The world lost a legend and a musical genius when Prince passed away last week at the age of 57.
People in all walks of life have been honoring the legend’s memory the past couple days as most sporting events or radio shows have been blasting Prince music at any opportunity, a litany of NBA players have paid their respects to Prince over Twitter as well.
One interesting story re-surfaced though, and it involves the time that Prince was a tenant renting out Carlos Boozer’s multi-million dollar mansion in Chicago in 2004.
According to an ESPN Chicago story from 2011, Prince had his eye on the 10 bedroom, 11 bathroom Chicago mansion that Boozer just purchased and approached Boozer’s people about renting it out.
Boozer initially had no interest in the proposition, but when Prince offered to pay $70,000 a month to rent out Boozer’s pad he couldn’t resist and Prince became Carlos Boozer’s tenant.
Prince, being the genius and eccentric extravagant that he was, took no time adding his own touch to the mansion.
In a 2011 interview that former Boozer and current ESPN Analyst Jay Williams had with ESPN Chicago he shared the story Boozer told him of Prince completely renovating the house in a way that only Prince could and Carlos Boozer was none too happy:
“Supposedly, Prince changed the front gate to the Prince sign, he changed the master bedroom to a hair salon, he changed the streaming blue waters that led to the front door to purple water, he knocked out walls, he changed the molding on top of the ceiling.” Williams said to ESPN 1000 Chicago in 2011. “Booz was livid. So pissed off, so angry … He put his Purple Rain stamp on it … Booz was like, ‘I was getting ready to go over there and beat this little man down.”
Boozer was so livid that he initially filed a lawsuit against Prince, but when he approached him about all of the changes Prince simply offered Boozer a $1 million check to restore the house to its previous look.
Here is William’s re-enactment of the conversation between him and Boozer about the encounter:
“Dude was just like ‘Here, Boozer, here is a little check for about a million, it’ll take care of everything, get it back the way you want it.’ And Booz was like, ‘This little man is cool as hell.”
When asked about the situation Boozer refused to go into detail about everything the Prince changed about the home to suit his unique “lifestyle” just that Prince altered the home to fit his specific lifestyle, which was very different than that of Boozer’s.
We all know about the classic story of Prince inviting Charlie and Eddie Murphy over to play pick-up basketball, serving them pancakes with grapes afterwards which was immortalized forever on The Chappelle Show and now we have yet another great Prince anecdote to revel in.
Game, blouses. https://t.co/2TYcwRVMGO
— The Topshelf Co. (@weshootpeople) April 22, 2016
One can only hope more great Prince stories surface as we continue to honor the passing of one of music’s most talented and accomplished artists.
