Tracee Ellis Ross Has the Best Prince Story Yet

Having Diana Ross for a mother and charisma for days, Tracee Ellis Ross was always positioned to have the greatest celebrity run-in stories, but her memory of meeting Prince as a pre-teen really is next level.

Ross was on The Ellen DeGeneres Show when Prince inevitably came up. Ross met Prince sometime around 1984 when she was about 11 years old, which puts this story right smack dab in the middle of the Purple Rain era.

As she remembers it, “I went with my mom — and I imagine my sisters, but I know my mom — to a concert of his, and I believe it was, like, Madison Square Garden, it was a stadium concert, it was like a big situation. And we went backstage after and I was with my mom and he was sort of mingling and talking to everybody and he came over and talked to us, and I was 11 or 12 or 13, whatever, and I was just like, ‘It’s Prince, yay.’”

This right here is a better Prince story than 99.9 percent of the human population can boast, but it’s not even gotten good yet.

“He went to walk away and he turned around and he was wearing chaps with nothing else underneath and his bare bottom was exposed and I was like, ‘Oh my god!‘ Like, as a child, I was like, ‘That is disgusting,‘” Ross recalled.

But it’s about to get real good: “And I was like, ‘Mom that is so gross,’ and she goes, ‘No, that’s cool.’”

Diana Ross turns it out, once again.

Ross offered her condolences to Prince’s loved ones, as well. A sentiment she, as the daughter of the Queen of Motown, is uniquely qualified to provide.

“I have to say, it’s heartbreaking; we were all so touched by his music and what he shared with the world, but my heart just so goes out to his family and his loved ones and those people that had a personal relationship with him and a personal connection,” Ross said. “When you love somebody that is that magical, that the world loves them, you have to share them with the world. And I just hope that those people are having their moment to grieve the loss of their friend.”