MINNEAPOLIS — Andre Cymone, Prince’s childhood bestie, wants to reclaim his role in the creating of the Minneapolis Sound.

The two lived together in the basement of Cymone’s family home on Russell Avenue N. as teens, crafting musical ideas and forming the band Grand Central. That was the incubator that helped make Prince Prince and hatched the Minneapolis Sound.

“A lot of people don’t know my connection to the Time stuff to the original [Prince] stuff and how involved I was in Grand Central,” Cymone said this week from Los Angeles. “I want to reestablish that I am legitimately one of the architects of this particular sound.”

To reassert his bona fides in building the sound that made Minneapolis famous, Cymone has released “The Resurrection of Funk,” a new album that will bring him to the Capri Theater in north Minneapolis this Saturday.

“It’s a full circle moment for me,” Cymone said. “This is my neighborhood.”

Cymone, 68, sees the Capri, which is celebrating its centennial, as playing a vital role in the Northside community.

“It’s important that kids in urban neighborhoods have a lifeline so they can realize there are still dreams out there,” he said of the Capri, where he met with young people last year. “You can have a dream in entertainment, a dream in art, in music. There is a place to go in the neighborhood where you can home in on that craft.”

The Capri, then primarily a movie theater, is where Prince made his professional debut in January 1979 with Cymone on bass. The sideman remembers those two gigs vividly.

“Prince had major stage fright. Not just once. Maybe twice,” Cymone recalled. “I had to do the whole ‘Spinal Tap’ thing and kind of give him the eyebrows. They could speak without me having to say anything, which meant, ‘C’mon man. This is your moment.’ It was his very first time ever fronting a band.”

Even though they had been in a band together for years, Cymone wasn’t sure Prince could command the stage as the focal point.

“He found some zone,” Cymone remembered, “and he keyed in it and he crushed it.”

Going new wave

The youngest of six kids, Andre Simon Anderson — Prince dubbed him Cymone after his middle name — met Prince when they were in seventh grade. Prince was having trouble with his parents, so he moved into the basement of the Anderson home.

“We’d go back and forth recording and jamming and recording,” Cymone said. “He’d play something and I’d critique it. I’d play something and he’d critique it. Until we got to a sound when we thought we should go into the studio.”

While attending Central High School in south Minneapolis, the two musicians formed a band, Grand Central, with Cymone’s sister Linda, Morris Day and others. The band broke up before Prince signed with Warner Bros. in 1977 and bestie Cymone was along for the ride. He toured with Prince’s band for a couple of years before leaving for a solo career in 1981.

Cymone recorded some new-wave albums, scored the hit “The Dance Electric” and got fed up with record executives who wanted him to be like Prince. So Cymone moved to Los Angeles, became a producer for Jody Watley (who won the Grammy for best new artist for his songs), Pebbles, Adam Ant and others.

In 2012, after years behind the scenes while raising six kids, Cymone reemerged as a hippie rocker, making protest music like “American Dream, “Vote” and “Our World Is on Fire.”

Now he’s returned to the hometown sound he helped pioneer with the 15-track album, “The Resurrection of Funk.”

“Love Revolution” oozes that vintage Minneapolis Sound, as does “Stone in Love” with its signature synth funk. “Show Me Love” tackles social commentary to a breezy groove. “The Revolution’s On Yo in O Net” nods to Gil Scott-Heron’s classic “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.” Cymone’s ballads, like the falsetto-styled “Inside Velvet Jones,” exude old school.

Cymone has another project in the works — a movie based on his childhood adventures with Prince.

“We’re cutting down the script,” he said. “It a coming of age kind of reality. To get people to understand a musical relationship and how a genius is born. It wasn’t a unicorn out of nowhere.”

Prince the fighter

Cymone was in the San Francisco Bay Area in 1977-1978 when Prince recorded his debut album.

One night they ended up backstage at a jazz festival thanks to a connection from Prince’s manager. An older blond woman walked up to Cymone and, without a word, took a handful out of his popcorn box and walked away. He mentioned it to Prince and pointed to the woman.

Said Prince: “Gimme the popcorn.” He approached the woman, but she ignored him. He turned to Cymone: “That’s Joni Mitchell.”

In 2024, Cymone was formally introduced to Mitchell at a concert rehearsal in Los Angeles. After fan-boying over her, he mentioned the popcorn incident.

“Sounds like me,” she told him.

Cymone has plenty of Prince stories. Can he tell us something people don’t know about the Purple One?

He shared two things:

He and Prince were competitive tennis players with each other, often playing for hours late at night, shining the headlights of their car onto the court. One time the car battery ran out, and they had to call Cymone’s mom for a boost.

The other thing: Prince can fight.

“I saw him get into a couple of scraps. He held his own. In high school, I saw him put the dukes up.”

©2026 The Minnesota Star Tribune. Visit startribune.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC