Since Prince has passed on to that great purple-draped funk palace in the sky, there will come a time when celebrities won’t have any more Prince stories to share. Frankly, we’re not sure we want to exist in that world. Luckily, right now the “Prince story” is still a hot and relatively available commodity, as it has been ever since Chappelle’s Show.
Charlie Murphy’s now-iconic tale of peak-Prince dunking on him while wearing a blouse and then serving him a pancake breakfast laid down the gauntlet for all Prince stories to come. In the years since, scores of celebrities have shared their encounters with Prince, and they’re all equally bizarre and interesting. Kevin Smith has a great one, so does Questlove. In fact, pretty much anyone who has come in contact with Prince has a story worth telling, and our most recent People’s Party with Talib Kweli guest, Anthony Andreson, has many.
On this week’s episode of People’s Party, Anderson shares the time he had pasta and pizza with Prince in his hotel room.
“I still have a hotel key from the Madison Garden show,” he tells host Talib Kweli and co-host Jasmin Leigh. “We went to the Village Underground after the show. Prince, myself, my wife, and Prince’s assistant… and the only person between me and Prince is his assistant, and he leans over to his assistant and says something to his assistant, who leans over to me and says, ‘Anthony, uh, Prince wants you to come back to the hotel room for pasta and pizza.’ But Prince is literally sitting right there!”
Anderson and his wife then jumped in a cab and headed to the Ritz Carlton to find a hotel room full of celebrities.
“I walk to a back room and its Tavis Smiley, Dr. Cornel West, and Prince, just huddled up in a corner, just rapping. It’s a who’s who in the hotel room and then all of a sudden at about 4 o’clock, pasta and pizza just arrive and we eat pasta and pizza… I took some fruits, I took the hotel key, I was just stealing shit.”
Watch the clip above to hear more Prince stories from Anthony Anderson as well as Kweli’s own experiences with the Purple One, then you might as well go down a YouTube rabbit hole of Prince stories for the next hour. What else are you going to do, work!? Just forward some Prince stories to your boss and go nuts.
People’s Party is a weekly interview show hosted by Talib Kweli with big-name guests exploring hip-hop, culture, and politics. Subscribe via Apple, Spotify, or YouTube.