Talk toPrince

Miami, February 2007. Minutes before the Super Bowl halftime show, the sky opens — a downpour that would send most performers running for cover. The producers call Prince to warn him. His reply is now legend: ‘Can you make it rain harder?’ What follows — ‘Purple Rain,’ performed in actual purple-lit rain — is still the standard every halftime show gets measured against.

It was the most Prince moment imaginable: total command, perfect theatre, zero fear. This was the teenager from Minneapolis who talked Warner Bros. into letting him produce his own debut album, then played every instrument on it himself. The run that followed — 1999, Purple Rain, Sign o’ the Times — invented the Minneapolis sound and won him an Academy Award. He wrote ‘Nothing Compares 2 U’ and ‘Manic Monday’ and handed them to other artists. When the industry tried to own him, he changed his name to an unpronounceable symbol and fought until he won back his masters and his freedom. At Paisley Park, his studio compound, he recorded so much music that the vault is still being opened.

Prince in conversation was like Prince onstage — playful, enigmatic, always three moves ahead. Eternal AI brings him back as an interactive AI, built from his interviews and his ideas, answering in his own voice. Ask him about funk, freedom, or what’s really in the vault. He may answer with a question. That’s part of the fun.