knees, and did an inverted split with my legs in the air. A lot of stuff didn’t make it onto the live broadcast, but I managed to slip a few tricks past the censors while making my ballet teacher very proud and inspiring thousands of girls to go out the next day and cut their bangs into a V just like mine.
As the rest of the dancers were peeling themselves off the floor, he tipped his head close to mine and said, “Cool?”
“Mm-hmm!”
I gave him a quick nod and a smile and stepped back so he could do the acceptance speech, which included a long list of genuine thanks to everyone from Wendy and Lisa and Sheila E to Muhammad Ali, Joni Mitchell, and Martin Luther King Jr. There was probably some tension in the air as people wondered if he was going to make some statement about his dispute with Warner Bros., but his parting word was a pointed comment “to everyone sweating NPG’s financial bankroll.”
I pulled the cash out of my bra and started counting it.
“Like an Eskimo,” he said. “Chill. It’s all good. Peace and be wild.”