Most artists love getting the Weird Al treatment, Michael Jackson, Lady Gaga, and Pharrell being among them, but Yankovic says there's one artist who turned him down again and again - the Purple One himself.
"I had a parody of 'Let's Go Crazy' that was about The Beverly Hillbillies", Weird Al recalls. "And I wanted to do something funny with 'When Doves Cry', and 'Kiss'. For '1999', I wanted to do an infomercial where you could get anything you wanted by dialing 1-800-something-1999".
Despite these repeated rejections, the comedian always "had this fantasy that he'd come out with a new song, I'd have a great idea, he'd finally say yes and it would erase decades of weirdness between us".
In a 2011 interview, Weird Al pointed to a particularly odd episode at an American Music Awards ceremony.
"Apparently I was going to be sitting in the same row as Prince that year and I got a telegram - and I wasn’t the only one - from Prince’s management company saying that I was not to establish eye contact with him during the show", he said. "I just couldn’t even believe it".
In spite of Prince's apathy and rejections, Weird Al still released a video - albeit a non-musical one - parodying Prince. Watch it below.