“Right in front of his keyboard rig was the big symbol guitar. He looks at me, he points at it. I'm like, 'Hell no! I'm not touching that thing!”: D’Angelo was so in awe of Prince that he refused to play his guitar on the one occasion they shared a stage

We lost many great musicians in 2025, but for fans of soul and R&B, it was the death of D’Angelo that hit hardest. His output may have been limited - just three studio albums across 20 years - but the quality was always sky-high.

In fact, such was D’Angelo’s talent that he was sometimes considered to be the natural heir to Prince, who he idolised. However, although he recorded a cover of Prince B-side She’s Always in My Hair in 1997, it’s believed that D’Angelo only got to perform in public with him once, during one of Prince’s legendary late-night aftershow gigs.

This was back in 1997, in the early hours of 24 July at the now-closed Tramps nightclub in New York. Prince had just played a main show at the Jones Beach Amphitheatre, but took to the stage again at around 2 am with his band in tow.

D’Angelo was one of several guests that night - The Roots’ drummer Questlove was another - and got the chance to duet with Prince on Brown Sugar, the title track from his 1995 debut album. He would later discuss the moment with Rolling Stone in 2015, following the release of 2014’s Black Messiah, but only now has the audio from that conversation been released as part of the Rolling Stone Music Now podcast series.

"I lived my whole life for that moment," D'Angelo says of his Prince experience. "I was sitting at the Rhodes, looking at him on the stage.”

Still a young artist at the time, D’Angelo was clearly in awe of his hero, and reveals that he couldn’t bring himself to accept the invitation to play one of Prince’s iconic guitars.

“Right in front of his keyboard rig was the big symbol guitar,” D’Angelo recalls. “He looks at me, he points at it. I'm like, 'Hell fucking no! I'm not touching that thing!... That motherfucker, man.”

By 2015, of course, D’Angelo was a legend in his own right, but even then, he put Prince on a higher artistic plane.

“He continues to be just the star to shoot for, creatively,” he admitted. “I can't think of no one else who's had a bigger influence on me artistically."

Prince’s tragic death in 2016 robbed us of the chance to see the two men on stage together again, but D’Angelo did pay tribute to his idol after he passed away with a moving performance of Sometimes It Snows in April, from Prince and the Revolution’s 1986 album, Parade. And now that D’Angelo has gone too, the sense of loss feels even greater.