For the third weekend in a row, Prince enticed fans to Paisley Park on Saturday night and wasn't a tease about performing.
A sharp contrast to the three-night dance party over Labor Day weekend at his Chanhassen studio complex — which cost $40 per night for less than four minutes of stage time by the host all weekend — Saturday's hastily announced shindig only cost $10 a head and amounted to well over two hours of Prince-led, funk-heavy performances.
Instead of jiving fans about taking the stage Saturday, the 57-year-old Rock and Roll Hall of Famer repeatedly teased them about leaving. He said "thank you" and/or "good night" into the microphone about a dozen times before he really did unplug for the last time just before 3 a.m.
The raison d'être this time around was Friday's formal release of his protégé Judith Hill's album "Back in Time," which she recorded at Paisley Park with Prince's heavy involvement. Hill, 31, took lead on a few songs and played keyboards throughout the show but never took center stage, where a perfectly adjusted 5-foot-2 mic stand adorned with Prince's symbol stood all night. As with the prior weekends' events, the backing band featured only one member of 3rdEyeGirl, guitarist Donna Grantis, along with drummer Kirk Johnson, saxophonist Adrian Crutchfield and bassist Mono Neon.
The party started out with a couple quirky false starts — 10- to 15-minute jams that ended with Prince and the band leaving the stage in the smaller, club-sized "atrium" room for a half-hour-plus break.
One of those mini-sets involved an extended version of Hill's "Cry, Cry, Cry," which she performed a week earlier on "The Late Show With Stephen Colbert."
Another found her and Prince trading off lyrics on "As Trains Go By," a seething, topical tune off her record with lines that make his recent protest song "Baltimore" sound like "Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah," including, "They shoot you dead and leave your body out in the street," and, "How many bodies need to hit the ground?"
Bodies began disappearing from Paisley Park as the breaks wore on. Finally, though — around 1:15 a.m. with about 200 people left — Prince & Co. returned to the stage again and stayed for about 90 minutes.