*Eric Benet says he was dating his current wife Manuela Testolini for two whole months before discovering that she was once married to Prince.
The crooner visited Van Lathan’s podcast The Red Pill and revealed that he only found out about Manuela’s ex-husband after challenging her over her complicated divorce during a trip to the airport. The pair began dating after meeting over a decade ago at a Los Angeles Fashion Week party.
“We’re seeing each other for, like, a couple of months and during those couple of months she’s telling me that she’s going through a divorce…,” he said, explaining he realized this was no ordinary split and there was a lot of money at stake.
“Her name is Testolini, so for some reason I thought she was married to some Italian (guy)… I was driving her to the airport… and she gave me some other details and finally I was like, ‘Who is this guy…?’ and so she just kind of laughed and said, ‘Prince’. I was like, ‘Prince who…?’ By that time we were already like (an item).”
The fact he was dating Prince’s ex made Eric step up his dating game, adding, “Usually, if I’m dating somebody and I invite her to the studio, it’s like, that’s a thing… It’s like, ‘Wow, I get to see how you create and this is so fascinating’. And then once I found out it was Prince, I was like, ‘I ain’t s**t, man…!’. My studio is (small).”
Benet also recalled the time Prince called him onstage to sing during a gig in Eric’s native Milwaukee at the beginning of his career.
“Prince saw me in the audience and told me to get up…,” he recalled. “I kick myself about this… but when you respect somebody (like that), when he pulled me onstage I was blown away… He was doing some jam…”
But when Prince handed Eric the mic, the young star just freaked out and screamed.
“He said, ‘The next time I invite you onstage you better sing’,” Benet laughed, adding, “Any musician out there now owes a debt to Prince… We’re all standing on the shoulders of that guy.”
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