“Girl, please,” says a man wearing a purple jacket and carrying a stylized guitar, “I Big Mac like a Prince.” Could this South African TV ad possibly be referencing any well-known musician? Not really, says McDonald’s…but an industry group begs to differ. The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), an independent trade group in South Africa, received […]
This weekend is Art-A-Whirl: the annual art crawl and de facto music festival that brings thousands to Northeast Minneapolis. At the Solar Arts Building, The People’s Museum for Prince is an art exhibit “designed to commemorate the ways Prince shaped and transformed personal lives.” Curator Emma Balázs is an Australia native and lifelong Prince fan who moved […]
Okay, let’s take this one step at a time. There’s going to be a show at which Prince classics will be performed by a variety of vocalists backed by a symphony orchestra. Yes, it’s approved by the Prince estate. Prince superfan Questlove is involved: he “has helped curate the music and arrangements,” though he’s not […]
Prince and Jay-Z shared so much respect that Prince chose Tidal as the only streaming platform to host his music during his lifetime. After Prince’s death, though, things between his estate and Jay-Z got tense. Very tense. Now, though, things seem to be patched up. In a press release, Tidal announced that in 2019 it […]
The West Indies archipelago of Turks and Caicos doesn’t have much in common with Chanhassen, Minnesota — but Prince made sure that visitors to his Caribbean retreat knew they were on his turf. The five-acre estate features a winding purple driveway, which is understandably highlighted in photos advertising the property’s upcoming auction. “This estate is […]
Now that this season’s American Idol contestant pool has been narrowed down to just seven, it was time to give the aspiring star performers a real challenge: performing hits from Prince’s catalog. Performers have to be at their absolute best if they’re going to attempt to channel Prince’s musicality and stage presence. Two contestants mixed […]
So you’re a Prince superfan. Could you name any Prince song if you only hear the song’s first second? How about the first half-second? How about the first quarter-second? Tonight Show host Jimmy Fallon couldn’t stump his bandleader, Prince obsessive Questlove, in a special “Prince Edition” of a One-Second Song Quiz that Fallon says was inspired […]
Troy Carter, an executive who’s serving as “entertainment advisor” to Prince’s estate, tells Variety that the estate is planning to release “a full-length album” of previously unreleased Prince material on Sept. 28. Although Carter didn’t divulge many details about the music, he indicted that the release will be a cohesive body of work from a […]
Will Celebration return? It sure sounds like it, based on the questions that Graceland’s managing partner Joel Weinshanker asked attendees on Saturday — and the responses he got. “Who’s coming back next year?” he asked a full soundstage audience before the evening activities began at Paisley Park. Most hands shot up. “Okay,” he noted. “Next […]
A recent Washington Post article reports on the unease surrounding “the prospect of turning Paisley Park into Minnesota’s Graceland.” When I read that, my first thought was: is that really a bad thing? Blatantly commercialized as Graceland is, it’s given Elvis Presley’s home the status of an iconic landmark — and it’s solidified the status […]
