10 Years Ago: Prince Died
Today in 2016, Prince died at his studio, Paisley Park
Prince was a big deal to a lot of people, but he was a really big deal if you lived in Minneapolis between 1984 and 2016. Like everyone who lived in Minneapolis in their 20s, I have a Prince story. It’s a quickie:
Prince had a way of shaping lives there, either directly or implicitly. Maybe you were a lucky fan who drove out to Paisley Park to see a late-night Chaka Khan performance, or maybe you were a journalist who landed your first big interview from him, or maybe he stole your girl. I personally remember his death — 10 years ago today of a fentanyl overdose at age 57 — as the founding moment for several groupchats that persist to this day. Every year around this time, those chats light up again.
This year, the chats have been revisiting The Book of Prince, the 9-hour documentary directed by Ezra Edelman — which you famously have not seen. NYT Mag wrote about the whole scandal back in 2024. The director, Ezra Edelman, spent 5 years making the 9-hour documentary, but the Prince estate battled Netflix to prevent its release.
When the story came out, many people predicted the same thing: Oh, this will leak online. But so far, it hasn’t.
Netflix is supposedly working on a different project with the Prince estate, but we haven’t heard much about that. Meanwhile, Edelman, who made arguably the best docuseries of all time, O.J.: Made in America, is currently working on a new project for HBO about Barry Bonds.
MORE ANNIVERSARIES
1 Year Ago Today: Pope Francis — the first Jesuit pope and the first Latin American pope — died.
40 Years Ago Today: Geraldo’s The Mystery of Al Capone’s Vaults (1986) was broadcast live. The whole thing was insanely boring, but you can watch it on YouTube if you don’t believe me.
60 Years Ago Today: The Rastafari holiday Grounation Day began, in honor of Haile Selassie’s 1966 visit to Jamaica.
100 Years Ago Today: Elizabeth II was born. She died in 2022 at age 96.
500 Years Ago Today: The Mughal Empire of the Indian subcontinent was founded in 1526.
Tune in Tomorrow: Jack Kerouac finished On the Road on a…. scroll?