The Night Tracy Morgan Got Kicked Out of Prince’s House
Prince holds a mythic place in Saturday Night Live lore. His Royal Badness was brought to life in several sketches by Fred Armisen, and the show’s alumni are still buzzing about his early-morning performance after the 40th anniversary show. “I was singing back-up with Chris Rock,” bragged Jimmy Fallon. “And I just gotta say — and I’m still on that high — it was one of the best nights of my whole entire life.”
Longtime SNL cast member and Prince superfan Tracy Morgan also has fond memories, even if the legendary singer once kicked the comic out of his West-Coast house. “Prince is a recluse!” Howard Stern told the comic in 2008. “How did you end up at Prince’s house?”
Morgan got the invite when Prince threw a Grammys afterparty, arriving on a bus with Jennifer Lopez. “Everybody was in there, man. If you was somebody, you was in there,” he said. “The drinks was going for free, he was playing with his band. He was in the living room, he had his pajamas on playing guitar, and it was just rocking.”
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The party kept going until the sun came up. By this point, everyone had vacated the purple premises — well, almost everybody. “It was just me and my boy Bradley, sitting down on his couch with two girls getting drunk, still going at it,” Morgan bragged.
Prince wasn’t having it. “I looked up and him and his wife was at the door,” Morgan remembered. “And he was like, ‘You got to leave.’”
An inebriated Morgan made his way to the door and grabbed the singer by the back of his neck. “Prince is a pretty motherfucker,” Morgan admitted. “I got gay for about five seconds. God damn it! Whoo!”
What does a man say when he has his hand on the back of Prince’s neck, Stern wanted to know. “I said, ‘My father loves ‘When Doves Cry,’” revealed Morgan.
“Yeah, yeah,” Prince replied according to a memorial Morgan wrote for Billboard. “Just get the fuck out.”
But the comic’s night/early morning wasn’t quite done yet. He and his group left the house and smoked a blunt in the driveway as the sun came up. “Imagine that,” Morgan sighed to Stern.
“Was he an influence? Absolutely!” Morgan remembered in Billboard. “He was free, he came from the heart. He was talking about making love, he was a sexy man!”
