King of Rock ’n’ B

Often, it seems, extraordinary things come from ordinary circumstances.

As Kip Blackshire recalls the May 1999 encounter, he'd been singing to himself in a restroom at Paisley Park. Later in the day, he was in one of the rehearsal spaces, and, he says, “Prince walked up [to me] and said, ‘I heard you [singing]. Why don’t you come on the stage and let’s see if you can sing for real.’ Prince opened up his lyric book to ‘Little Red Corvette’ and reached into a guitar solo. I looked at [Prince’s keyboardist] Morris Hayes, and, he said, ‘Just go to church.’ I let ’em have it. Then Prince said, ‘OK, stop. I gotta bring you into the studio. I have a song I need you to get on.’ That’s how I got the gig.”

Paisley Park last summer, on the pop star’s Grammy-winning album, and at his post-Grammies party this spring.

Today, Blackshire is his own frontman as a solo R & B singer. In August, he releases his second album, The Eleventh Hour, and leaves for his second solo European tour, which will include England.

How Blackshire got to Paisley Park in the first place is a simple story of talent and a little bit of luck. In 1980, when he was four, he started singing with his older brothers, DuJuan and Johnnie, who were five and six years old, respectively. “I come from four generations of gospel singers,” says Blackshire. “We were pretty much made to sing gospel, because our grandmother wasn’t going to take no for an answer.” For years, the brothers sang regularly in the New Testament Holiness Church in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, where their grandmother was the pastor.

By 1999, the brothers had named their group “Blackshire” and signed with a small R & B label in Houston. When the label tanked, they called on Morris Hayes, an old family friend from church—and Prince’s keyboardist. He listened to their demo and asked who produced it. “I [told him] I did,” says Kip, “and he said, ‘Well, then, you’re the one I need to deal with.’” He invited Kip to the Twin Cities. “It was like removing my limb,” Kip says of leaving his brothers.

After arriving in the Twin Cities, Blackshire, under Prince’s guidance, was turned on to a whole new world of music—work by musicians such as Stevie Wonder and Donny Hathaway. “Growing up, I was restricted to listening to gospel music,” says Blackshire, now twenty-nine. “The moment I heard this rock and funk stuff, my mind just went to work. I had a chance to grow.”

As Blackshire developed his own R & B sound, mixing it with rock and funk, he sang and toured with NPG and put in time as lead vocalist for the Fonky Baldheads, the Minneapolis-based funk group led by NPG drummer Kirk Johnson. “They were very instrumental in helping me grow into what I am now,” says Blackshire. “I learned a lot from Kirk. He taught me about using the stage and [giving] a high level of performance. And he introduced me to the edge. He put some fatback on my sound. That’s what we call him ‘Fatback Black’ Johnson.”

In 2002, Blackshire decided to go solo. “It was the hardest decision musically that I’ve ever had to make, because I was always a follower,” he says. “I always followed my brothers’ lead, simply because I didn’t have any confidence to step out on my own. What would be my sound? What would make me different from Jodeci or Boyz II Men? I didn’t see myself as [a typical] R & B vocalist, so I had to come up with a new sound. Working with all these people helped me find [my sound]. Finally, I just gave it a try. And here I am.”