For those who don’t know, Maya Rudolph is in a cool Prince cover band called Princess. And, during a stop on The Tonight Show last night, Rudolph and her bandmate Gretchen Lieberum joined D’Angelo in a tribute to the legendary musician with a spectacular performance of “Sometime it Rains in April.”
D’Angelo played the piano and sang while Rudolph and Lieberum sang background vocals.
The incredibly moving tribute will leave you in tears. As D’Angelo sings his voice breaks slightly, he pauses, and composes himself, and it’s in that moment that everyone’s heart breaks. He also adjusts the somber tribute to say “I often dream of heaven, and I know that Prince is there/Maybe he’s found the answer to all the April snow.”
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Earlier this week, Rudolph and Lieberum also paid tribute to His Purple Highness during a gig in Austin, Texas. The band covered everything from “Controversy” to “Let’s Pretend We’re Married” and did a 13-minute long encore of “Purple Rain” while tossing flowers into the audience.
“Dearly beloved, we are gathered here to celebrate the one-of-a-kind, most brilliant, most special, most magical, most f***ing incredible Prince Rogers Nelson. He was our hero. We loved him. And he has completely shaped our world. We’re going to do this together, am I right?” Maya shouted to the crowd.
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Rudolph also shared her first experience seeing Prince perform and talked about the time she met the singer after a show. “It was amazing … and we got to meet him backstage. I got to tell him that story, and he was so fucking cool. He knew that we did Princess and he really supported it, because he knew that it came from love.”
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Soon, the Saturday Night Live veteran couldn’t hold back tears any longer as she cried, “You never think your heroes are going to die. It’s so strange, but it happened to me. My hero died. I never knew what that felt like. And it’s so sad, because there just aren’t that many incredible musicians left. I’ve been a Prince fan my whole life and am realizing how many other people in the world loved him. I don’t know what we’re going to do, but now I just want to sing more songs. I know that’s what Prince would do.”
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