To say Justin Timberlake‘s Super Bowl halftime performance drew “mixed reaction,” would be a big purple understatement, but no matter what you thought of the show, there’s no question Prince himself would have objected.
So why in the world would Prince fans be united in their condemnation of JT’s superpurple ragamuffin projection tribute? The answer is simple..
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In a 1998 interview with Guitar World magazine, Prince was asked directly about the use of digital editing to “create a situation where you could jam with any artist from the past.” The artist, formerly known as, well, “The Artist,” did not mince his words…
To put it mildly, the purple one was not a fan of another artist using his likeness postmortem.
“That’s the most demonic thing imaginable,” he said. “Everything is as it is, and it should be. If I was meant to jam with Duke Ellington, we would have lived in the same age. That whole virtual reality thing … it really is demonic. And I am not a demon. Also, what they did with that Beatles song (Free As A Bird), manipulating John Lennon’s voice to have him singing from across the grave … that’ll never happen to me. To prevent that kind of thing from happening is another reason why I want artistic control.” source
Photo by Christopher Polk/Getty Images