Always a man with a surprise up his sleeve (was anyone anticipating his first acting credit in years to be on New Girl?), Prince's new song is probably not what you'd expect from the Purple One.
Prince and 3rdEyeGirl released an electric guitar-heavy cover of Christian singer-songwriter Nichole Nordeman's "What If."
Prince released the song to Louisville, KY, radio, where he's kicking off the U.S. portion of his Hit & Run Tour.
His cover has been in the works for years. Nordeman says she received a call more than five years ago from Prince's management asking for permission to cover What If, a hit for her on Christian radio in 2005.
"I didn't hear anything else, so I thought it had just died," she said.
"I think Prince just heard it on the radio one day while he was driving and really liked the song, then brought it to me and the girls and just said, 'Hey, do you guys like this? Let's learn it,'" 3rdEyeGirl drummer Hannah Welton said during a radio interview preceding the track's premiere. "Then he put his touch on it, obviously, and arranged it."
"I wrote the song years ago from conversations I had had with an atheist friend," Nordeman says. "I had gone down the path of feeling compelled to argue and convince him to become a Christian. After a while, I realized how futile that was and that it really isn't my place to argue and debate someone into a faith.
"The song was kind of an apology to my friend, like, 'I'm sorry I turned every conversation about faith into an argument, and I'm sorry that I made it about debate and not about love.' I would love to know what part of that resonated with Prince."
Nordeman also has another connection to Prince: former Prince protégé Sheila E. covered Nordeman's song River God on her 2001 album Heaven.
Billboard article
USA Today article
Play Music - Embed Audio - Prince & 3EYEGIRL what-if
