Remember How Prince Would Make Surprise Performances?

Fans of Prince surely remember their most favorite performance, witnessed while watching him on TV or seeing him live in concert. But one of The Purple One’s many legacies will be how he showed his love for music by unexpectedly performing with artists famous and not-so-famous and in venues large and small – just because he wanted to.

It happened a lot. Here are so many but here are some of our favorite (note: some are on video, some are not. Prince was very protective of his art):

Prince defied musical categories. He just wanted to jam with artists he loved and respected from all different types of genres. He seemed to love to play his guitar in his guest appearances.

In 2010, a fan captured Prince jumping in on a jam with funk legend Larry Graham:

Prince’s recent appearance with hip hop artist Q-Tip was dope:

If you were at the Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings performance in Paris five years ago, you remember he popped up there too:

He would appear even at a random Jazz night at a swanky Hollywood bar. It didn’t matter:

There are countless examples of this that are not on video or on the Internet. In 1997, he appeared on the Today Show for Bryant Gumbel’s last show. In 2008, he had Sheila E and Morris Day and The Time join him at Coachella. He once jammed with Alabama Shakes at his Paisley Park studio. In 2015, he performed during NBA All Star Weekend in honor of Michael Jordan’s Nike Brand. He crashed City Winery in 2013 in support of his backup band New Power Generation. He once popped up at a nightclub in Birmingham, Alabama. He performed at the SNL anniversary after party.

The list goes on and on.

The Purple One also had a philanthropic streak in his impromptu live performances, as we found out in more detail through Van Jones on CNN:

The most reported of these shows for a cause was his unexpectedly scheduled show in support of Baltimore after the Freddy Gray uprisings. Prince even wrote a song called “Baltimore” inspired by the incident.

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