CBS’ new live performance particular Let’s Go Loopy: The Grammy Salute to Prince is hosted by Maya Rudolph. Folks might not know that she is a large Prince fan. In reality, she’s such an enormous fan that she fashioned a Prince cowl band referred to as “Princess” along with her pal Gretchen Lieberum they usually carried out for the CBS tribute live performance. Right here’s what you want to learn about their band and their mutual love of Prince and his music.
Maya and Gretchen Are Mates From School
Rudolph and Lieberum have been mates for almost 30 years. They met once they had been each attending the College of California, Santa Cruz within the early 1990s, in accordance with a profile on The Reduce. The primary band they co-founded was SuperSauce, “a nine-person group that carried out unique funk, disco, and soul songs.”
They might have began off taking part in events, however the band later opened for No Doubt when the Gwen Stefani-led group performed a live performance in Santa Cruz. However the ladies particularly bonded over their mutual love of Prince. They even had the identical poster of him hanging on their wall as youngsters.
“I had the Parade poster on my wall with him, like, peeling his tank high off together with his armpit hair, and my Jewish grandma was like, ‘He appears like a woman, honey,’” Rudolph informed The Reduce. “First it was simply the music [I loved], after which I needed to bone him onerous.”
Lieberum, who’s an expert jazz vocalist, added, “There’s undoubtedly two camps: the those who need to bone him, and the individuals which are like, ‘What?!’”
In a 2016 interview, they each additionally informed the Washington Put up once they first grew to become Prince followers. For Lieberum, it was when she was a child and “When Doves Cry” got here on the radio.
“My mother had gone grocery purchasing and left me within the automobile — as a result of it was the ’80s and mothers did that then — and it got here on the radio and I used to be mesmerized by it. I’d by no means heard something prefer it. There’s not many songs the place I can keep in mind the primary time I heard them, however that was one among them for positive. After which I acquired [Purple Rain] and have become obsessive about the album, and the film simply destroyed my little mind,” stated Lieberum.
Rudolph added that Prince’s music was in her home “fairly early on” due to one among her older cousins — and he or she didn’t notice what most of his lyrics meant till she acquired a lot older.
Princess Fashioned in 2011
In 2011, Rudolph and Lieberum fashioned Princess, which they name a “celebration” of Prince’s music. They informed The Reduce they’d have stopped taking part in instantly in the event that they heard Prince wasn’t in favor of their band, however he truly as soon as noticed them after a live performance and informed them he had their 2012 Tonight Present efficiency saved on his DVR.
4 years in the past, the band appeared on The Tonight Present once more to carry out a tribute to Prince after his premature dying in April 2016. They sang an emotional model of “Generally It Snows in April” with D’Angelo, who broke down in the course of the efficiency.
Let’s Go Loopy: The Grammy Salute to Prince airs Tuesday, April 21 from 9 p.m. to 11 p.m. ET/PT on CBS.