Chillin’ with Adam with Prince
According to Prince, God was always present in his life.
“As I evolved and grew up, my religious beliefs would change, but the belief that there’s something bigger who is communicating to everyone on this planet through everyone was always kind of my rock, what I would hold onto, what made me feel solid and grounded in my being as Prince.
I’d like to think I passed that message on to other artists and other beings. Being your true self despite what other people might think, what other people might judge you for, being your authentic self is the easiest thing you can do.
We create it in a human form as one of the hardest things to do because we allow other people to tell us who to be, what to do. what to think, how to think, what to feel; but truly if we let go of all of that, if we let go of the restrictions that everything and everyone outside of us put upon ourselves, then life can be very easy. Life can be comfortable for you because you’ll be who you are. You’ll be who you want to be, and you’ll be who you are meant to be. When we get to that point, for me, being true to myself, not allowing anyone to take my own identity away from me, was one of the key factors in this life’s journey.
I started very early and I got a record label to sign me up when I was only seventeen. I went into the professional music industry really, really early and from the beginning, people were trying to manipulate me, and say maybe you should ask this person to help you. I always said no. No. No. This is my thing and I’m going to do it my way. It didn’t matter and I think that shocked them a little bit that a little boy seventeen years old who had never made a record, who had never recorded anything professionally, just stood up and said, “No, I’m going to do this my way. I’m going to do it this way or I’m not going to do it at all.”
I think it really shocked them. That was not something that they usually see. Usually, that comes with experience and later on when artists are famous and they get used to how it goes, then the confidence usually comes out, but for me, I had that from a very early age. I think I was always a fighter from the beginning because if you look at how I was raised, my dad was very strict. He was very strict and he was very controlling. He was physically abusive and I tried for years to please him and to make him proud of me. When you’re a child, you just want your parents to be proud of you and to support you in what you’re doing. When I was really little, I already knew that I was going to be a musician. I did get the support to go into the music industry because both my mom and my dad were in the music industry, but I never got the recognition as an individual, who I was besides the music and I think that caused me to become a fighter for people to see me as ME. So, in a way, I’m very grateful for the harshness I was raised in.
My parents eventually divorced when I was around ten. My mom got remarried and I lived with my father at first, but I always had a thing for the ladies. Like I said, I was a very sexual being and one day my dad caught me with a girl in bed and he kicked me out. I was twelve years old.
My dad wasn’t very happy with that. He kicked me out and I tried to come back and I tried to apologize and tell him how sorry I was that I disrespected him and so on, but he didn’t want to hear it, so I went to mom and I lived with mom for a little bit, but I didn’t like my stepfather. I did not get along with him, so I didn’t stay there very long. I eventually ended up living in the basement of a neighbor’s family, broke, very young, and I had to find a way to survive.
Music was my way of doing that. Music was just part of my DNA. I had a knack for playing instruments. I picked up on it very quickly. I taught myself a lot of things. I would play over a dozen instruments. I could play them all, basically. We started playing gigs. The son of the family that I was staying with in the basement and I became friends. So we started making music together and we did some gigs here and there just to make a little bit of money.
I eventually recorded a song that I put on a demo and I had done all of the instruments myself and had put it all together. When I sent in the demo, the person who was listening to it thought, “Wow! This is a great band! Who’s the band? Who is the guy who does the guitar?” Of course, when they found out I was the whole band, it immediately convinced them to give me that record deal. That’s how everything started for me.
I have to say, though, I never had any doubts that I was going to be a musician and that I was going to become famous. It was like a knowing. It was something that I’ve had in me since I was tiny, tiny, tiny. There was this knowing that I was supposed to bring forth music to people and really influence them in a way to promote self-love and to promote being human and so much more.
Not a lot of people know this, but I have always been very connected to Spirit. I never really said much of that, but I did hear voices talking to me in my mind. Not like a schizophrenic, they weren’t different voices. They were mostly my own voice, but they would tell me things that I didn’t know. That made me aware that angels were talking to me. That’s how I saw it. Angels were talking to me and they were helping me and guiding me. I never much revealed that to anyone because I didn’t want people to label me in a specific way. At least, not the people that I love. The people that really mattered in my life. I just saw it as God’s way of talking to me.
There was one point when I was little that I did see one of my guardian angels. When I was born into this world, I had epileptic seizures for a long time. My mom and dad did what they could, but we were not very wealthy, so we didn’t really have a lot of support medically to help me with that. I had a dream and in that dream one of my angels came to me and said I wasn’t going to be sick anymore. That was done and I was going to be okay.
The next day I went to mom and I told her an angel told me no more sickness for me. We’re done, and I never had a seizure after that. So, as a very young child, I knew that God listens. I had been praying to get better because I thought the stress of me being sick was what was causing the friction between my parents. Of course, that wasn’t it, but as a child, you’re looking for a way to explain why there’s so many problems in your family. Why there’s so much struggle between mom and dad.
That just empowered me even more to believe in God. I knew that whatever was good for me and whatever I needed, God was going to provide for that, so I went into the music industry with so much confidence because of my belief in God, in Source. That there was something bigger out there who was guiding me that I never had a fearful, doubtful moment in everything that I did.
Although the record sales didn’t go at first as planned and they weren’t as big as the record label had hoped, for me, I didn’t see a problem. They saw a problem. I didn’t see a problem. This was all part of the journey and I understood that. Eventually, the success did start coming. The people did start getting adjusted to a kind of unique way of performing; and although they did try to tune me in and change me, I never allowed them to. The more they tried to change me, the more extravagant I went. So, that was my revenge in some way.
“You know, if you keep hassling me, I’m going to go naked next time.” That was kind of my thing and I would have. I would have. I’ve been on stage in just my underwear, so, you know, why not? Eventually, they kind of let me be and let me do my thing. So, slowly this ‘Prince’ kind of personality started developing. It was such a great adventure because I was not just allowed to be creative with music, but I was allowed to be creative with my own personae, with my own individual being.
I love experimenting with clothes and I loved being creative with makeup and dancing and videos. It was such a creative process my whole life was about releasing this creativity and this energy of manifestation that it really was a joy to be.
In my concerts, when people looked at me, I wanted them to know that I gave it everything that I had. I didn’t want to be an artist who says, “Here. Here’s my hour. Have fun. Bye.” When people would ask for an encore, I would come back four or five times because I just couldn’t say no to them. My concerts instead of having it be an hour or an hour and a half, it would sometimes be three hours in a row. That is something no other artist would do, but that’s what I would do. Sometimes we’d stay jamming four hours in a row. We gave everything we had because that’s why I was here. When I was on stage, I felt good. I felt happy. I felt like I was doing what God intended me to do and so I followed that like a religion. That was my path. That was my goal. I followed that to the fullest. It was a great life.
It was my ambition to give it my all and to stay true to who I was, spread joy and fun and openness to the people. I think what everybody in this world should try to accomplish, you know so many people are like, “What am I here to do? Where am I supposed to go or what’s my path?” It’s really not hard. It is so simple. Your only goal in this lifetime is to be you and to just follow what you want to do. That’s it, people. It’s not hard.
We make it hard because we don’t trust ourselves or we don’t believe ourselves or we allow other people to tell us what to do, how to feel, and who to be. So, my message to all of you is, BE YOU. Just be you. That’s it. Don’t make it complicated. If we all just be who we are and we feel the freedom to express ourselves in the way that we want to express ourselves, then this world would blossom and this world would create compassion and acceptance and growth and expansion because we would support each other to be who we are and we would feel a lot better because we would all be so different that it would be a joy to discover each other. Now, we’re all trying to be like everyone else.
We’re all trying to be like the people we see on TV or the people they say we’re supposed to be, so everyone becomes a shadow of everyone else, and eventually, those shadows, if you look at everyone now, half of the people don’t say hello. They don’t look up. They aren’t even aware that you’re there. That’s just because we’ve become shadows of who we are. We are no longer that vibrant light that passes by.
When a person walks by you and he catches your attention, that person, I can guarantee you, is being exactly who he wants to be. He’s shining that positivity out and that catches our eye because that’s what we all want to be. So, look around you and look at yourself and just ask yourself who you want to be and just be that. That’s life. Don’t make it hard. Just follow who you’re supposed to be and go for it and don’t let anybody stop you in the discovery of your own authenticity and individuality. That’s what I wanted to pass on to everybody out there.
The world would be a lot happier place if we were all allowed to just express ourselves freely and without judgment.”
Please enjoy our visit with Prince:
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