The Truth About Prince And Pink's Relationship

The saying goes, "You should never meet your heroes." For pop star Pink, that phrase became all too true years ago when she first met one of her music idols. The "Love Me Anyway" singer saw her hero at a concert, but it ended on a sour note. Years later, Pink regretted how the encounter happened, but it didn't lower her opinion of the legendary musician. That artist was Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Prince.

Pink had always wanted to collaborate with The Purple One, but his unexpected death on April 21, 2016, meant that the two stars would never make music together. During an interview with an Australian radio show in April 2016, Pink reflected on the impact the "Purple Rain" singer had on her life and described an awkward meeting she had with the late music icon when she was only 19.

"I actually got into an argument with Prince once," Pink said on the radio show Fitzy & Wippa (via US Weekly). "I asked him to collaborate with me, and he asked me if I owned my own masters. I told him no ... because I had just gotten a record deal." Being new to the music scene, Pink thought that she was too early in her career to own her master recordings.

Seemingly unimpressed, Prince told her to "call him when [she] did." Put off by his response, Pink called him a "rude f**k" before taking the stage that day.

For a significant chunk of his career, Prince was involved in a battle between himself and his record label, Warner Bros. — the label that released many of his hits, including "Purple Rain" — as he fought for "ownership of and control over his music," per Billboard. "He wanted to put out an album whenever the urge struck him, and it could be a three-song album or a 70-song album," Gary Stiffelman, the artist's former attorney, told the outlet.

Prince went as far as changing his name to an "unpronounceable glyph" in protest, and the war ended in 1996. Perhaps, Prince was giving Pink a lesson from what he learned from his own legal battle during their 1998 encounter.

And while Pink isn't the only celebrity Prince seriously shaded, she had no hard feelings toward the legend. In an interview with Extra shortly after Prince's death, Pink admitted that she was rough around the edges when she was 19."When I was 19, I just thought that, you know, straight off the streets of Philadelphia ... if you gave me a toothbrush, I'd turn it into a shank."

With maturity, however, comes understanding. "I love Prince," Pink said. "That was the biggest part of the story was that I would have loved to have collaborated with him." She added, "The point is that he was and will be forever amazing."