Prince Hired This Guy To DJ A Date And He Knocked It Out Of The Park
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Prince really had a unique knack for suddenly popping into people’s lives, making everything weird and magical for a bit, and then floating off into the purple mists again. Many of those people have shared their Prince stories in the days since his death, and now Los Angeles DJ/producer WallyWaves has shared his. As he recounts in a lengthy post on his Tumblr, he was sitting at home eating his dinner when he got a call from a friend who worked at a famous hotel in LA. One of the guests had made a last-minute request for a DJ to play the hotel bar, and they needed someone who could get there and start playing music within an hour. That hotel guest was Prince.
When WallyWaves arrived at the hotel, the bar was completely empty and the room was lit almost entirely by candlelight. “A waitress tells me there’s like an 80% chance Prince doesn’t show up. He just likes to rent out the bar in case he and his friends wander through the hotel and feel like stopping in. ‘But you should start playing music anyway in case he comes in. Who knows,'” he writes. “So I start playing songs to the very empty bar.” A few hours pass, until:
At 12AM the door opens and some guy walks over to me and without a greeting he says,
“Hey man. He’ll be here in 15 minutes. What are you gonna play when he walks in?”
“Oh I got some stuff lined up. Some older Stevie Wonder, the JB’s.”
“Yeah. Yeah, he likes that. Anything like that, Earth Wind & Fire, Chic.”
“Yeah I got Chic! I’ll play that.”
“And he wants to hear Janelle Monáe when he walks in. You got that?”
“Yup. Yup. Janelle Monáe.”
“Cool, he’ll be here in 15 minutes.”
After a mad dash to get the hotel’s WIFI code and procure some Janelle Monáe songs, Prince finally shows up. WallyWaves keeps DJing and Prince seems to be paying no attention to the music, but then Prince’s middleman returns to let him know that Prince and his guest “love your music…Just keep playing what you’re playing.” “And then it hits me,” WallyWaves writes. “There’s only two people in there. Prince and a girl. I’m not there to DJ a private party. I’m there to DJ a date. Prince is on a date and I’m the entertainment.”
Eventually, Prince’s date gets up and walks over to WallyWaves to say, “Hey, so what’s the name of this song? He likes it and wants to know.” (It was Stars’ cover of the Smiths’ “This Charming Man.”) And when he starts playing Ballistic Brothers’ “Blacker (4 The Good Times),” she comes over again to ask, “What’s this one? He wants this on repeat.”
After over 7 hours have passed, at 4:30AM, Prince finally comes over to WallyWaves, looks him in the eye, says “Thank you. That was very enjoyable,” and leaves.
That’s the gist of it, but you should really just read the whole thing here. There’s no timeframe given, but the date in question seems to have been sometime in the past couple of years. And if the ghost of Prince ever appears to you in the night and you want to impress him, here’s WallyWaves’ Prince-approved playlist:
Janelle Monáe – “Q.U.E.E.N.” (Feat. Erykah Badu)
James Brown – “Talking Loud And Saying Nothing”
Billy Gardener – “I Got Some”
J.B.’s – “Givin’ Up Food For Funk”
Ike & Tina Turner – “Bold Soul Sister”
Charles Wright – “Express Yourself”
Johnny Hammond – “Tell Me What To Do (Whiskey Barons Rework)”
Pharrell Williams – “Gust Of Wind”
Omar – “The Man”
Steve Arrington – “Weak At The Knees”
Belle Epoque – “Miss Broadway”
Chic – “I Want Your Love (Todd Terje Edit)”
Ethel Beatty – “I Know You Care (U-Tern Edit)”
Curtis Mayfield – “Give Me Your Love”
Mayer Hawthorne – “Just Ain’t Gonna Work Out”
Jay Dee – “It’s A Man’s World”
Jay Dee – “Think Twice”
Alicia Myers – “I Want To Thank You”
Positive Force – “We Got The Funk (Larry Levan Re-Edit)”
Rene And Angela – “I Love You More”
Stevie Wonder – “That Girl”
The Isley Brothers – “Tell Me When You Need It Again”
N*E*R*D – “Run To The Sun”
Beyonce – “Blow”
Hall & Oates – “I Can’t Go For That”
St. Germain – “Sure Thing” (Feat. John Lee Hooker)
Tom Tom Club – “Genius Of Love”
Bernard Wright – “Who Do You Love”
Tina Turner – “What’s Love Got To Do With It”
George Benson – “Give Me The Night”
Junior – “Mama Used To Say”
Stevie Wonder – “Do I Do”
Fela Kuti – “Opposite People”
Claudja Barry – “I Wanna Dance”
Janelle Monáe – “Dance Apocalyptic”
Joe Coleman – “Get It Off The Ground”
Flight Facilities – “Crave You”
Nu Shooz – “I Can’t Wait”
Stars – “This Charming Man” (The Smiths Cover)
Aretha Franklin – “Rock Steady”
Edwin Birdsong – “Rapper Dapper Snapper”
Ballistic Brothers – “Blacker (4 The Good Times)”
Ballistic Brothers – “Blacker (4 The Good Times)”
Ballistic Brothers – “Blacker (4 The Good Times)”
Esperanza Spalding – “I Can’t Help It”
ESG – “My Love For You”
Jimmy Bo Horne – “Is It In”
Floating Points – “Love Me Like This”
Broken Bells – “After The Disco”
Tornado Wallace – “Don’t Hold Back”
The Mohawks – “Champ”
