Purple Cupcakes and Raspberry Beret-ed Iced Tea

In celebration of the Purple One's birthday, Ziti presents to you:

20 Reasons why Prince will always be the original Don Dada:

[Note: Originally posted in June of 2006. Re-posted in honor of Prince's B-Day.]

1. Only musician (still) rocking a perm (outside of James Brown) that you give props to.

2. Only dude that can dress like a cross between a 3 Musketeer and a pirate and get away with it.....and take your girl.

3. Can talk about doing "the nasty" and God all in the same song.

4. Met Nikki in a hotel lobby, masturbating in a magazine.

5. Starfish and Coffee

6. Influenced a whole generation of musicians: Andre 3000, Bilal, D'angelo, Raphael Saadiq, Meshell N'degeocello, Common, TLC, Questlove, N.E.R.D., Badu, Alicia Keys, Missy Elliot, Alanis Morrisette, Cody Chestnutt, Trent Reznor, Lenny Kravitz and the list goes on.

7. Adore

8. He can ride a purple motorcycle, with a freshly permed do, wearing a purple trenchcoat and high heels.....with a guitar on his back.....and take your girl!

9. Has more aliases than Wu-Tang, Nas, Madlib, Jay-Z, Snoop Dogg and Outkast combined.

10. Makes thick bodied sexy's purify themselves in the waters of Lake Minnetonka ("wait that's not Lake Minnetonka!")

11. Can wear pants with the butt cheeks cut out.......and take your girl!

12. No one else has killer lines like these:

"You don't have to watch Dynasty to have an attitude" (from "Kiss")

"You can tear up my clothes, smash up my ride...well maybe not the ride" (from "Adore")

"If I was your girlfriend would you come to me if somebody hurt you--- even if that somebody was me? ("If I Was Your Girlfriend")

"You sexy muthaf*cker" ("Sexy MotherF*cker")

"Damn U, you're so fine" ("Damn U")

"I wanna be your lover. I wanna be your mother and your sister too" ("I Wanna Be Your Lover")

"Does everybody know about the quake? BULLSHIT!" ("Housequake")

13. 20 years after Purple Rain he can still toss you a heater like "Black Sweat".

14. Named a group after one of his babes (Vanity 6) and made her the lead singer. Then bounced her, put another babe in her spot and re-named it after her (Apollonia 6). Now that's "gangsta"!

15. One of the few artists, outside of Hip Hop, that had background dancers as part of his group (i.e. Jerome Benton circa "Under The Cherry Moon" and Kat circa "Sign Of The Times"). I betcha that's where Kane got the idea for Scoob & Scrap.

16. Speaking of Hip Hop...wasn't the song "1999" a posse track? [do the math: Dez Dickerson, Gayle Chapman, Lisa Coleman and Prince].

17. Can give an artist a throwaway track and make them hot! (See: Sinead O'Connor, Patti Labelle, Tevin Campbell, The Family, The Time, The Bangles, Sheena Easton, Chaka Khan *see bottom)

18. One more nod to Hip Hop: didn't Prince (a.k.a. The Kid) and Morris Day portray artist "beefing" with each other prior to 50 Cent and Ja Rule? Matter of fact this was before Shan and KRS-One! AND....how gangster was it in [the movie] Purple Rain when Morris Day goes, "So how's the family?" right after Prince's dad shot himself? That sh*t could've been on a mixtape! That's right up there with Makavelli's "Hit Em Up" or Nasir's "Ether".

19. Walked into a record exec meeting, at Warner Brothers, with the word "slave" written on his face. If you don't see how raw that is, try pulling that same sh*t at work tomorrow!

20. You gotta be an icon when you change your name to a f*cking symbol! A F*CKING SYMBOL! I mean changing your name? Sure....that's been done. But how many dudes can pull some sh*t like changing their name to something that looks like a pretzel (with no way to pronounce it) and have the balls to be DEAD serious! Even if you made jokes, he still had mofo's calling him "The Artist". Game recognize game.

Note: Eddie Murphy has gone on record saying Prince did indeed whup him and Charlie Murph in basketball.....wearing heels! AND this was said years before Chapelle's Show was on the air!

* Even before the Prince connection, Chaka had a hit with her cover of "I Feel For You" another Prince penned gem.

Oh yeah....what's up with Taja Sevelle? "Love Is Contagious" was my sh*t!

Happy Birthday, Prince.

Ziti

p.s. do you think you could send one of those lingerie wearing, mulatto sexy's my way?