LOS ANGELES â Coming of age in Minneapolis in the 1980s, Anitra Davis, like many of her peers, counted local musical-prodigy-made-good Prince Rogers Nelson as her very favorite artist. Also like many of her peers, Davis could boast of some personal but tangential connections to Prince; her mother worked at the Capri Theater, where Prince first performed songs from his debut album For You, and Davis grew up just three blocks from where Prince and future bandmate Andre Cymone began their musical careers.
In 2014, Davis, a financial analyst by day, moved from Minneapolis to Thousand Oaks. Though she loved the Southern California weather, she struggled to meet people in her new West Coast home. When Prince died April 21, 2016, from an accidental overdose of the painkiller fentanyl, she felt especially alone in her Minnesotan mourning. To relieve that pain and expand her social circle, Davis, now 46, founded Prince Army Los Angeles, or PALA, a Facebook group connecting local Princ
On the fifth anniversary of his death, we rank every Prince song officially released as a single, from 1978’s ‘Soft and Wet’ to 2015’s ‘Free Urself.’
In 2014, Davis, a financial analyst by day, moved from Minneapolis to Thousand Oaks. Though she loved the Southern California weather, she struggled to meet people in her new West Coast home. When Prince died April 21, 2016, from an accidental overdose of the painkiller fentanyl, she felt especially alone in her Minnesotan mourning. To relieve that pain and expand her social circle, Davis, now 46, founded Prince Army Los Angeles (PALA), a Facebook group connecting local Prince fans. An L.A.-based Prince fan group known as The BumpSquad had been in existence since 2000, but as a former Minneapolitan, Davis felt compelled to represent her hometown hero in her adopted city.