Prince Secretly Bought The House From This Movie
The musical genius known as Prince created a massive infrastructure to keep his secrets. The BBC reported that he created multiple pseudonyms, like Peter Bravestrong, Jamie Starr, and Alexander Nevermind to conceal his identity while traveling or setting up meetings. Misty Copeland told GQ that he would frequently make phone calls using fake accents and disguising his voice.
And then there was the mythical secret vault. For years, rumors swirled about Prince's Paisley Park secret vault — how big it was, what was in it, and if it even existed at all. But evidence of the vault surfaced after investigators into Prince's unexpected death provided photos depicting a staggering trove of thousands upon thousands of his songs, many of which were unreleased, per Pro Sound News. Others were unpublished versions of songs Prince fans have come to know and love.
During a 2014 interview, Prince mentioned in passing the vault where he hid songs "no one's ever heard," but it wasn't entirely clear he was talking about The Vault. "Yeah, I like time capsule stuff," Prince told Rolling Stone. "I have a couple Revolution albums in the vault and two Time albums, one Vanity 6 album ... and tons of stuff recorded in different periods. But so much gets recorded that you don't have time to compile everything."
Prince bought the Purple Rain house before he died
Prince's careful curation of his artistic life wasn't limited to his music. Just months before his death, Prince secretly bought the house whose exterior appeared in his 1984 film "Purple Rain," where The Kid lived with his parents.
Deborah Larsen of Coldwell Banker Burnet in Minneapolis said a woman in California called wanting to pay cash for the house at 3420 Snelling Avenue in the Longfellow neighborhood of Minneapolis after it had been on the market for a week, the AP reported. "Revitalize this historic home which Prince featured in his Purple Rain movie," read the Caldwell Banker listing, per the Star Tribune.
Prince's company, NPG Music Publishing, bought the 1913 "fixer-upper" for $117,000 — $7,000 more than the $110,000 listing price. To be sure, it's not the same property as his "Purple House" on Lake Riley in Chanhassen, Minnesota, which he built a few years after his Purple Rain notoriety kicked in. That entirely purple home was demolished at his wishes following the death of his father in 2003.
Prince never lived in the 1,348 square foot, three-bedroom, two-bath home on Snelling Ave., and Larsen doesn't know why Prince would want it, saying the house needed "a lot of repairs." Maybe he left sheet music in the basement.