Prince Unveils
Plan to Release Three LPs Via Lotusflow3r
Website at Private Gig
Written by Steve Appleford
as published on RollingStone.com
February 2, 2009
The e-mail invitation was vague
but intriguing: spend Saturday night
at Prince’s mansion in Beverly
Hills for “a journey through
the galaxy” and a live performance
by the man himself.
As the first to arrive, I’m
greeted by Scott Addison Clay, the
bearded young developer behind Prince’s
new Website, lotusflow3r.com. He
wears a tweed jacket and sits behind
a widescreen computer monitor to
show off a bit of the new site,
launched just minutes earlier. Leaning
against a nearby couch is a sparkling
metal cane, with Prince’s
“love symbol” etched
into the handle.
Clay notes that 10 years before,
Prince helped revolutionize the
relationship between music and the
Internet by being the first major
artist to debut music exclusively
on the Web. And lotusflow3r.com
is where Prince will release three
new albums in 2009, including MPLSound,
Lotus Flow3r and the unveiling of
his newest female protégé
Bria Valente.
Then there is a voice behind us:
“Can I use my computer?”
It’s Prince, smiling in a
blue shirt decorated with a stylized
drawing of his own image, and shoes
with heels that blink colored lights.
“It’s OK, I just want
to check my e-mail.”
This is his home office, just one
corner on a large estate in the
exclusive gated community of Beverly
Park, in the hills above Los Angeles.
In another room is a space-age grand
piano with liquid curves and framed
snapshots of Chris Rock, Spike Lee,
Quincy Jones and other friends.
Outside on a pedestal amid the reflecting
pools, recording studio and a beach
volleyball court is a metal sculpture
of his symbol. This is could only
be one man’s house.
Downstairs in the home theater,
Clay gives a deeper glimpse of what’s
coming on the site, set to slowly
unfold in coming months. For now,
it is limited to a home page with
a barren cliff beneath a night sky
and three new songs: “Another
Boy,” “Colonized Mind”
and “Discojellyfish,”
which flow from a boombox that glows
purple. Fans will eventually be
asked to pay a subscription fee
to open up other areas of the site,
with music, lyrics, animation, photographs
and video (including Prince’s
cover of Radiohead’s “Creep”
at Coachella last year).
Guests are led down the hall, past
the pool table and a pair of motorcycles
that look like they just rolled
off the cover of Purple Rain, toward
the sound of a band tuning up in
a small room. It’s a crowd
of barely 30 people: three invited
fans, a few journalists, soul singer
Anita Baker, DJ Kat Corbett from
KROQ-FM and Miss Valente, tall and
elegant in a low-cut dress.
Prince is in the corner with a guitar
and the first song is a shimmering
cover of the Cars’ “Let’s
Go,” followed by “Crimson
& Clover” (by Tommy James
and the Shondells), before erupting
into the Troggs’ “Wild
Thing” as Prince raises his
guitar, singing like Hendrix himself:
“Baby, I think I love you
. . . sock it to me!”
He calls harmonica player Frédéric
Yonnet up to blow through the Rolling
Stones’ “Miss You,”
following a tough, sexy groove as
Prince announces: “Come on
out on the dance floor, come on!”
It’s just the first of two
sets he’ll lead tonight, and
it’s a purely musical performance,
without the big production of a
tour date, playing vivid originals
going all the way back to 1979’s
“I Feel for You” and
surprising cover tunes, including
several Sly Stone hits (”Everyday
People,” “Stand,”
etc.).
You could see when Prince was especially
moved by an emotional vocal from
Baker or one of his three backup
singers (Marva King, Shelby Johnson
and Olivia Warfield), whose solos
are epic performances unto themselves.
Baker joins him for several duets,
including “Guitar.”
“Real music by real musicians,”
Prince announces, slipping into
another funky psychedelic groove,
leaving room for big solos from
the band and his own guitar.
Near the end of the second set,
it’s nearly 3 a.m. as Prince
and bassist Josh Dunham jump into
a sticky groove that’s instantly
recognizable as a 1976 riff from
Wild Cherry. Prince points directly
at Clay, his Internet guru, by now
pealed out of his tweed at the edge
of the dance floor. He calls him
over to the microphone, and Clay
immediately begins singing, reading
from an ovesized lyric sheet: “Play
that funky music, white boy! Play
that funky music right!”
Prince leans back against drummer
Cora Dunham, still slashing at his
guitar, eyebrows rising, as if he
can’t believe what he is witnessing.
But it’s a kind of unbelievable,
brilliant moment, one of many during
more than three hours of live music.
Clay is still dancing behind the
microphone, his dress shirt soaked,
and for one moment the baddest white
dude on the West Coast. “That’s
pretty funky, right?” he asks.
With Prince and the band behind
him, it could hardly be anything
else.
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