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  • 2016-04-22 (xsd:date)
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  • Prince on Politics (en)
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  • Within hours of news breaking about the death of musician Prince, a meme began to circulate online featuring a purported quote from the music icon about his supposed devotion to the Republican party: We couldn't uncover any record of Prince's uttering this phrase. The quotation (whether from Prince or anyone else) doesn't appear in any reports from major news outlets and appears to have been invented solely for this fictional meme. The quote also doesn't fall in line with Prince's known political views. Like the musician's life and career, Prince became famous by defying definition. Throughout his life he expressed support (and criticism) for a wide range of political and social views. Most recently, Prince voiced his support for the Black Lives Matter movement. He performed a concert in Baltimore after the death of Freddie Gray (a young black man who died in police custody), said books, black lives, and albums still matter during the 2015 Grammy Awards, played a secret show at the White House (President Obama is reportedly a big fan of Prince's), and (according to Rev. Al Sharpton) donated money to the family of Trayvon Martin (the black Florida teen fatally shot by George Zimmerman): However, while Prince exuded sexuality on the stage, the musician did harbor conservative religious views. Prince, who was raised a Seventh-Day Adventist and later became a Jehovah’s Witness, criticized both Republicans and Democrats for their interpretation of the Bible during an interview with the New Yorker in 2008: While Prince once donated to the campaign of a Republican senator from Minnesota in 1990, the musician said in 2009 that his religious views prevented him from voting: We found no record of Prince's ever expressing a devotion to the Republican Party. In fact, while researching Prince's political views, we found that the musician supported a wide range of political views, and (like the rest of his life and his career) could not be described as fitting into any one specific political category or party. (en)
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