Most Beautiful Lies

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1826 days

Forever In My Life

Prince by Andy Earl for Q Magazine, July 1994

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Old Friends 4 Sale

One of the most ironic sentences we can give you from Neal Karlen’s new book This Thing Called Life: Prince’s Odyssey On and Off The Record is when he writes “If Prince reappeared again, I was sure, he would die a second time the moment he saw what was being done in his name, memory, and supposed honor” (Karlen, Prelude). Neal took this jab at other associates in the book’s prelude yet went on to dishonor the man he says he loved too. These folks are starting to sound like a broken record now. Quite a few people claim to have loved Prince Rogers Nelson but won’t miss an opportunity to breakdance on his grave for pay. Or to get out whatever grievance they have over some perceived slight from decades ago. Or both.

Neal Karlen is a journalist who became friendly with Prince in 1985 when he interviewed him for his Rolling Stone cover story. Neal and Prince maintained a relationship for 31 years that consisted of late-night phone calls about life, love, music, sports, and all the things friends talk about. Neal says he last spoke with Prince three and a half weeks before he died. The odd timing of the conversation left Neal feeling shaken and Prince didn’t sound like himself either.  Neal was so worried that he reached out to C.J. (yes, the probable Billy Jack Bitch inspiration) to interview him for Minneapolis’ Star Tribune just days before Prince’s plane made the emergency landing in Moline, IL. This was a supposed plot to anger Prince enough to get him to call Neal again. Really Neal? Despite 31 years of contact with Prince there was no other way to initiate a conversation with the man besides providing an interview to C.J. and saying you’re waiting for Prince to die and other ridiculous tidbits? We’ll take backtracking and flip flopping for a $500 because Neal knows these quotes are a bad look.

In 2019 Neal was asked by a friend of a friend if we really needed another Prince book? He admits that he had no answer until he was reminded of the thank-you note Prince had written to him after that first Rolling Stone interview. The note said “Thanx 4 telling the truth!” and Neal believes this gave him the reason he needed to write the book. To tell the truth about Prince. Whether or not this is Prince’s truth is up to you. Just like it’s up to you to decide if the things written in This Thing Called Life needed to be told at all even if they are true. Either way, we wish Neal had just come out and admitted that he’s here for a check and attention just like the other associates he has disdain for because they’re behaving badly. We’ve learned that lots of people who knew Prince seem to have their version of the truth about Prince and somehow their truth becomes more true than anything Prince ever said about himself.

One of the most alarming things that Neal recounts is Prince’s alleged discussions of suicide that began in 1985 when the Purple Rain tour abruptly ended. Neal says that Prince admitted to hurting himself on several occasions throughout the tour and feeling like no one would notice. In a nutshell, Neal Karlen doesn’t believe that Prince’s accidental overdose was quite so accidental. He sees Prince’s untimely death as a passive suicide because Prince never recovered from the loss of two children and blamed himself for not having the life he planned to aside from the music.

Passive suicidal ideation — thinking about, but not planning, one’s own death.

Wow. That’s a hell of a psychological assessment from a man whose lane is journalism. Then again Neal is inclined to think that Prince might have been cognitively impaired and had savant syndrome while condescendingly referring to him as “ignorant”, an “extraordinary nitwit” at times, and an autodidact who had read books that looked interesting, but was still full of “ignorance and misinformation”. Are we talking about Prince or Rain Man here? We’re not sure if Neal even liked Prince very much aside from his musical genius because he takes perverse pleasure in taking Prince’s persona down a notch whenever he can. In Chapter 15 Neal describes a 1998 visit from Prince that is beyond disturbing. Neal says he had broken a leg and Prince called to check on his recovery. During the conversation the topic switched to the unlimited Percocet Neal had received for pain management after his surgery. Neal found it strange that Prince offered to come by, and what was supposed to be a well-meaning gesture ended with Prince allegedly downing a third of Neal’s Percocet like candy while looking like “Uptown’s skankiest panhandler” (Karlen, Chapter 15). “Uptown’s...skankiest...panhandler.” Let that sink in. The audacity of THIS guy to call John Bream an ass clown.

Another questionable portion of the book has Neal discussing the tragic birth and brief life of Amiir Nelson. Neal says that Prince “faux-consulted” Mayte after Prince had already made his decision to turn off Amiir’s ventilator. He recounts a conversation with Prince six month’s after Amiir’s death and grossly describes a man who had just made a decision that most of us hope to never be faced with as speaking in a tone that “was flat and carried with it all the ain’t-that-a-shame emotion of someone killing time by recalling, shot by shot, a very, very bad movie that he’d wanted to walk out of but couldn’t” (Karlen, Chapter 13). It’s funny that Neal gives a nod to Mayte Garcia’s 2017 book, The Most Beautiful, which directly contradicts whatever Neal is working hard to imply here. In Chapter 9 of The Most Beautiful, Mayte says she was the one to suggest that they let Amiir go while Prince tried to persuade her to let the doctors perform additional procedures. She knew their baby was suffering and eventually Prince AND Mayte agreed together to take Amir off the ventilator. Now we’ve given Mayte a hard time around here over some things since 2016, but why would anyone take Neal Karlen’s version of events over Mayte’s?

It isn’t lost on us that Neal Karlen takes a direct hit at Prince’s portrayal of his parents and childhood in his own autobiography, The Beautiful Ones. Although Neal calls the book “artfully-written”, it’s easy to see that he had issues, big issues, with Prince being less than truthful about his life. It’s a running theme throughout This Thing Called Life. If Prince had made peace with Mattie and John and forgiven them for any sins and/or chose not to rip that bandage off again, did Neal really need to go there? It’s obvious that Prince had troubles at home that caused him to land at Andre Cymone’s house, but why is Neal so offended that Prince wasn’t always truthful with people? Prince didn’t owe Neal, any other associate, or fans 100% of himself. Neal says he can’t let Prince escape history, but it seems more like he’s looking to put as many dents in Prince’s armor as possible. Neal saw Prince as a man who didn’t learn true empathy and how to stop using people until he was roughly 40 years-old, yet Neal gives fans a book that lacks empathy for the situations Prince probably wanted to bury and he is certainly using Prince for his own needs. Neal calls Prince’s father, John L. Nelson a “slimy, reptilian motherfucker”? Well slimy, reptilian pot meet slimy, reptilian kettle. Neal believes that Prince wanted him to write This Thing Called Life because Prince allowed him 31 years of conversation? We’re doubtful about that because like most fans, we believe that Prince wanted to tell his own story in The Beautiful Ones. We’re also doubtful that Prince agreed to be recorded outside of the 1985 Rolling Stone interview where Prince seems to be aware that the tape recorder is present.

It should come as no surprise that those taped recordings of Prince that Neal included in the audio version of the book don’t back up any of the outrageous claims he’s making. There’s nothing scathing in the recordings at all to be honest. You want to know what’s included in the audio version? Brief recordings of interviews and stories that most Prince fans already know. There’s no recording of the allegedly vile comments Prince made about his own mother. There’s no recording of Prince unleashing vitriol about his father. There’s no recording to prove Prince’s decades long suicide talk. Nothing. Nada. If Neal is holding back recordings to prove the worst details in the book what would be the reason at this point when he’s already shown us exactly who he is?

Old, old friends for sale Get 'em while the gettin' is hot But you better watch out, they'll kiss you Until they get what you got And they'll show you the friends that they're not Old friends for sale 

        Prince, Old Friends 4 Sale

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Prince at the Pala Trussardi by DPA Picture Alliance, June 7, 1987

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1461 Days

Still Would Stand All Time

Prince from the Gema Archives/IconicPix, 1990

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Please Cancel Our Subscription to Your Issues

You can always tell when April 21st is approaching because Prince fandom is suddenly filled with bird chirps and squawks from the ones Prince left behind. Some associates have officially hit a new low and this time it’s all over cake.

Yesterday Billboard posted a new Sheila E. song called Lemon Cake. Sheila says that a particular chocolate and lemon cake that she baked was Prince’s favorite and all hell broke loose after Apollonia aka The Replacement was strangely triggered. Over...lemon...cake. Sheila is singing about lemon cake, but we don’t think it’s the kind you’ll find at your local bakery.

https://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/pop/9359539/sheila-e-lemon-cake-prince

So far, we’ve heard from Brenda Bennett in Apples’ comments and she says her ex-husband LeRoy Bennett is Prince’s original lemon cake baker. In case you didn’t know, LeRoy was Prince’s production and lighting designer for 14 years. Brenda also threw in a tidbit about how Sheila doesn’t have her own identity. Interesting. We’ll never understand how Prince associates who have thin resumes outside of Prince things can accuse each other of lacking identity.

Brenda even got a co-sign from Susannah, but Susannah returned to make it clear that she only agreed about the lemon cake part and not Sheila’s alleged lack of identity. Glad you cleared that up Susie. Especially since your twin Wendy and the rest of the Revolution are still riding Prince’s coattails into the sunset. Anyway, here’s her original one word comment just because we’re petty.

To add to the comedy, LeRoy himself showed up in the comments to brag about his lemon cake and swear that Sheila is taking aim at him with the cake credit because he pushed to get the Revolution added to Prince’s upcoming Grammy tribute. Despite LeRoy’s huge and impressive resume full of productions for musical giants, he’s on Facebook seething... over...lemon...cake.

Apollonia however is the one who has come completely undone and here’s her Facebook post that caused the cake madness above. It’s unbelievable that a 60 year-old woman who has consistently embarrassed herself online would keep going with these shenanigans. Read the WTF rant below.

 Apples was careful not to mention Sheila by name, but since she attached this rambling to the Billboard post linked above it wasn’t hard to guess. Now we don’t have any idea about charity funds, music schools and “legal letters” that Prince sent to Sheila, but let’s keep it real, Apollonia probably doesn’t know either. The good sis has been milking the information she allegedly has about Prince and shady folks in his camp for at least 2 years now and has yet to produce a single receipt. Telling Sheila that she is desperate to be relevant is like a beggar calling a moocher a freeloader. Apollonia has been desperately clinging to the Purple Rain era since Prince died and has constantly inserted herself into his story.

Apollonia also decided to take the low road by possibly outing Sheila’s sexuality. Not cool. Not cool at all. It’s just as gross to claim that Prince called Sheila a “HeShe”. Whatever that is. Prince has been linked to some complicated statements about homosexuality in the past and Apollonia’s claim is not a good look. Could Prince have used such a phrase? Possibly, but there is also a chance that he didn’t. It’s clear that Apollonia is harboring some ill will against Sheila, but she’s gone too far. It’s also quite sad to see so many people condoning the behavior in her Facebook comments with zero consideration that she might not be telling the truth. We’ve scratched our heads about a few of Sheila’s actions since 2016 too, but why exactly is Apollonia so believable versus the next associate?

You can also see that Apollonia does another teaser about the memoir that no one really needs. So let us get this straight. Apples is slamming Sheila for the symbol t-shirts and Prince cruise, yet she likely has plans to SELL her memoir? None of the information she swears she has about Prince’s death or how he was surrounded by “Thieves In The Temple” will be offered to fans for FREE? Got it. People in glass houses y’all...

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The “Thing-ification” of Prince

The New Yorker delivered an unexpected treat to Prince fans in the September 9, 2019 issue of the magazine in anticipation of the release of The Beautiful Ones memoir on October 29th.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/09/09/the-book-of-prince

In The Book of Prince, his collaborator Dan Piepenbring reveals Prince’s vision for the book and details some unexpected conversations that have us longing for what could have been. The candid comments about his childhood and parents are probably the first time that we see Prince ready and willing to set the record straight about an early life that fans have speculated about since he first arrived on the scene. Prince also opened up about race in America more candidly than ever before. Most of us already know that Prince was unapologetically black and that the ownership of his intellectual property was important to him. He certainly didn’t go to war with Warner Brothers, write “Slave” on his face and become the butt of industry jokes because he had nothing else to do. According to Piepenbring, Prince believed that black artists needed ownership of their creativity to fight racism and restore wealth to the black community. We imagine that’s why he wanted to give readers a little known history lesson about the thriving Greenwood community in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Greenwood was known as “Black Wall Street” and one of the most successful and affluent black communities to ever exist. Sadly Greenwood would be the scene of a devastating 1921 race riot that left 300 black residents dead. They were massacred by white residents of Tulsa who sought revenge due to a young white woman’s unfounded rape accusation against a black shoe shiner.The Book of Prince is probably the best damn thing that’s been written about Prince since his passing and it has ramped up excitement for the book’s release.

It’s interesting that this piece dropped after we learned that Ava Duvernay was no longer involved in the Prince docuseries for Netflix. As some fans tossed around names of other directors that could capture an accurate picture of Prince as a man and a musician, a few over at Prince.org breathed a sigh of relief that Ava was gone. They didn’t like the idea of Ava possibly portraying Prince as “woke”. Let that sink in. Prince didn’t need to be portrayed as woke, HE WAS WOKE. Why would it be problematic to highlight a black musician’s blackness and all of the things that come with it? Prince had no problem reminding people that he was still a black man in America despite his success and diverse fan base, yet this very notion makes some people uncomfortable.

https://prince.org/msg/7/460534

As you can see, one Orger even called Ava a feminist and a lesbian. As if the possibility of Ava being either of those things is somehow worse than being a bigot. It’s perfectly fine to not be a fan of Ava’s work, but comments like this hint at the same sad story. It’s also extremely telling that someone would view Spike Lee’s use of footage from the deadly white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia in BlacKkKlansman as a “gimmick” or attempt at relevancy. Interesting. With the film’s subject matter and today’s racial and political climate in the country we find it strange that someone would feel that a nod to Charlottesville had no place in the movie. What they really mean is that Prince’s version of Mary Don’t You Weep had no place in the movie because there were some unhappy campers that felt Spike was politicizing Prince. Mary Don’t You Weep  is commonly referred to as a freedom song and considered to be one of the most important Spirituals ever written. We won’t spoil the ending for you if you haven’t seen the movie, but we’ll just say that there aren’t many songs that Spike could have chosen that would have been more appropriate for the film’s final moments than Mary Don’t You Weep.

We have never quite been able to figure out why Prince’s larger than life persona attracted non-black fans with a need to place ownership over him as if he were an object and not a real person. There’s that pesky “thing-ification”.

thingification. Noun. The fact or process of turning something into a thing. reification.

Do they need to force him to be a colorless character that transcended race in order to feel better about their admiration? Or is it because they just can’t accept that a black man was a musical genius? Why the push to disassociate Prince with racial topics that you have disdain for because it doesn’t affect you personally? These same fans are clueless about why it’s extremely important to Prince’s black fan base that his entire story be told when there’s a long history of white people hijacking black culture and it’s icons without showing respect to the originators. It’s the height of white privilege to ignore Prince’s own words about racial dynamics and how it affected him because you don’t want to face your own biases and are exhausted with the conversation. If your immediate reaction to any of these statements is outrage, then this post is probably about you.

Since 2016 two glaring issues have emerged with the discussion of Prince’s legacy. It’s hard to ignore that the loudest voices and talking heads that have been trotted out to discuss the music are non-black and/or distinctly tied to the 1980s when Purple Rain catapulted him into full crossover territory. While we realize that nostalgia is powerful, Prince didn’t stop producing excellent material after he disbanded The Revolution despite what former band members like Wendy Melvoin and some fans might have you think. Susan Rogers may have been present for many great moments in Princes history, but how many times did he have to tell us that Susan knows nothing about his music? Prince told Chatty Sue to mind her business in the 2015 Ebony Magazine interview, but here’s one more for the road from The New Yorker article:

The book would allow him to seize the narrative of his own life. Once, he said, he’d seen one of his former employees on TV saying she thought it was her God-given duty to preserve and protect the unreleased material in his vault. “Now, that sounds like someone I should call the police on,” he told me. “How is that not racist?” People were always casting him—and all black artists—in a helpless role, he said, as if he were incapable of managing himself. “I still have to brush my own teeth,” he said.

Racial issues aside, Prince never managed to outrun the 1980s no matter how hard he tried and on Tuesday we found ourselves in the time machine again. Here’s a head scratching and now deleted biography from The Revolution’s official website.

Pure Drunk History. So they’re just going to forget about Andre Cymone, Dez Dickerson and Gayle Chapman? It wasn’t long before the band swooped in to apologize for the error on their Facebook page and official Twitter account, but this is an example of past associates with over inflated egos rewriting history to overstate their importance. Some genius also spelled Gayle’s name wrong, but we digress...

These are the type of things that damage Prince’s legacy and erase the contributions of the numerous other musicians and singers of all backgrounds that he surrounded himself with throughout his career. It’s old, it’s stale and it’s tiring. Never doubt that the Prince fan community has #love4oneanother, but stop using that phrase as a shaming tactic to silence the difficult conversations you don’t wish to have.

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Happy Prince Day

On the seventh day of June we celebrate the life and legacy of the best to ever do it. Happy Birthday Prince.

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1095 Days

Forever missed.

Prince by Herb Ritts, 1991

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With “Friends” Like These

We woke up this morning and were pleasantly surprised to find that Kim Berry’s Diamonds and Curlz: 29 Years Rolling With Rock Royalty was actually available on Kindle. We weren’t so sure a book would be ready after we saw Kim’s Facebook video from April 15th discussing mysterious publishing delays and numerous questions from people who pre-ordered the book months ago. Anyway, we took a few hours to read and digest all 189 pages before we wrote this post and our opinion is:

For a woman who wears her Christianity like a cloak to ward off the recent well-deserved criticisms of Prince fans, Kim sure decided to wallow in the tabloid mud for her first book. It’s almost like she looked back on the same actions that have had her defending herself for months now and said “hold my beer” and decided that she wanted to make herself look questionable one more time. I mean there’s a paragraph about voodoo in here folks. Let’s be clear though. Kim says that she’s telling her story from her perspective, but you have to side eye that when she’s telling all of Prince’s alleged business...and everyone else’s alleged business too. She’s done a bang up job of painting Prince as misogynistic and devoid of emotion while he changed women like he changed his clothes. How nice. What happened to her promises that this book would paint a picture of a loving and talented man that became like family to her? We wanted to read that book and this is not it. You definitely get the sense that Kim not only disliked Prince’s rock star lifestyle, but that she disliked him as a person. It’s become blatantly clear why she had no qualms about selling the man’s hair and socks.

It’s interesting to note that she portrays herself as a close confidante to Prince throughout Diamonds and Curlz, yet the book has no photos of “them” and only a sketch of the Steve Parke Rave Era photo where Kim is braiding Prince’s hair. The rest of the book features Prince pictures borrowed from 21 Nights. Interesting.

Prince was not perfect and we’ve stated several times on this very blog that he was as flawed as they come, but you have to wonder how an associate can claim they grieve his loss then easily reveal personal tidbits that were never meant for public knowledge. Not to mention that Prince and Mayte’s tragic loss of Amir should always be off limits to a third party. Just like any famous women that he allegedly slept with. Or anything that Prince allegedly said about his mother and anything he may or may not have done to his mother-in-law. In case you weren’t aware, this is only volume one of the Diamonds and Curlz trilogy. If God is truly as good as Kim keeps saying He is, volumes 2 and 3 will never see the light of day.

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Kim Berry Keeps Her Collection Plate on Deck

We have sat back and watched Prince’s former hairstylist Kim Berry tease fans with her upcoming book, Diamonds and Curlz: 29 Years Rolling with Rock Royalty, since last year. We never saw much value in a book written by Prince’s hairstylist unless she was spilling the man’s beauty secrets and we suspect that book publishers felt the exact same way. In a move that would make Joanne The Scammer proud, Kim launched an Indiegogo campaign to crowdfund the book with a goal of $10,000. Believe it or not, 171 backers helped Kim exceed her goal to the tune of a cool $11,357.

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/diamonds-curlz-the-book--3

Fans who gave $20 to $550 (W...T...F???) could get a range of “keepsakes” from a Certificate of Love (which we’ll get to later) signed by Kim to an autographed photo of her styling Prince’s hair (which we’ll also revisit). If you gave one of those big baller amounts you could have a private meet and greet or dinner with Kim and 4 of your friends. Kim’s Indiegogo campaign specifically stated that these funds would “cover the cost of every aspect of writing and promoting the book” and the donation would enable a 20 city book tour, so can anyone explain why she launched a Go Fund Me campaign for $20,000 whole dollars on March 18th to pay for a book tour? Many fans were outraged. We’re not sure if the campaign was reported or if Kim managed to scrape together some decency and ended it on her own, but roughly 24 hours later it had vanished. Kim’s latest attempt to take advantage of Prince fans has kept her riding high atop the shit list of many people.

Back in January Kim planned to auction a lock of Prince’s hair along with his comb. L.A. Archives surprised everyone with a Facebook post announcing the auction and we have to admit that we were speechless.

Of course we have no way of verifying whether or not that hair actually belongs to Prince. For all we know Kim snipped a piece of her own hair or the family dog’s and tried to pull a quick okie-doke, but we do know that you have to be a thirsty individual to put something as personal as a dead man’s hair on the auction block. While Kim swore that it was all a big misunderstanding, L.A. Archives stood by their post and also said that the consignor, aka Kim, had been gifted this hair by Prince himself.

So Kim expects us to believe that Prince, a man who preferred to call his fans “friends” because he didn’t like the association with fanatic and had no interest in being deified as a God, would give someone a piece of his hair? Anyway, she obviously decided against publicly selling the hair because she was being dragged across social media by her own edges and chose to proceed with auctioning Prince’s worn socks instead. Sigh.

Kim’s “apology” only highlighted her lack of self-awareness that would be hilarious if it wasn’t so pathetic. She refers to Prince as family yet she’s quick to reduce him to dollar signs for her own enrichment? You can’t make this stuff up.

Earlier we mentioned a “Certificate of Love” that fans could get by making a donation on Indiegogo. Well look what Mi-Ling Stone Poole posted on her Facebook page. Y’all remember Mi-Ling right?

https://www.mostbeautifullies.com/post/167038283690/nobody-wants-to-claim-cloreen-bacon-skin

The autographed photo above was taken by Steve Parke. He stated in no uncertain terms last week that he did not give permission for Kim to use his work for promotional purposes. This is also the second time that Steve has had to address this issue. Yup, he’s that colleague and friend that Kim is talking about in her Facebook apology. Steve first addressed Kim for allegedly selling an autographed version of this picture while on a Prince themed cruise in January.  Steve’s statement sadly escalated when a few unhinged fans made threats to Kim because of it. The threats were gross, unnecessary and ridiculous and we highly doubt that was Steve’s intention, but he has every right to be passionate about his art and protect it’s use. Don’t think for a moment that Steve has been the only one subjected to Kim’s sticky fingers. She’s also used Troy Gua’s Le Petit Prince artwork in book promos without his permission too.

You have to wonder how 29 years of rolling with rock royalty and owning a hair salon at one time leads you to hawking a dead man’s items on the internet? We couldn’t tell you, but sis had her cosmetology license revoked at some point and got it reinstated with 3 years probation in 2015. This is an interesting tidbit because it was mentioned in the investigation files that Kim had allegedly not worked for Prince in the six years prior to his death. Allegedly. That also kind of calls her 29 year timeline into question.

You know what else makes this 29 year tenure a head scratcher? According to Prince Vault, Kim’s name doesn’t appear as a hairstylist on any of Prince’s tours until The Ultimate Live Experience in 1995. Maybe she can explain this new math in the book.

http://www.princevault.com/index.php?title=Live_performances

When you’re a big star like Prince you employ a lot of people who depend on you to eat. Unfortunately, there are some associates who think that Prince owes them a meal ticket after death too. Since Kim’s book is slated for release on April 16th we expect her to take her antics to Minnesota just in time for Celebration. What better way to keep the gravy train now known as Prince chugging along than to peddle a few books to grieving fans with cash to spare?

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She Used To Love Him

Surviving R. Kelly has proven to be one of those documentaries that people can’t stop talking about. Executive Producer Dream Hampton succeeded in bringing R&B singer R. Kelly’s alleged questionable activities with underage girls and women to the forefront again in the #MeToo era. Now that this is a hot topic, Prince’s past relationships with two of his exes who were under the age of 18 (yet of the age of consent in their respective countries) are being re-examined. Writer Sezín (rhymes with Celine in case you care) Koehler penned a questionable opinion piece on Black Girl Nerds to misinform you all about it. (UPDATE as of 1/19/2019...the article has been rightfully pulled from the website).

https://blackgirlnerds.com/not-a-love-letter-to-prince-batman-album-on-30th-anniversary/

For what it’s worth, Rhymes With Celine is not a black girl. The half Lithuanian American and Sri Lankan author discusses how she planned to write a love letter to Prince’s 1989 Batman soundtrack on its 30th anniversary, but now in the wake of Surviving R. Kelly she can no longer love the album that once gave her life some much needed light. She also can’t love Prince anymore because of the (y’all ready for it?) ”horrific real life events that have come to light about Prince”. “Horrific” is Koehler’s word, not ours. She goes on to claim that he groomed both 16 year-old Anna Fantastic and Mayte Garcia and she’s absolutely sick about it. Don’t even think about bringing up David Bowie to her either. Interesting. Sezín Koehler claimed back on April 27, 2016 in a published Huffington Post piece called Happiness Is Purple: Requiem for Prince that our man provided the soundtrack to many of the rare happy moments of her life.

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/sezin-koehler/the-sounds-of-happiness-a_b_9765640.html

“The fact that Prince made it a priority to mentor, support, and promote the careers of so many women over these past decades is another testament to what a giving creative soul he was, and a rock’n’roll feminist. I can’t think of a single other male artist who gave legs up to as many women as Prince did, nor who boasted all-female bands like the Vulvalini-esque 3RDEYEGIRL. He was so ahead of his time it’s profound to begin putting his life’s work into this kind of perspective.

Like David Bowie, Prince’s sparkling fabulousness transcended social and cultural norms — especially in subverting notions of masculinity and its presentation — in such unique ways, it’s impossible to take a full measure of its and his depth and scope except to say that he was one of a kind and there’ll never be another person who reaches the bar he raised. We had a purple unicorn living among us all this time, and damn straight we knew and worshiped him.”

She also brings up the brilliance of the Batman recording and calls Prince a genius who she believed respected women by mentoring and supporting female talent. She mentions how he was just as fabulous as (y’all ready for it?) David Bowie. So you mean to tell us that an alleged lifelong Prince fan didn’t know the stories of Anna Fantastic and Mayte Garcia for all of these years? While she was fan girling for for David’s fabulousness, she was totally unaware that he had sex with a 14 year-old? Sezín Koehler was born around 1979 so definitely old enough to have witnessed the Mayte saga. So what gives? Is this really a case of a concerned fan looking at some of Prince’s decisions with a fresh set of eyes? Or is it that Koehler and the Black Girl Nerds website are like everyone else on the internet and will write for attention? I mean look at us! Anything is possible because the founder of Black Girl Nerds, Jamie Broadnax, landed flat on her face after her Universal FanCon event went down in flames due to financial difficulties while writers for the site went unpaid. Hitching your wagon to the scandal of the moment is a sure fire way to get some attention and click bait revenue right?

Now we aren’t here to tell anyone what they should or shouldn’t be outraged about. As much as Prince was a musical genius, a philanthropist, and our King of Shade, he was still a flawed human being. However you can find the details of Prince’s dealings with Anna and Mayte to be inappropriate without dropping him in the same category as R. Kelly. We watched all 6 parts of the R. Kelly documentary and if any of the things these women are alleging is factual, he’s a true predator and abusive monster. Don’t even get us started on R. Kelly’s 2008 child porn trial. Anna and Mayte have told us for years how they both felt adored and nothing but love from Prince. They’ve also been adamant that nothing sexual occurred until after they turned 18. Anna even popped up to tell Sezín that she got it wrong:

The only woman who has ever publicly accused Prince of any outlandish sexual behavior is Charlene Friend, who at her big age claimed that Prince was keeping women (not her!) in cages. None of this was ever proven of course and the story likely stemmed from Charlene’s anger at Prince stopping her from selling some nice gifts he had given her.

This wouldn’t be the first time that Sezín Koehler has taken a male musician to task for what she perceives as bad behavior. In 2013 she called out Robin Thicke for the lyrics to his hit song Blurred Lines.

https://psmag.com/social-justice/mouths-rapists-lyrics-robin-thickes-blurred-lines-66569

Koehler wrote that the song was a “rape anthem” that victim blamed at the same time. She proceeded to intersperse the lyrics with images of rape survivors who detailed how their attackers used statements similar to the song. We truly believe each survivor. We hate that we live in a world where so many people have these gut wrenching stories of being violated, but at the same time it’s a bit over the top to try and assume what’s going on in the mind of a songwriter because YOU don’t think Robin was asking for permission. So no consideration that the lyrics of Blurred Lines could also be the dirty talk between two consenting lovers? One would think that as a writer Koehler wouldn’t want to go down the slippery slope of having people presume what’s going on inside her head and slander her over a misinterpretation. Anyway, after receiving a proper verbal beat down with the facts from Prince fans,Sezín decided to lock up her Twitter until the heat is off. We guess she didn’t want that much attention?

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Prince by Morgan O’Donovan, 2007

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The Chazz Hive Is Coming

Well it looks like the Prince gravy train just pushed Cousin Chazz off at the last stop. In case you aren’t in the loop, Charles “Chazz” Smith is Prince’s second (or maybe even third!) cousin and an early former band mate. Chazz gained notoriety in the Prince fan community last year for being vocal about his belief that there are some shady circumstances surrounding Prince’s death. Chazz says that the truth is still out there (cue the X-Files theme music) and he is now a man on a mission to bring attention to the cause, or himself, depending on who you ask. By Chazz’s own admission he had not seen or communicated with Prince in decades. Now he certainly has plenty of old school Prince memories and probably loved “Cuz” dearly, but how much did he really know about Prince’s recent day to day lifestyle and associates to make the judgement call that something is amiss? It looks to us like Chazz has inserted himself into the investigation for pure attention whoring purposes by making as many media rounds as possible.

In Podcast Juice’s continuing trend of digging into the bottom of the barrel for guests, Mike Dean and crew invited Chazz on for a second time in May 2018. During the May podcast, Chazz admitted that he had not read the majority of the newly released investigation files. However, he wasn’t about to let that pesky detail get in the way of his second big podcast moment when after 30+ years he was finally getting some shine of his own. In between all of the “me, ME, ME”, random name dropping, promoting a bus tour of Prince’s old neighborhood and other irrelevant things, Mike Dean tried in vain to keep Chazz on topic to discuss his Justice4Cuz campaign and thoughts about the investigation. In between the chatter about himself, Chazz insinuates that Kirk Johnson and Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins are shady, says Omarr had been trying to reach him and Tyka was doing the best that she could right now.

Chazz launched a Justice4Cuz website where he’s asking for fans to donate or purchase a t-shirt to raise money to fund a private investigation into the now closed case.

https://justice4cuz.com/

We have to give a tip of the hat to the Prince fan that directed us to Chazz’s Facebook page today. We were greeted with “The estate is trying to silence me!”. Chazz has apparently received a letter from trademark and copyright attorney Tracey L. Deutmeyer of Fredrikson & Byron, P.A. Ms. Deutmeyer is demanding that he remove all images of Prince from his Justice4Cuz website and all associated social media. Fredrikson & Byron are also demanding that he cease selling and destroy the t-shirts bearing Prince’s image and any other likeness, trademark or copyright owned by the estate. Lastly, they told him that he needs to provide a disclaimer on the website and social media that he has no affiliation with the estate.

See beloved, you’re not being silenced. You’re free to shout “Justice4Cuz!” from the mountaintops of Kathmandu if you wish. You just won’t be using Prince’s image to solicit your donations or causing any confusion among fans who may think this campaign is sanctioned by the estate. It looks like the estate isn’t taking any prisoners and that includes family. We think this is a good thing because the subject of Prince’s death has become a total freak show. Since the release of the investigation files in April, we have seen an escalated and deliberate effort to push a murder conspiracy on fan forums and social media platforms.

Justice4Prince is another group that is soliciting donations for a private investigation into Prince’s death. They seem to rely heavily on the “psychic” rants of a woman named Abigail Noel who appeared out of thin air after Prince’s death. Just when you thought things couldn’t get any weirder, you’ll see that they’ve named everyone from Prince’s former chef Ray Roberts to Queen Elizabeth as having a hand in the alleged conspiracy. They are insistent that Prince was murdered because of something he knew, yet they have never stated what it is that Prince allegedly knew that would cause someone to murder him. Prince had been vocal about shady record labels and rotten music industry practices since the 90s. He was always open about his faith and probably put more of his life into his lyrics than any other modern artist. So again we ask what did Prince allegedly know?

http://www.justice4prince.com/

Just so we’re not one clown short of a circus here, there’s a third group in on the shenanigans. On September 12th a petition is due to be delivered to the Carver County Attorney, Mark Metz and Erica H. MacDonald, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Minnesota. The petition is demanding a grand jury investigation into Prince’s death.

https://www.thepetitionsite.com/421/017/009/prince-homicide-grand-jury-investigation-demanded/

Mark Metz decided that there would be no charges in the case because the investigators didn’t provide any irrefutable evidence to warrant charges. Let’s also remember that some files have been held back from the public, so we have no idea what’s been redacted that could offer more facts about the case. Anyway, we need you to hone in on the names of those who signed the petition because they represent “various Truth and Justice for Prince groups”.

Any of those names look familiar fam? If you keep your ear to the internet streets you would know that one of these names, Laura Veney, is the internet font known as Laurarichardson and she’s become a sore subject in Prince fandom. In the only move that Prince.org has gotten right recently, they banned her for the outlandish conspiracy talk and being a general pain in the ass to other members and moderators. It looks like Laurarichardson won’t be silenced either because she has dusted off her Junior Detective Kit and taken the show to the Lipstick Alley Prince forum. No matter the subject, she can swiftly turn it into a ghoulish death thread. Prince told us on “Joint 2 Joint” that he loved Cap’n Crunch and soy milk you say? Laurarichardson is sure to jump in and say that the police failed to test Prince’s cereal boxes for fentanyl and the Cap’n is the killer. Failure to engage and agree that Prince was surrounded by a merry band of murderers and thieves will lead to an unhinged meltdown. One would think Snitcherella would be more concerned about the private Facebook groups she torpedoed for this very reason versus being a consistent troublemaker. If you love a good conspiracy we have one for you. Do any of these people actually believe that Prince was murdered, or have they just found a way to cash in? How much has been collected in donations by these various groups and what has been done with those donations so far?

Everyone is entitled to their opinion about Prince’s death investigation. Yes, even we think there was some incompetence on the part of those involved with Prince’s healthcare in those last days, but some have crossed the line into downright slander by accusing the siblings, associates and employees of nefarious things just because they don’t like the Carver County Attorney’s decision. We also don’t know what information the family may be privy to that they have chosen not to share, especially details of the full autopsy report. The release of the investigation files and pictures officially stripped away the last remaining shreds of Prince’s privacy, so has it occurred to anyone that the siblings may choose to remain silent about certain matters now? We love Prince, but we aren’t entitled to know every aspect of his personal life. We’re all still grieving the tragic loss of our musical hero, but these conspiracies and scams are casting a shadow on Prince’s legacy. We’re going to stop right here though. Chazz’s followers have worked themselves into a tizzy, he spent the previous evening fighting with Andre Cymone about nothing on Facebook and we don’t want to be found tied up and gagged in an alley with the leftover Justice4Cuz tees.

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Prince’s first custom guitar, the first being made in 1983. He had three more Clouds built during his lifetime, all with different paint jobs. Though the Madcat was a favorite of his, the Cloud is one of his most iconic guitars, featured i the movie Purple Rain (remember Apollonia gave it to The Kid as a gift?).

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