Credit: Far Out / Alamy
Sat 8 August 2026 21:00, UK
Prince was one of those ethereal people. Someone you’d have an out-of-body experience just to look at, never mind get up close or talk to.
In this sense, to think of the man being stumped, dumbfounded, or even starstruck seems like a completely foreign thing. That’s something that only happens to mere mortals, not Prince. He was mythic and almost unbelievable, only keeping you on the cusp of reality because you knew you could see him with your very own eyes.
However, strange things do happen. Life has a means of working in mysterious ways, and when one star crossed paths with another, Prince was the one, in this instance, who was completely lost for words. Falling into the orbit of your hero is one thing, but to then be told that the same person is one of your greatest admirers? Well, you could have knocked him down with a feather.
But George Clinton has always commanded a certain psychedelic magic like that. Parliament-Funkadelic changed the face of the scene irreversibly and in countless ways, serving as a divine inspiration to Prince and so many others. But really, the bandleader saw that the young peripatetic star was his spiritual protégé.
This was something that left Prince reeling when Clinton first said the words. “Not long ago I talked to George Clinton, a man who knows and has done so much for funk,” he said in a 1985 interview with Rolling Stone. “George told me how much he liked Around the World in a Day. You know how much more his words mean than those from some mamma-jamma wearing glasses and an alligator shirt behind a typewriter?”
While it was obviously a thinly-veiled jibe towards the music critics of the world who may like to get on their high horses in between the feigned compliments, the point Prince was making was clear. Clinton was a master of his craft, a founding forefather of funk whose words and approval carried a certain kind of unique majesty.
You could completely understand why this meant more to him than anything else. Indeed, Around the World in a Day may not have been one of his more critically-praised works, but it was this sense of rebelliousness and ingenuity that probably appealed to Clinton more than anything else.
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He’d had his moment in the spotlight with Purple Rain, and now it was time to well and truly throw any of those preconceived notions out of the window. With no major press tours, no massive fanfare, and most notably no singles from the album until a month after its release, the whole idea was that you really had to listen to the music. Clinton could certainly get on board with that.
The lack of pretentiousness at the time did nothing to take away from the fact that Prince was completely blown away by the newfound attention it gave him, though… To be fair, if the godfather of your genre were to compliment you, what would you do, shrug it off like it was nothing? Indeed, it was probably the most human moment he ever had in his life.
