#PrinceOnThisDay In the early hours of October 15, 2015, at Paisley Park Studios in Chanhassen, Minnesota, Prince threw an intimate, high-spirited celebration for the Minnesota Lynx after they won the 2015 WNBA championship. This was a semi-private, invite-only performance in the NPG Music Club room (not the main sound stage), starting shortly after 12:30 a.m. and running roughly two-and-a-half hours until nearly 4 a.m., with an estimated 150 people in attendance (mostly Lynx players, staff, and Target Center personnel). Prince, who had attended the decisive Game 5 at Target Center, was in a joyful, generous mood. He opened with “Purple Rain” before the champs even arrived, then moved into hits while congratulating the team “on a job well done.” Video screens displayed a newly made slide with the Lynx logo and the words “2015 WNBA Champions.” He modified lyrics on the fly (turning “Hot Thing” into something closer to “hot thang, world champs”) and invited players onstage to dance—Seimone Augustus in her orange championship cap and Renee Montgomery, who proved as strong on the dancefloor as on the court. Maya Moore later called the night “unbelievable.” The band was a looser configuration than the standard 3rdEyeGirl lineup: Prince on vocals, guitar, and keyboards (he even took a drum solo at one point), Donna Grantis on guitar, Kirk Johnson on drums, and MonoNeon on bass, with Joshua Welton on keys and Liv Warfield and Ashley Jayy/Minnieweather adding vocals. The first stretch was heavy on classics—“Let’s Go Crazy” (with a Frankenstein interpolation), “Kiss,” “When Doves Cry,” “Sign o’ the Times,” a guitar duel on “Guitar,” and a funky mash-up of the Time’s “Cool” with Michael Jackson’s “Don’t Stop ’Til You Get Enough” (Warfield and Jayy sharing leads, and at one point breaking into a “we are the champions” refrain). Newer material from the recent HITNRUN Phase One appeared via the slow-dance “1000 X’s & O’s,” while covers included a gospel-tinged Bill Withers “Use Me” and the Allen Toussaint/Pointer Sisters “Yes We Can Can.” After about two hours the players were spent, but Prince returned following a DJ break for a looser late-night jam with a much smaller crowd (around 35 people). He leaned into newer tracks like “Shut This Down” and “X’s Face,” delivered a sexy slow-jam version of Rufus’s “You Got the Love” with Warfield and Jayy, then closed with “Alphabet St.,” “The Gold Standard,” and a tease of “If I Was Your Girlfriend.” He later admitted they were “just jamming.” At the end, dressed in black with a stocking cap, he walked into the remaining crowd, playfully feigned collapse from exhaustion, steadied himself, and exited like a champion. Contemporary accounts describe it as one of the longest and most joyful Paisley Park shows of the period—an unannounced, celebratory party rather than a formal concert, full of hits, improvisation, onstage dancing, and the intimate energy Prince often reserved for his home studio. It stands as a warm late-career highlight of Prince hosting local sports heroes in his own space.

#PrinceOnThisDay NPG Music Club members first heard a roughly 40-minute soundcheck/preshow that included instrumentals of The Rainbow Children, Pop Life, and Raspberry Beret, plus full versions of Beautiful Strange, Bambi (with a strong guitar solo), and a jazzy Don’t Play Me. Prince was in a good mood and the session set an intimate, exploratory tone before the main show. The concert proper began around 8 p.m. at Frankfurt’s Festhalle for a three-quarters-full house of roughly 7,000. The roughly 2½-hour performance (about 155 minutes) was a jazz-funk-forward set that many fans ranked among the tour’s best. He was backed by a strong New Power Generation unit featuring John Blackwell (drums), Rhonda Smith (bass/vocals), Renato Neto (keyboards), Greg Boyer (trombone), and the standout saxophones of Maceo Parker and Candy Dulfer (with Dudley D. on turntables). Staging was relatively simple; the focus stayed on the music. Prince, in a white high-collar shirt and trousers, mixed spiritual messages about divine love with constant calls to dance and party—“real music by real musicians.” The set opened with The Rainbow Children material, then moved through classics and jams. A representative sequence included Pop Life, Xenophobia (with Bustin’ Loose), Money Don’t Matter 2 Night, The Work Pt. 1, an unexpected extended Purple Rain (10–15 minutes), 1+1+1 Is 3/Housequake/Love Rollercoaster (with D.M.S.R.), Sign O’ the Times, Take Me With U, Raspberry Beret, The Everlasting Now, a piano medley (Adore, The Most Beautiful Girl in the World, Condition of the Heart, Diamonds and Pearls, Delirious), The Beautiful Ones, Nothing Compares 2 U, The Ladder, Starfish and Coffee, Sometimes It Snows in April, Days of Wild, Peach, and Anna Stesia. The standout was Purple Rain. After telling the crowd this was 2002, not the 1980s, and asking if they were only there for that song, he delivered a committed, lengthy version anyway. Contemporary German reviews saw it as a sign that the earlier habit of withholding hits had eased. The later piano section offered a quieter contrast of ballads and medleys. Press and fans praised the night as polished yet freewheeling entertainment—a seamless blend of jazz, funk, rock, and soul. Attendees described a high-energy, dancing crowd and called the show superior to parts of the U.S. leg. No formal aftershow was reported, but the main set more than delivered. The Frankfurt date remains a strong snapshot of the One Nite Alone… era: Prince back in his name, fronting an elite band, balancing new spiritual-jazz material with generous classics, and putting musicianship first. For those present, it was a memorable night of funk and fire in the Festhalle.