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Raphael Saadiq remembers when he thought Prince was a ghost: “It was the scariest s*** ever!

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Kevin Winter/Getty Images Prince would have turned 60 years old today, and Raphael Saadiq, who toured with him for two years, remembers one concert when Prince scared him so much, he actually believed he was a ghost.

“You remember that line in Purple Rain where Prince is holding a puppet saying, ‘Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the funkiest of them all?,’ he tells Variety, recalling being in the dressing room at a show at the Oakland Coliseum.

”I run to the mirror and I say it: ‘Who’s the funkiest of them all?’ And then I hear this voice go, ‘Is that right?’ and Prince was sitting in the chair, looking at me! I swear, he appeared like a ghost, he wasn’t in the room when I got there.”

“I screamed…and ran to the stage. It was the scariest s**t ever,”  Saadiq says.

Saadiq joined Sheila E’s band as a bassist in 1984 when he was 18 years old.  The band opened for and played with Prince on many shows.

The former leader of Tony! Toni! Tone! also remembers a concert in Copenhagen in 2011 when he thought the audience was cheering for him, but it was actually showing love to Prince.  

“I was onstage, the crowd was having a good time, partying, and I did a spin and the crowd went nuts. I’m thinkin’ ‘I’m really killin’ it right now,’’ — and then I turned around and Prince is onstage, dancing behind me. I was killing it, but I wasn’t killing it that much!”  

The Prince estate just announced it’s releasing Piano & a Microphone 1983, an album of songs Prince recorded 35 years ago.  Due out September 21, it contains nine songs of Prince singing only with piano, including an early performance of “Purple Rain.”

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