T.C (David) Ellis, Rap protégé who appeared in Prince’s movie “Graffiti Bridge.” Ellis rapped the hit songs “Twin Cities Rap” and “Bat Rap.”

TPS: So, we’re just catching up on all of our friends and acquaintances from
 ”back in the day.” I understand you’re living in Vegas now?

TC: No, I still live in St. Paul, but I TRAVEL and work quite a bit in Los Angeles, and Las Vegas. I spend enough time there, it seems like I live there!

TPS: What has you doing all that traveling?

TC: Well, I’m very excited because this Fall we’re opening a brand new High School for Recording Arts in Los Angeles. I’m the Founding Director. Also, I helped to develop the Explore Knowledge Academy in Vegas. That’s what I’ve been doing these days–working to develop programs and schools like the one I started in the Twin Cities. I do technical consulting for innovative educational programs.
 
TPS: How did that start?

TC: I used to see a lot of High School-aged kids cutting classes. They’d hang out around my recording studio in the St. Paul skyway. These kids had no real interest in school, but boy, did they have a lot of interest in rap and recording. They’d ask me all kinds of questions and would try to talk me into letting them record. So finally, I let some of them–and they were good! And they were motivated and passionate. That’s when I realized there was a real need in the community to help these kids–a lot of them at first were “at-risk youth,” but over the course of 9 years that we’ve been up and running, we’ve been attracting kids from the suburbs who just didn’t “fit” in the traditional school system.

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The early years

At a young age Prince’s parents separated and he had a troubled relationship with his stepfather causing him to run away from home. During a brief period where he once again lived with his father who bought him his first guitar, initiating an enduring interest in composition and performance. Later, Prince moved in with a neighborhood family, the Andersons, and became friends with their son, Andre Anderson (later called Andre Cymone).Prince and André joined Prince’s Cousin Charles Smith in a band called Grand Central other members we’re Morris Day and André’s sister Linda Anderson.

The group later received some musical tutoring from Pepé Willie, a musician married to one of Prince’s older cousins who would later provide both Prince and André with their first recording opportunities as session players for the band 94 East. By their high school years the members of Grand Central had re-invented themselves as Champagne, switching their focus from covers to self-written material. Despite some success as a live act in the Minneapolis area, Champagne would dissolve before any recordings were made.

Prince became a central figure of “Uptown”, a 1970s underground funk scene in Minneapolis (centering around the Uptown neighborhood of Minneapolis) which also spawned Flyte Tyme, Jellybean Johnson, Terry Lewis and Alexander O’Neal. In 1976, he started working on a demo with producer Chris Moon in a Minneapolis studio. He also had the patronage of Owen Husney who Moon introduced him to allowing him to produce an excellent quality demo. Husney started contacting major labels and ran a clever campaign promoting Prince as a star of the future, resulting in a bidding war eventually won by Warner Bros., who offered him a long-term contract.

The rest is truly history