… owned the name “Prince” – the name with which he was born.
“I had heard that The Artist was a Muhammad Ali fan and had never met him,” said Mr Clark, who now runs David Clark Cause, an organization promoting charitable work around the world.
“We’d known it was an incredibly, incredibly long shot to get someone like him to say “Yes” and travel on his own dime at such short notice.”
There was no question of Prince, or The Artist, or the symbol, saying “No”.
He had grown up idolizing Ali, who had himself changed his name after converting to Islam and denouncing his previous name, Cassius Clay, as his “slave name”. “I didn’t choose it and I don’t want it,” he said.