Katt Williams has revealed that meeting Prince as a child inspired him to grow past what he thought were his limitations.
Sitting down with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson on the Wednesday (December 3) episode of IMO Podcast, the comedian said he dated a younger cousin of the 1999 musician when he was 12. Williams claims Prince would have been 18 at the time, although the two have a 13-year age difference.
"I met Prince when I was 12. And he changed the trajectory of belief for me," Williams said (around the 1:05:00 mark in the video below). "I knew I didn't have to make any changes. This was a guy who was shorter than me. He was already rich and famous. And he had a purpose in life."
Williams claimed that Prince's cousin was his first girlfriend and that he met the late musician when he was in Dayton to perform. "You ever meet somebody and go, 'Whoo, this person's way smarter than me,'" Williams said. "So it was really my first time being in the vicinity of real brilliance."
Williams recounted having a "super deep conversation" with Prince, and by the end of their talk, the two were "friends." But it was when Prince escorted Williams out that the musician noticed his bicycle, which Williams called a "tricked-out mongoose."
"That's when he lets me know that he's 18, a grown man. I'm 12. But because of our sizes, we just assumed that each other was the same," Williams continued.
"So he gave me the confidence to know because up until that point in my life, I thought that there were some things I was gonna need to do in order to be good enough," Williams said. "Like, I gotta get taller. I don't know. This might be the first mistake God has ever made. Like there, I can't find evidence that anyone in the world missed a growth spurt."
The comedian added that Prince allowed him to see that he didn't need to be taller to show his talent.
"He already had just signed his music deal. He had just produced his album by himself. He played 26 instruments on it. He did all of the jobs. And it had worked," he continued. "And so I knew that I didn't have to make any changes. I just had to be in the right position and be right myself when it transpires."
It's not the first time that Williams has spoken about Prince. Earlier this year, he remembered the late legend in an episode of This Past Weekend with Theo Von, calling him a "magnificent, one of a kind individual."