Lianne La Havas has recalled doing a “supermarket sweep” for Prince.
The pair became friends during the latter years of the late music legend’s life, with Prince playing at her home in Leyton, east London in 2014, and the ‘Green and Gold’ singer has revealed she once had to cook a meal for The Purple One.
Lianne told Jessie Ware on her ‘Table Manners’ podcast: “Ok, I’ll tell you a story. I cooked lunch for him one time. I think it was before I was vegan or like a few months before I was vegan actually. It was 2014 and he flew me out to Minneapolis to Paisley Park to just kind of hang out, potentially work on music, this is where I ended up being a part of his album, Art Official Age, but it wasn’t presented to me in that way, it was just like ‘hey, come hang out.’ Anyway, I remember he picked me up from my hotel in a giant low black car that was like a batmobile and it had the symbol in the upholstery of the car, it was so amazing and he was like ‘do you want to cook me lunch?’ and I was like ‘ok’ and he took me to the supermarket.”
Jessie asked: “What was that like, going round the aisles with Prince?”, to which she replied: “He didn’t go in.”
The ‘Spotlight’ hitmaker then suggested that Lianne went on a “supermarket sweep”.
And the 31-year-old musician shared how the ‘Purple Rain’ hitmaker – who died in 2016 aged 57 from an opioid overdose – gave her $100 to buy the ingredients for a vegetarian supper, and when she went to pay, she’d lost the money.
Fortunately, someone found the money and, as Lianne had already paid on her card, she gave Prince the money back.
They then went to the park to watch the World Cup together and tucked into their tapas meal, but Prince picked out the mushrooms as he wasn’t a fungi lover.
She continued: “It was literally like that, I went in and I was like ‘oh my god, what do I get?’ He was like ‘I’ll just wait here.’ He gave me some money as well, he gave me like a 100 dollar bill and I put it in my pocket. I was wearing this skirt… basically what happened; he gave me the money, I was like a supermarket sweeper there like ‘what the hell do I cook for Prince?’ He was vegetarian, that was all the information I had. So I go there, it was really like a Wholefoods type one, you can get whatever grains you want, dried mushrooms or whatever. So I was like ‘I don’t know…I’m going to saute some mushrooms, I’m going to make him an avocado and tomato salad and I’ll make some chips or something, like some sauteed potatoes, I don’t know.’ So I go in and get everything I need and then I’m at the checkout and then I reach out into my pocket and the money’s gone. And I was like ‘oh no I have lost Prince’s money. What do I do?’ And then someone tapped me on the shoulder, hands me an envelope and they were like ‘I think you dropped this.’ And someone had picked up the money and put it in an envelope for me and returned it to me. Somehow they knew it was mine. And then by that point, I had paid on my card and then I got back in the car and gave Prince back the money. And then we went to Plassey Park and I cooked him this sort of tapas lunch and then we watched the World Cup final.”
Jessie asked: “Did he eat your dinner?”, to which she responded: “He didn’t eat the mushrooms, he has a thing about mushrooms…but he ate the salad. He liked the salad.”
Listen to the full episode now on the ‘Table Manners’ podcast on all major podcasting platforms.