Our beloved Denise “Vanity” Matthews met the iconic Prince at the American Music Awards and was blown away by him, but what many don’t know is that she went there with his then musical rival, the legendary Rick James and reportedly ended up leaving with Prince instead. Interesting, right?
Well, word on the Old School curb is that our girl Vanity was originally never supposed to be in Vanity 6, but the reason it all happened was because when she was with Rick James that night at the AMA’s, he was in the process of prepping her to be the lead singer of The Mary Jane Girls. After bailing out with Prince, Vanity obviously threw Rick’s whole Mary Jane Girls idea out of the window.
Rick also claimed in his book, “The Confessions Of Rick James: Memoirs Of A Superfreak,” that Prince jacked his entire concept of The Mary Jane Girls and created Vanity 6, after Rick confided in Prince about the idea he had of creating a multi-ethnic, all-female group that would have a super sexy appeal. Rick said he was pissed about that and made sure that he groomed The Mary Jane Girls to be better than Vanity 6. What do you think ILOSM family? Who’s group was better, Prince’s, or Rick James’?
That wasn’t the last time Vanity allegedly ditched a plan just before it was about to take off from the runway: Prince had actually written the song, “Glamorous Life” for Vanity, but she decided to leave before recording it and go to Motown Records, so Prince gave it to Sheila E. instead, which wasn’t a bad look at all by the way.
The things you learn when you do a little background checking. All in all, we’re glad that Vanity ended up being in Vanity 6 because Vanity 6 and The Mary Jane Girls had two very distinctive chemistries and changing one piece of that foundation would have probably thrown the whole vibe of the groups off. Maybe that’s why Prince’s revised group, Appolonia 6, didn’t have much life after Purple Rain. Appolonia worked well for the movie, but as a real-life group it would have been hard for us to adapt to her without our girl, Vanity, in the mix.
Learning how to spell Apollonia would have been a great start.
Learning how to spell Apollonia would have been a great start.