Prince was one of our own, and he made Minnesota seem cool

I was discussing music with a friend at a house party in Bloomington not long ago when the conversation turned to Prince.

"Ugh, Prince is so overrated," my friend spewed. "Minnesotans only love him because he's from here."

My friend's questionable musical tastes aside (overrated?), he was right about one thing: Minnesotans love Prince, and we love him because he is one of us. More talented, funkier, better dressed and far cooler than any of us dare dream to be, but Prince was — and always will be — a Minnesotan.

Minnesota boasts of a lot of amazing artists — Bob Dylan, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Judy Garland, Stifler from those "American Pie" movies — but Prince was different because he stayed here. While other talented native sons and daughters fled to places like Los Angeles and New York and never looked back, Prince kept Minnesota as his home. He lived here (at least a large portion of the time), recorded here, cheered for our sports teams and shopped at Target. (OK, I may have made up the last one, but chances are even Prince needed to buy toilet paper and shampoo once in a while.) It's only fitting that his last breaths were taken here as well.

Aside from his otherworldly talent, Minnesotans have another reason to revere Prince: He made us all look a little better. To most of the world, Minnesota is just part of "flyover country" — a frozen wasteland best known for having some lakes and being occupied by blonde people with goofy accents. But Prince made Minnesota cool, or least somewhat cooler than we were before he came along.

One of the baddest, raddest dudes — one of the biggest rock stars the world has ever seen — is from our boring ol' wintry state. Minnesota can't possibly be lame if we produced someone like Prince!

Of course, all true Minnesotans have a Prince story, or at least we have a friend who has a Prince story that we sometimes pawn off as our own. There are stories of the times Prince surprised the unexpecting audience with an impromptu jam session at the local jazz club, or when he mingled through the crowd at the radio station's annual music festival, or when he was spotted at the Metrodome cheering for the Vikings, or when he invited the public to late-night pajama parties at Paisley Park.

I have a friend of a friend who once helped Prince pick out pants at a vintage store in Minneapolis.

Sure, these aren't exactly revelations, but they are our Prince stories, dammit, and we enjoy telling them over and over.

This week the world lost a great musician, but Minnesotans lost one of our own. Goodbye, Prince, may you rest in peace, but hopefully not in quiet. You'd better be rocking out up there!

Julie Liew lives in St. Paul.