For 90 minutes last night, Prince found the common ground between virtuosic guitar shredding and house-party funk, with the scales tipped generously toward the former. The Purple One and his backing band, 3rdEyeGirl, turned nearly every song they touched into an extended jam, reinventing some old classics and playing some unfamiliar new stuff as well. He opened with “Let’s Go Crazy.” He closed with “I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man.” Neither sounded anything remotely like the record, but those two hits anchored an exploratory, guitar-solo-drenched set that was the sound of one guy doing exactly whatever the funk he wanted. And everyone in the crowd was completely fine with it.
In fact, at the start of last night’s late show—which began relatively promptly, not long after 11:30—with the Roseland’s interior walls freshly painted purple for the occasion, the noise of the cheering crowd almost drowned out the sound coming from the stage, which wasn’t exactly quiet. Bedecked in a skintight black-and-white shirt and a small, fuzzy fro, Prince appeared at the front of the stage as 3rdEyeGirl’s sludgy, slow remake of “Let’s Go Crazy” came from behind the curtains (did you know the Roseland even had curtains?), which parted as the song launched into gear. It was the “pinch me” moment of the show, with everyone in the crowd not quite believing that, yes, this is actually Prince, and yes, he’s actually playing this song, and yes, you are actually in the room with him.