Prince spoke up for #BlackLivesMatter, gave secret Obama White House performance

Prince had his political side.

Prince showed up at the 2015 Grammys to hand out the award for best album.

“Albums still matter,” he said to the crowd of pop start and music luminaries. “Like books and black lives, albums still matter.”

It was a quick moment, but one of Prince’s more direct comments on social issues. It drew applause from the crowd and widespread attention on social media.

In case people didn’t get it enough at the Grammys, Prince followed up his remarks by recording and releasing the song “Baltimore” about Freddie Gray, an African-American man whose death while in police custody set off riots.

Prince also played a concert for peace in Baltimore, where riots had broken out.

Ahead of the concert, he called on those attending to “wear something gray.”

Prince played a secret show at the White House on June 13, 2015, for President Obama, first ladyMichelle Obama and 500 of their friends.

Music legends play at the White House all the time, of course. But this one was different, in part because it was so secretive.

He also wrote a song that blasts Wall Street greed:

In March 2009, during the throes of the Great Recession, Prince premiered the song “Ol’ Skool Company” on NBC’s “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.”

“The fat cats on Wall Street, they got a bailout. Think it was AIG,” Prince sang in the single, referring to the insurance company American International Group Inc., which was bailed out by the government amid an enormous scandal, with a hefty price tag of $182 billion tax dollars.

“Everybody’s talking about hard times, like it just started yesterday,” he says in the studio recording of the song.

“People I know they have been struggling, at least it seems that way. Fat cats on Wall Street, they got a bailout, while somebody else got to wait.”

“$700 billion but my old neighborhood, ain’t nothing changed but the date.”

A number of people close to him, including Van Jones, spoke yesterday about Prince’s quiet, unhyped philanthropy. CBS News cites one example in which Prince made a public appeal:

Prince put his money where his mouth was. In 2011, he donated $1 million to the Harlem Children’s Zone, a nonprofit organization that seeks to end the cycle of intergenerational poverty by focusing on children in Harlem. “We can’t wait and see — or only hope for — the future of those coming after us. We must actively take responsibility for ensuring their success,” Prince said at the time.

By: Alan

Alan Colmes is the publisher of Liberaland.