I have to be honest. Growing up I was never really that into Prince. Sure, there were a couple of songs that I liked as a kid but half his stuff was too mature for my young ears and the other half I just didn't understand. I even fell in love with Sheila E. and The Time prior to him. I didn't "get" Prince for a long time and I couldn't understand why. It was around 13 or 14, when I began to create and arrange music that I really began to delve into what Prince was. In similar fashion to exploring Quincy Jones ( my lifelong musical hero) I dug into any and everything I could find. I listened to albums, songs, measures over and over. I read the liner notes and would see pages and pages of credits that contained no other name but his or one of his pseudonyms. It became a very real, yet still indescribable understanding. I became that person who spent hours buried in earphones too big for my head. I became that person who looses sleep for days at a time now over a guitar lick played by some random street musician that I heard in passing 7 years ago. I'm the one that's always tapping her foot, nodding her head in silence with her eyes closed, drumming on a desktop or quietly beatboxing to herself. It isn't nervous energy. It's the physical manifestation of the orchestra that's inside me forcing itself to the surface. I became a person who is unequivocally and unapologetically who I am in direct defiance of who people think I should be, or how I should act or what I should wear. The problem wasn't that I didn't understand Prince. The problem was I didn't know that he understood ME. I knew I had to be at that show and now I feel like I was MEANT to be at that show. This is where I find my solace tonight. #Prince