Being androgynous in music was a thing that we had seen before
with David Bowie and Elton John and a lot of white rock artists.
When it came to black artists, especially black male artists,
it was not very common at all
and Prince kind of made that his thing
and that's just how he was.
He was the first artist that made you feel okay
with playing around with the masculine/feminine thing.
We see it today all the time.
Men, these skinny jeans, they didn't just come from nowhere.
Prince was wearing skinny jeans before there was a skinny jean.
Right now I'm in an oversized koozie sweater
that's really "supposed to be" men's attire.
In terms of fashion and seeing it in music that way,
he made that okay.
Prince performed with bikini briefs, thigh high boots,
and a trench coat.
And his hair was kind of like washed and not straightened
but not curled, just kind of there.
As far as opening yourself up for sexuality,
he was the king and the queen of that.
Look at his sophomore album.
Prince just shows up with the ill perm, no shirt.
Nobody could really explain what Prince was really doing.
I love Prince's style. Prince would do a lot of
high-collared blouses with the ruffled front.
Prince always pushed the envelope with every look.
I got the honor of kind of seeing Prince work his magic
in Paisley Park in Minneapolis
and I honestly have to say that
it was probably one the best experiences of my life.
And I want his whole wardrobe. He literally, like,
I would steal his clothes if I could, but I can't
'cause he's really good at knowing what his clothes are.
He was a little dude, he walked around
in these 5-inch, 6-inch heels all the time.
Everything ultra-tight, you know,
the ass-less pants at one point.
You know, my man had like ass-less pants,
which I think about. That's some of the wildest shit ever.
I would never do that.
To me, it spoke to his drive and his urge to be free.
♪ This thing called love, are ya up on this? ♪
Before Prince, the only person we'd seen
who even had a shimmer of being more feminine was,
what, Little Richard?
And that was a whole generation or two before him.
Prince pushed the boundaries on
what people expected men to wear.
We wouldn't find a lot of men wanting to wear all of this.
It was in the context of Prince, it was acceptable
and any context offstage, when you're not Prince, it was nuts.
I grew up as a Southern Baptist in Houston, Texas,
so I grew up definitely having certain views about things
about sexuality, everything.
And Prince changed my life.
Like, that's just the end of story.
The same time he's talking about all these things about sex,
Prince was always talking about God
and how it relates to God and how we all come from God
and how we are all just souls and energy,
and not what's on the outside
that we are always looking at so much.
So Prince just made me open my eyes
and made me realize certain prejudices that I held
that I just had to let go of and realize, like, who cares?
I think it was a way of challenging this ideal of that
you have to super duper hard and angry and "Agh!" all the time.
It's like, "No. I'm chilling over here
with my heels on and my three girlfriends."
♪ You got look
There were always questions around his sexuality,
around him looking androgynous, and he never cared.
In fact, he took it to the next level.
We have artists that are doing that right now.
We have men that are faces of women's brands now.
And these are really cool dudes.
Pharrell with Chanel.
We have Jaden Smith, the face of Louis Vuitton.
Dior, A$AP Rocky.
And these are mainly women's brands
and they're using men to promote them.
He always played with this duality
and the symbol that he chose reflected that.
When Prince changed his name from Prince to a symbol,
it is a combination of the male and female symbols,
which also symbolized his androgynous nature,
that's what his music embodied. So it was, like, perfect.
His bar was so high that you just-
you wanna become, like, the best version of yourself
and grow and grow and grow.