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CHRIS ROBERTS: Marty Keller, owner of Media Savant Communications in Minneapolis, witnessed the beginning of Prince's ascent but probably never would have predicted it. Keller was writing for City Pages in the late '70s and went to see this teenager Prince play at the Capri Theater in North Minneapolis.

MARTIN KELLER: I thought, cool band, interesting costumes. There's some good songs here, but the stage presence had not been worked out. It was totally flat.

[PRINCE, "PARTYUP"]

CHRIS ROBERTS: Six months later, Prince had another big gig at the State Theater, which Keller also covered.

MARTIN KELLER: And it was night and day. He had somehow transformed into Prince with very little clothes on and just tearing it up.

PRINCE: (SINGING) We don't give a damn

We just want a jam

Party up

Party up

Got to party up

That army bag

MARTIN KELLER: I think the Twin Cities were the perfect place to create an anomaly like Prince.

CHRIS ROBERTS: Keller says back in the early '80s, when Prince started hitting the charts, the Twin Cities was one of the whitest radio markets in the country and ironically, the last to play his songs. Prince was the opposite of lily white. He had a multiracial, mixed gender band that played music that invited everyone in, white and Black, straight and gay.

[PRINCE, "UPTOWN"]

PRINCE: (SINGING) Uptown

That's where I want to be

Uptown

Set your mind free

Uptown

Got my body hot

Get down

I don't want to stop no

CHRIS ROBERTS: Prince himself grew up on a steady diet of Sly Stone, James Brown, and Stevie Wonder but was also exposed to a healthy dose of Midwestern rock and pop because that was all the radio played.

For Keller, part of Prince's genius is how he melded the two.

MARTIN KELLER: I don't think anyone's done it better. I mean, I would imagine 30, 40 years down the road since then, someone has but not with the reach that he has, and original brushstroke.

CHRIS ROBERTS: There's always a strong temptation to compare Prince to Minnesota's other even more reclusive icon, Bob Dylan. But to Keller, a more interesting pairing, one that maybe reflects the yin and yang of Minnesota culture, is with another performer who had a meteoric rise in the '80s, Garrison Keillor.

Keller says Keillor represents the good country stock who settled the state.

MARTIN KELLER: And here's the libido, the Minnesota libido manifested in Prince, the bad boy who's not afraid to run around almost undressed onstage, and talk about sexuality, and really push the social norms of Lake Wobegon, if you will.

[PRINCE & THE REVOLUTION, "BABY I'M A STAR"] Look me over

Tell me do you like what you see

Hey

CHRIS ROBERTS: That's Prince's stage persona. But what is he like in person as a bandleader and collaborator?

MICHAEL BLAND: He works harder than any musician I've ever worked with in my life.

CHRIS ROBERTS: Michael Bland's first regular job as a musician was drummer for Prince. He was a 19-year-old Augsburg College student playing with a legendary local R&B band, Dr. Mambo's Combo. Prince saw him down at Bunkers one night and basically hired him on the spot.

That was in 1989, and Bland drummed for Prince's group, the New Power Generation, for the next seven years. What Bland admires most about Prince is how he always looks forward artistically and his commitment to his craft.

MICHAEL BLAND: And a lot of people these days, they really want to be famous. They don't really want to be great at what they do. They just want to be famous and/or rich. And I think that has been the key to his success is to stay true to the art itself.

CHRIS ROBERTS: But taking direction and trying to please someone who can play 25 instruments and record and produce his own music isn't a walk in the park, even if it's Paisley Park. Prince is notorious for being a perfectionist. And playing for him means having to constantly meet his incredibly high expectations.

Put it this way, Bland never found it to be relaxing.

MICHAEL BLAND: Just going to cause you stress either way. Whether you're not up to the challenge or whether you are up to the challenge, you're going to go through the same minefield and hope you don't step on anything.

CHRIS ROBERTS: Where was the joy in it, do you think, for you, working with Prince?

MICHAEL BLAND: [LAUGHS] I think George Clinton put it best, which is, funk is its own reward. I mean, just to be playing with the best of the best.

[PRINCE, "LET'S WORK"] Let's work

Let's work

CHRIS ROBERTS: Prince has always been extremely protective of his brand and distrustful of anyone who might try to benefit from his music or image. But he opened up to Minneapolis writer Neil Karlen, who did a cover story on him for Rolling Stone in 1985.

In fact, Karlen got kind of a career boost for being the guy who got Prince to break his silence. Karlen says he pretty quickly found Prince to be canny, smart, and bonded to his home in Minneapolis, which surprised Karlen.

NEAL KARLEN: Because this seems like the last place he'd want to be, out of just pride. This is the last place in the country that played his music. There is that Minnesota, if you're so good, what are you doing here, thing going on.

And it is funny. I love telling friends in New York or LA, if you see a stretch limo here, it's either Prince or the graduating class of Richfield High School on prom night.

CHRIS ROBERTS: Some years ago, Prince packed up his Paisley Park belongings and moved to LA. And Prince sightings at stores, on the highway, and certainly at the club ceased. But for many, it was inevitable he would move back. And last year, he did.

Now, people are spotting Prince regularly again. He's even popped into Karlen's favorite Minneapolis coffee house a couple of times.

NEAL KARLEN: It's so funny because right across from the coffee shop, Patrick Stewart walked in one day when he was performing at the Guthrie, and the entire neighborhood was talking about it for months. The guy from Star Trek was here. And yet Prince, who will go down as probably one of the great musicians of the century or however you cross the millennium, is sort of like, yeah, yeah, you know.

I don't know if it's familiarity breeds contempt, or familiarity breeds familiarity. I'm not quite sure.

CHRIS ROBERTS: It's like an unwritten rule in Minnesota, don't swarm on the celebrities, especially the ones who live here. Michael Bland thinks Prince really appreciates that.

MICHAEL BLAND: Prince can go to the Byerly's in Chanhassen, buy a couple of things off the shelf, and go through the line, and there's no hassle. There's no paparazzi. There's just people shopping, and oh, there goes Prince. I think that he enjoys that, whereas in Los Angeles, he can't go anywhere.

CHRIS ROBERTS: But that doesn't mean there isn't a special place in the collective heart of Minnesotans for Prince. A psychoanalyst might theorize that Prince makes people here feel less homogeneous and more open minded. But Marty Keller doesn't take it that far. Keller says Prince is just a homey who done good.

MARTIN KELLER: I mean, he definitely appealed to people of lots of different sexual persuasions, races of all colors, and that's to his credit. But I don't think of him like that. I just think of him like, this guy's just a monster talent, and we have him here.

CHRIS ROBERTS: In nearly every aspect of his career, Prince has been a pioneer. He was the first to demonstrate how a musician could use the internet to achieve independence, in Prince's case, a very wealthy independence.

As for his lifetime achievement award from BET, he's only 52. Given his renowned productivity, he's got years of music still to write, and he's probably stashed away what would be four careers worth of songs for other musicians in the vault. Maybe that's what BET is really celebrating.

Chris Roberts, Minnesota Public Radio News.

[PRINCE, "OL' SKOOL COMPANY"] Every once in a while

You need some ol' skool company

Somebody that appreciates a sexy groove

And a old school melody

When god his son and the love of family

Ruled in the community

The songs you sing lift you up to heaven

A heaven we can believe in

Everybody talking about hard time

Like it just started yesterday

People I know they've been struggling

At least it seems that way

Fat cats on Wall Street

They got a bailout

While somebody else got to wait

700 billion but my old neighborhood

Ain't nothing changed but the date

Listen

Every once in awhile

You need some ol' skool company

Somebody that appreciates a sexy groove

And a old school melody

When god his son and the love of family

Ruled in the community

The songs you sing lift you up to heaven

Heaven we can believe in

Ain't nothing ever came from complaining

Except for a bit of heart

That's true

Follow along and you go on to do something

Before the next chorus is through

The songs we sing they used to mean something

Now every other one's just mean

Rather than reminisce I'm telling you this

It's time for a brand new scene

Oh whoa

Every once in a while

You need some ol' skool company

Somebody that appreciates a sexy, sexy groove

A old school melody

When god his son and the love of family

Ruled in the community

The songs you can sing

Lift you up to heaven

Heaven we can believe in

Everybody's sinking into quicksand

Created by the keepers of time

Cast aside by using ancient tricks

Changing your state of mind

They got you catering to the whims of the flesh before

Before you'll get your paper right

Call me old fashioned

But back in the day

Wasn't no shorties in sight Got that money.

Cause every day y'all need some ol' skool company

We we we need it

Sexy groove

That we would believe in

Ruled in the community