[getty src=”86098514″ width=”495″ height=”594″]
“Fall of 1984. I’m 10. My dad has a satellite dish and I’m the only kid in my school that has access to MTV. I watch every day after school. I hear Purple Rain for the first time. I’ve seen the ads for the movie, but it’s rated R and there’s no way someone is going to take me to see it. But this music video and the videos for When Doves Cry and Let’s Go Crazy let me know everything I needed to know. I knew that I needed to find a way to get that album now that Tipper Gore decreed that it had to have one of those parental advisory stickers on it. I eventually did by making a bootleg tape from a classmate’s older sibling’s copy and naming it Bryan Adams or Corey Hart or some such Can-Con.
I got a taped copy of 1999 too and I start loving Prince like there’s no room in my heart for anyone else. I would listen to Darling Nicki really quiet or with headphones on so not to get caught. Prince was contraband. Prince reminds me of feelings I didn’t have words for. I was 10 but could pass for a high schooler. I was 10 and wanted to be anyone but who I was. I was a child, technically, but would have traded all the Prince records in the world to be a grown up. Prince reminds me that I could get away with things I wasn’t supposed to do.”