Prince protege: Prince was brilliant and generous

Prince was a musical mentor to dozens of aspiring artists and he even wrote or produced hit songs for many of them - including Taja Sevelle.

Today, she's an advocate for urban farming in Detroit but that's after her musical career was touched by Prince. She worked closely with him on stage, in movies, and on her hit song "Love is Contagious".

On Thursday, right after news of Prince's death was announced, we reached out to Sevelle to talk about the Artist. While we all knew what he was like as a performer and entertainer, she knew him as a person.

"It's just really hard for me to believe that we're talking about this. Prince was brilliant, not just musically but intellectually and he has a lot of wisdom. Between his vast experiences around the world and you know - coupled with that knowledge - he was just so far ahead of his time. He had a huge heart. He launched my career. He gave me freedom when he was not giving artists freedom. And let me release "love is contagious which is a song i wrote by myself and i think that's first time he had done that with an artist," she said.

But it wasn't just her music that he held influence, he was also generous in other ways. Sevelle said he was a big proponent of urban farming.

"He helped urban farming, you know. He saw the vision. We talked to paisley, and he saw the big vision because he's a big visionary and he really wanted the world to love each other and you snow that's what, that's what i'm about. That's what my music's about. That's what my work with urban far. Ing is about. I saw all this unused land in the city and i had lived on a farm for three years and i thought why are people struggling to eat when we can plant food on this land and so i put my music career on the back burn picture and started planting these gardens everywhere just trying to get the food in the ground so people could eat. And prince was there you know. We would be down to $2 get a call. He's sending some money. He donated part of his perfume sales. He did a concert in new york. He just had a big heart, you know."

This is just the tip of the iceberg. Watch the full interview in the video above.