Jill Jones is widely known as the actress whose character as a waitress in “Purple Rain” was sweet on “The kid” (Prince’s character) in the movie. But what some may not know is that Jones is a singer who was once signed to Prince’s Paisley Park Records. After gaining notoriety in  “Purple Rain,” releasing two albums, and working with a plethora of hit-makers – ranging from Prince; to the soul band, Chic; Me’shell Ndegeocello; to Rick James; Teena Marie and more –  Jones’s career kinda hit rock bottom. She ended up going through a great deal of pain, embarrassment, and disappointed in both the music industry and her personal life.

She was victorious in her fight to find peace in the end, but not without going through the heartaches she described in the following excerpts from her past interview with soul singer, Rhonda Nicole (for Soul Train)…

JILL JONES GREW TO HATE THE ENTERTAINMENT WORLD

After years of trying to have a successful music career, after the death of her beloved Mother, and after releasing her lightly-promoted second album titled, “Two,” Jill Jones revealed that she hated the music game like a “bad lover”:

“It had become very easy to focus on the sad aspects of my life—the death of my mother, a divorce. I spent the 15 years after that album [her 2001 album, “Two”] not really being comfortable in my own skin, not accepting the parting of my mother, not being involved with a label and having to do everything myself. I became kind of angry about it. […] I felt music was one of the love affairs of my life…something that always left me hanging. It was like a really bad lover!

I did miss it [music], but I did cut it off. I wanted to be angry about it, to always have some negative thing to say. I was scared, I was terrified! I didn’t want to be rejected, I didn’t want everybody to know that I was a failure. […] There was so much humiliation. It was like, ‘What am I going to do, and how am I going to do this?'”

JONES ODDLY DEVELOPED NEW PERSONA TO RUN FROM MUSIC INDUSTRY

Jill said she so desperately wanted to run away from her music industry past, that she created a totally different identity, oftentimes lying about who she was:

“I had to re-build…I bar-tended. I remember a member of the Wu-Tang Clan came into the bar and he said, ‘You’re Jill Jones!’ And I was like, ‘No, I’m not.’ And I was speaking with a French accent. There was this shame…I had just disconnected and disassociated and pulled myself away. I cut out everybody.”

But things began to shift in her life…

JILL JONES OVERCAME HER GRIEF

Jill Jones says that she’s now at a point in her life where she has overcome her sense of failure, and is now very accepting of who she is:

“I had reached a place in my life where I was comfortable with who I am. During this time, when you let go of all the other concepts of what someone thinks of you or how you need to be, I found peace with who I was. And I decided I am who I want to be at this point. I got into Kundalini yoga a few years ago and started a serious meditation practice because I wanted to change some things. And then I realized there were some things that I’m not going to change—these are soul experiences that I just have to learn, and they’re not going to change until I finally accept what they are.”

Jill Jones has released her last album, “I Am,” was released in 2016, and is available on iTunes.