Prince’s Birthday Tweet
Prince famously did not celebrate birthdays. But for me, he acknowledged it.
It’s common knowledge among Prince fans that he stopped celebrating or even acknowledging his birthday once he became a Jehovah’s Witness in the early 21st century.
It’s also common knowledge among anyone that knows me in any capacity that I adore Prince. I’m a musician and songwriter myself, and so with that comes an address book of contacts in the media and publishing world. Typically I’ll be one of the first ports of call anytime anyone wants to talk or write about Prince.
And thus it was, in May 2015 that I got a message from my friend Asjad Nazir of the British newspaper Eastern Eye. It’s a newspaper that my band, Swami, have been featured in several times. Asjad has been a constant supporter of our music, and both myself and my bandmate and cousin DJ Swami have written columns for the newspaper before. But this time, Asjad wanted to know if I’d be interested in writing an entire double page centrefold spread…….about Prince.
Are you nuts? Of course I’d be interested!!
I wrote more than he needed (of course…) — and edited down as best I could. The idea was to write something that both fans and non-fans would find interesting, and hopefully convert the latter into the former in the process.
The double page spread was published on Friday the 5th June, 2015. That’s two days before Prince’s birthday. The sections I included were : “My Story”, “Did You Know?” which was 5 facts about Prince that non-fans wouldn’t be aware of, “Five Essential Albums”, “Prince on Film”, “The Vault”, “Prince’s Bands”, and “Top Five Singles”. Basically a crash course in Prince with insights only a hardcore fan would know.
It was fun to write, and I got a lot of great feedback from it, from fans and non-fans alike.
In keeping with his usual position, Prince, an avid tweeter by this time, was silent on June 7th, his birthday.
But then….. in the afternoon, this happened:
That’s a direct link to my Imgur upload of my article.
You can try it — it still works.
Like many of his tweets, this one was deleted maybe 10–15 minutes after it was posted.
But it was the *only* tweet that he made all day.
I couldn’t believe it when I saw it. It’s not the only time Prince acknowledged me, but more than anything….. I was just happy that he saw my article, even though it went to print with a horrible grammatical error that I still kick myself about!
I’ve written a ton of things about Prince over the years, mostly on prince.org where I’m a staff member and moderator, but this one stands out, because it wasn’t just a case of me “preaching to the converted”- what I wrote would have exposed a lot of people to his genius.
Thank you Prince, for this, and for everything. Happy Birthday and Rest in Power — you are loved more than any of us could ever explain.
Hope U have found The Dawn.
Casey Rain
xxxx