Ingrid Chavez

Ingrid Chavez was born in Albuquerque in 1965 and grew up in Georgia, first in Marietta and then, from the age of 10, with relatives in Atlanta. She came to Minneapolis in 1986 to chase music, auditioning for bands, working the local scene and paying the bills with a coffee-shop job, and the break came in late 1987, when she met Prince in a pub after writing to him. He was taken with her voice and her poetry and took her under his wing.

She turned up as The Spirit Child on his 1988 album Lovesexy, handling the outro on "Alphabet St.", and Prince pushed her to write 21 poems toward a poetry album they would make together; in January 1988 the two of them recorded The Poetry Session at Paisley Park Studios.

Her own album, May 19 1992, came out in 1991 on Paisley Park and Warner Bros., a hushed, dreamy spoken-word record where the words carry as much weight as the music, her voice murmuring over the grooves rather than singing across them. "Hippy Blood" is the track that kept her name on the countdowns long afterward. The same year brought a less flattering spotlight, a Golden Raspberry nomination for Worst New Star, but the record has outlived the joke.

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