An emotional Stevie Wonder talked about Prince with CNN’s Anderson Cooper Thursday night, hours after the Purple Rain singer died at 57 at his Paisley Park studio residence near Minneapolis, Minn..
Wonder struggled to keep his composure when Anderson Cooper asked if he would perform a Prince song.
“Yeah, I think I would probably break down if I do a song right now,” he said, appearing to choke up. “I’m just glad I was able to say to him ‘I love you’ when I last saw him.”
He also seemed touched by audio of Prince calling the “Superstition” singer as a “role model.”
In another part of the interview, Wonder praised Prince for his versatility: “He could play classical music if he wanted to, he could play jazz if he wanted to , he could play country if he wanted to. He played rock, he played blues…He played everything.”
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Write to Olivia B. Waxman at olivia.waxman@time.com