Prince does not care about the rules. We have known this for a long time, so it is no surprise that he has requested to shake up Saturday Night Live's longstanding two-song format. Instead of prepping and performing two four-minute songs, The Purple One has decided to play one eight-minute jam this Saturday on national television with help from his backing band 3rdEyeGirl.
Billboard reports that the artist, formerly known as The Artist Formerly Known As Prince, last played SNL in 2006. Chris Rock will be hosting for the first time since 1996, when The Wallflowers joined him as musical guest.
Prince has been busy as hell, by the way.
He released two albums — Art Official Age and Plectrum Electrum — at the end of September, and talked about the song "The Breakdown" with Arsenio Hall earlier this year.
"There's a song we've just written called, 'The Breakdown,' he said. "One of the things that we try to do, though, is wait until we have other songs that go together with our favorites. That's why it takes a long time to come out with albums these days. You know, not being under contract, there's no rush."
Asked by an audience member what he'd be doing if he wasn't Prince, the international superstar gave an interesting answer.
"When I was 16, I was completely broke and needed to go get a job and I got the Yellow Pages out and I couldn't find one thing that I wanted to do," he said. "So I decided I was going to push as hard as I could to be a musician and went at it."
He later added: "I think I'd want to teach in some capacity. There's a lot of fine musicians in the group right now, and I'm learning from them. So as much as I'd like to teach, I like to learn."
