Dear Prince Fans — U Need 2 Stop
Every Prince fan is not the best Prince fan
Hello. Ernest here. Prince fan since 1979. I heard “Soft and Wet” way after the fact, but found “I Wanna Be Your Lover” on radio and K-Tel’s Soundwaves compilation. I bought the latter because of Lipps, Inc.’s “Funkytown” and “Upside Down” by Diana Ross as track 2 and 1 respectively. Prince was tucked into side A on the record. He confused and intrigued me.
My journey through Princedom isn’t much different than any other fan’s journey. We all have our “first time” for anything. We collect records, the 12” singles, the videos, the merchandise. We fawn over his outfits, lust after his face and kiss his little Cuban-heeled boots. Women want to be with him, and men want to be him. (Some men want to be with him, too, but not this one.) We know every line in Purple Rain, Under The Cherry Moon, and Graffiti Bridge. We’ve seen them all a hundred times, and own them all on every format available including but not limited to 16mm, Beta, VHS, CED, Laserdisc, DVD, HD-DVD, and BluRay. (By the way, I own all of those except the first.)
We know the timeline of albums, girlfriends, tours, and divorces. We’ve all touched base with people around him to feel closer and to get to know part of the team that gave us life in our teenage years and beyond. I’ve talked to Matt Fink, Wendy Melvoin, Steve Parke, Monte Moir, and Lisa Coleman. I’ve traded emails with Rosie Gaines and Sheila E. I’ve become friendly with St. Paul and Susannah Melvoin. I’ve even gotten a sweet and short D.M. from Apollonia in recent weeks. We’ve all been there, done that. It’s the ways of the internet that we, as fans, can all reach out and be able to come into contact with some of our favorite purple people. It’s not just that they knew Prince intimately on some level (personally, relationship, friendship, and so on), but because he surrounded himself with people whose talent he helped hone. He gave them room to create, grow, and perhaps become something they didn’t think they were capable of becoming. Prince did that with everyone around him — he saw someone who had something, helped kindle their fire, then gave them room to grow while he pruned and watered that talent as necessary. Prince was a musical gardener.
We know Prince, as much as he let us. Some fans seem not to know is how he died. We know he took an accidental overdose of the opioid Fentanyl, which is fifty times more potent than heroin. We know he was taking an excessive amount of prescription drugs in the years leading up to his death at Paisley Park. He had lost weight, seemed hazy, gaunt, and disconnected. His eyes were sunken and hollow. He walked as though his joints were made of glass. The man who once strutted in heels and danced his ass off suddenly walked with a cane, and made no strides to hurry anywhere. His swagger had changed but was still c-o-o-l. Clearly, his health had declined, likely due to drug addiction, age, and a lifetime of hardcore performing in shoes not kind to the body. Of course, fifty-seven ain’t twenty-seven. No one expected him to do those stunts anymore. I wish it was just age that kept Prince tied to his pimp cane. Opioids aren’t made for long term use. And the longer a person uses them, the more they become an irritant to the pain being treated, which leads to taking more pills to counteract that. It’s a vicious cycle that millions get trapped in every year. Prince was one of those people.
Fans want answers. I get that. I want more answers, too. The truth that is available paints a clear picture, thus far, of what happened. What fans shouldn’t do is wallow in conjecture, entertain outrageous conspiracy theories, or romanticize Prince’s death. His passing wasn’t pretty. It wasn’t some Hollywood version where even dead bodies have a little Vaseline on the lens. No matter how much one tries to trace the edges with a purple Sharpie, he still died alone in an elevator. There is no Insta-filter for it. The ugliness is, was, and will always exist. He was alone for hours before someone found him. He was already in eternity as mere mortals were waking up to go to work at Paisley Park when they discovered his remains. I cannot imagine the horror and shock they experienced. It has to be unspeakable. It’s almost indescribable for those of us who knew him from afar, so I can’t even pretend to know what Kirk Johnson or others felt who were there and saw the atrocity of death.
It’s been four years since Prince died. It seems longer than that. It also seems like last month it happened. Losing someone stunts your thought process for a while. You have an instant-new normal, and it takes the brain and soul a while to readjust and right itself. It’s like a buoy in the water, then the wind hits it. The water moving, the buoy bobbing back and forth — it takes a while for it to find its original position again. What troubles me isn’t all of us finding our original place again. Instead, those few fans vying for a new position by trying to romanticize his death. Everyone’s an armchair doctor after April 21. Here are some fan’s quotes after his death:
“He knew something was wrong, and he chose to leave.”
“I think it was suicide.”
“He sang about it in a song.”
“I was at a concert and worried he’d die, then he looked at me and winked.”
Let me be blunt: These people need a reality check, a friendly rebuke, and a compassionate “snap out of it” Moonstruck moment.
Prince loved life. He went headfirst into anything he did, encompassing an aesthetic in music and life. Whether it was his typhoon-do of the early nineties or the short, cropped hair of the Parade era, Prince lived his music. He was here as a gift of, and a vessel for music. He was a walking piece of art. It’s no mystery why his then-lawyer L. Londell McMillan started simply calling Prince The Artist during his name-change years. He was the artist. He set the standard. He created music because he was music, per his own bit of braggadocio. It’s illogical for someone who encouraged everyone around them to be the best they could be, love God, and promote having love 4 one another to simply check out and leave it all behind in disarray and without reason. It’s the way of a coward. I don’t believe suicide is a coward’s plot. It’s a cop-out judgment for those who don’t understand suicide. People suffer from depression, bullying, and more that can drive them to take their own lives. Prince didn’t suffer from those ailments. Sure, he had physical pain, even after a removing of scar tissue from his hips in 2010. (It wasn’t hip replacement, but it was a procedure to scrape and remove scar tissue from overworking his body — in heels — for decades.)
We know that Prince sought a doctor’s help with the opioid addiction, and perhaps alternative treatment to get his body and life back in shape. We could have probably seen a dip in his public appearances in 2016 and 2017, then he would show up again with new music and looking great for a man of almost sixty years old. It could be been a revival, of sorts, for a man who never left the scene. Old and new fans alike could have discovered a new and improved Prince, one with a fresh outlook and a new story to tell. But we’ll never know that for sure, not anymore.
As fans continue to insist on writing a false narrative of Prince closing up shop on purpose and then taking an overdose to kill himself, they dishonor Prince’s entire legacy. They paint him as a liar, hypocrite, and fool. Those are three things Prince was not. It would also dictate that he took us, his fans, like fools, too. They’re saying, “we know Prince better than anyone else.” And as any Prince fan knows, every Prince fan is the best Prince fan. It feels gross that a segment of the fanbase glamorizes his death as if it were some Shakespearean plot. To lump Prince into some embellished version of death is stereotypical ignorance and reeks of a pedestrian grasp attempting to make logical what seems illogical. If Prince was anything, he wasn’t pedestrian or stereotypical.
These are more actual recent quotes from fans years after his death:
“It was suicide. He didn’t like showing weakness. He was always in control and made sure he had full control over his death, and the amount of fentanyl he had taken was to make sure nothing can save him.”
“He was just hurting so much, he couldn’t take it anymore.”
“It appears to me for the first time that he probably killed himself… he was clearly bored and depressed.”
“I’ve always thought his death was a suicide. Especially after hearing about that strange statement about giving it a few days and not to waste your prayers. That’s a view of his intentions.”
Can we just consider the more significant point these “fans” are missing? If Prince was going to off himself, why the hell would he do it in an elevator? Why not just go lay down, take the pills, and let the drug do its thing? People don’t commit suicide from boredom. Nor can it be deduced that his intentions were to kill himself because he said, “don’t waste your prayers” days prior. To say he did it in an elevator because of a song from 1984 is a stretch by anyone’s imagination. All of it is another attempt of fans to try and sentimentalize his death. Had Prince never written lyrics like:
R we gonna let de elevator bring us down?
Oh no, let’s go!
Let’s go crazy, let’s get nuts
…they’d never even considered the elevator anything more than arbitrary. But since he mentioned it, it must mean something. He also mentioned Almond Joys, but he didn’t gorge himself to death on a 50-pack in a moment of sometimes feeling like a nut. If anyone really knows Prince, they’d know his story behind “Let’s Go Crazy” and that it was allegedly a song about not letting Satan steal your joy. So for him to purposely die in an elevator would then dictate he openly allowed Satan to take his joy. With his dogmatic approach to lyrics in the aughts and beyond, it would make Prince a hypocrite again to give in to the thing he preached against — sin. Prince was deep, but he wasn’t that deep as to plan his own suicide in an elevator.
Dare I say, fans who lay in the muck of conspiracies aren’t fans at all. They’re the worst kind of fan, one that delves into assumed schemes and nuance rather than facts. They dirty Prince’s name by speaking it and sully his enduring legacy of being one of the greatest musicians in a lifetime. They paint it with lies, opinion, and conjecture — none of which is based in fact. I can almost hear Prince screaming to his fans, as he did in the extended version of “Thieves in the Temple,” saying, “You lied! You were supposed to take care of me!” Fans do him a huge disservice with the death theories. They aren’t taking care of his legacy because they maneuver in a lie.
But let’s talk about that.
Are the conspiracies and armchair medical opinions just a coping mechanism? Are fans just trying to make sense of it? Maybe. I’m a firm believer that the truth is the best way, in any situation, to maneuver through life. None of us can know Prince’s thoughts on his health at that point. We know of it, bits here and there. He was private about it. He has a right to privacy. It wasn’t about him “not wanting to show weakness.” Prince never owed anyone anything when it came to his personal life. Prince fans are entitled and think they have a right to Prince’s life. They don’t. Clearly, they aren’t reading the room since Prince never let any more of his personal life out that he desired. That was partly done by way of Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDA), although there was always some story coming out from the woodwork. The fact that Prince shared anything about his personal life, whether through song or in an interview, was a gift. Prince fans have a bad case of Prince privilege.
There’s a saying that if you want to make God laugh, try making plans for your life. To think that a man who loved God and believed some version of the bible would also pretend to strike a deal with his creator to check out on his terms is laughable, at best. Promoting the idea of Prince’s deal with God is irresponsible and ignorant (and probably a light smear of heresy). It has to end because, frankly, most of us tired of rolling our eyes at the bullshit. It won’t bring him back. If it did, he’d be here now.
I say all that with a level of ire, passion, and compassion. Fans are suffering after losing one of their favorite artists. I wish he were here, too. I wish he had gotten the help from doctors. His health would have improved, and we would still be getting new music by Prince. But he’s not. He’s gone, forever. It’s a horrifying fact we all have to accept. It’s real, and no amount of denial will ever change that. Fans sit in denial while life continues to move forward. If fans chose to walk in the truth — something Prince was vehement about in his life and his music — then healing would begin for all of us. Prince always tried to move forward and not live in the past. The man lost both his parents. Some of us know what it feels like to lose a parent. But we move forward, we adjust, and we heal as best we can. We find a new normal with the cards on the table. We can’t play a hand we don’t have available to us. So until then, those “fans” are choosing to sit in pain without hope of healing. It’s insanity and a little masochistic. I suppose that’s their right. When pain becomes a comfort zone, that’s when you’re in trouble and headed for disaster.
“You don’t have to hold onto the pain,
to hold onto the memory.”
-Janet Jackson, “Together Again” — The Velvet Rope (1997)
To the fans: Break out of the holding pattern. Just because you believe you hurt more or hurt longer doesn’t make you miss Prince more, nor does it make you a bigger fan like you’re “the one who got him” or whatever. We all “got him.” It’s why we’re fans. It doesn’t mean you are more respectful because you continue to sit in the pain of his absence. It just means you’ve chosen to not grow over the past four years. You’ve decided not to evolve and be a better person — or fan. It’s not what Prince would have wanted. I’m not saying you’re not allowed to grieve or even be angry that he’s not here. What I am saying is this: you’re not allowed to use Prince as a reason to be the poster child for the ultimate grieving fan. There is no reward for it. No one’s going to give you a prize, a Groupon, or a pat on the back. Your misery party is a tablet or one. But you’re more than welcome at the table where we’re all celebrating the man’s life and legacy, and honoring him. A fantasy will keep you in bondage forever to lies and ILLusions. But the truth is what will give you ultimate freedom. And if there is one thing Prince believed in — it was being free.
What if half the things ever said turned out 2 be a lie
How will U know the truth?
If U were given all the answers when U stopped 2 wonder why
But how will U know the truth?Everybody’s got a right 2 love
Everybody’s got a right 2 lie
But the choice U make, it ain’t no piece of cake
It ain’t no motherfuckin’ piece of pie
So as we make our way through another deathaversary, let’s honor his life and music, not sodden it down with hunches and suppositions. Enjoy the Grammy Tribute on CBS (which airs tonight), play your favorite record at high volumes to annoy your quarantined neighbors. Show the world the joy we all feel from knowing Prince. Peace and B Wild.
Ernest Sewell was born & raised in Oklahoma. After living across the U.S. in places like Philadelphia, Los Angeles, and Minneapolis, he’s settled in upstate New York for the past twenty years. He’s authored and published two books and is working on a smattering of new material, including a new horror novel. He shares his home with a friend, three cats, and his vinyl collection, all of whom have the same level of love from him. When he’s not causing an uproar on Prince forums or social media, he enjoys reads (a lot), trying new recipes, and prank calling people.
“Don’t take yourself too seriously. No one else does.”
