Pepé Willie, mentor to Prince and Morris Day, dies at 76

He melded the Brooklyn, N.Y., hustle of his youth with the Minnesota Nice he learned after moving here. Pepé Willie used his music biz knowledge, generous spirit and infectious smile to mentor Prince and others to become a godfather of the Minneapolis Sound.

“The Prince story would not have happened the way it did without Pepé,” said Bobby Z, Prince’s longtime drummer who also played with Willie in the band 94 East. “He was there for us all along. He was like a godfather to us.”

Recording artist André Cymone, who played in Prince’s first band, called Willie an “essential” part of the Minneapolis music story for teaching aspiring musicians about songwriting and navigating the music business. “If you ran into brick walls,” Cymone said, “you could always reach out to Pepé.”

Willie, of Plymouth, died Sunday of pancreatic cancer at the Minneapolis Veterans Medical Center. He was 76.

He had survived liver cancer for several years, but it spread to his pancreas about a month and a half ago, according to 94 East’s Kristie Lazenberry, his longtime business and romantic partner.

“He was the best friend to so many people,” said Twin Cities journalist Tony Kiene, who co-authored Willie’s 2020 memoir, “If You See Me: My Six-Decade Journey in Rock and Roll.” “You could count on him. He’d always be there with a word of encouragement. With that big heart and that big smile, he could light up a room.”

Lazenberry, who met Willie in 1975, said he just wanted to assist others.

“He would just help people in the music business without any remuneration,” she said.

Marcy Ingvoldstad, another 94 East principal and lifelong partner, said Willie prioritized helping others reach their goals “through uplifting and inspiring and telling them the truth.”

Singer Morris Day was indebted to Willie from the get-go.

“Pepé was the guy who was willing to help with whatever needed to be done,” Day said Monday. “He was there to lend his knowledge. He didn’t demand or even ask about money. It was definitely for the love of it all.”

An entire chapter in Willie’s memoir is devoted to him helping Day get to the Hollywood premiere of “Purple Rain” in 1984 after the singer had a bitter falling out with Prince.

“Pepé had to give me a pep talk, hence the name Pepé,” Day recalled with a chuckle. “I was a little salty about that whole thing back then. He was instrumental in me getting away from Prince and getting my solo deal. He was a very savvy industry guy. He was just a good brother.”

Raised in Brooklyn, Linster Willie Jr. became a valet for his uncle, Clarence Collins of the hitmaking vocal group Little Anthony & the Imperials. While assisting backstage at concerts, Willie encountered many stars, including Elvis Presley, Muhammad Ali and Stevie Wonder, and learned lessons about the music industry.

Willie always credited his showbiz uncle with getting him away from the gangbanger life he grew up with in a crime-addled neighborhood. “He talked about how music saved his life,” Kiene said.

Collins wrote the foreword to Willie’s memoir, depicting himself as an older brother to a “kind, caring human being” with “a gentle, artistic side.”

In New York, Willie met Shauntel Manderville, moved to her hometown of Minneapolis in 1974 and married her. She was Prince’s first cousin. So Willie took an interest in the aspiring musician and his high school band, Grand Central. The New Yorker produced a recording session with them at Cookhouse Studio on Nicollet Avenue S. and schooled them about songwriting. Willie also enlisted Prince to record lead guitar with his own band, 94 East.

“He flew me and Prince to New York City to write for Little Anthony & the Imperials,” Cymone recalled. “We wrote ‘Do Me, Baby’ and ‘I Feel For You’ for them” but the recording stars rejected them. (Both tunes later ended up on Prince albums.)

After Prince went over budget recording his one-man band debut album in 1978, anxious Warner Bros. Records executives wanted to see him perform live. Willie, now divorced, helped Prince put together a band, which rehearsed in Willie’s house by Lake Harriet after their equipment was stolen from a practice space on the West Bank. They booked two concerts at the Capri Theater in north Minneapolis in frigid January 1979.

“The Capri was do or die,” said Bobby Z, Prince’s drummer. “After that first album, it was pretty scary what was going to happen. Pepé was fluent in the language of the business. That was big for all of us. He had a huge influence on us for a while. He was the glue.”

Said Cymone, then the bassist in Prince’s band: “We were flying blind for a while because Prince didn’t have management. Pepé was the bridge of getting Prince from Point A to Point B.”

Over the years, Willie served as mentor, producer, adviser, interim manager, consultant, big brother and confidant to Prince. If there was one word to describe Willie’s role, it would have been protector.

“He did not want Prince to get ripped off in any way,” Ingvoldstad said of Willie.

“I never took a dime from Prince,” Willie told the Minnesota Star Tribune in 2020.

He collected disability from the Army and later worked for the U.S. Postal Service.

In 2002, Prince called Willie to complain about his image being used illegally on the cover of a Willie-affiliated album in Europe. After assuring Prince that the issue would be addressed, the mentor suggested, “Let’s go hang out, let’s go play hoops or something.” Prince responded: “I don’t talk to people.”

By contrast, Willie was a gregarious, outgoing character with “an overwhelming presence,” as drummer Z put it.

Willie gave his last performance with 94 East in September 2024 at a street-corner ceremony honoring the late Bernadette Anderson, Cymone’s mother and a community mainstay, in north Minneapolis.

“He was very humble, a beautiful spirit,” Cymone said Monday from Los Angeles. “When the wildfires hit California this year, Pepé was one of the first people to reach out to me and say, ‘Hey if you need a place to stay, I’ve got a place in Vegas. You’re welcome.’ For him to reach out like that, that means a lot to me. He was a really special, special dude.”

Willie is survived by his daughter Danielle Berry of Brooklyn Park and two grandchildren. A celebration of life will be held at a later date.