Babyface remembers jaw-dropping live moment with Prince

Kenneth “Babyface” Edmonds just looked back at a surreal moment when music legend Prince handed him a guitar onstage.

While having a conversation with PEOPLE magazine before his Uncle Charlie’s R&B Cookout tour, the 66-year-old American singer-songwriter and record producer revealed that Prince once told him if you pick up the guitar, “you’ve got to be able to play funky.”

Babyface went on to reminisce about the time he teamed up with the late American singer-songwriter and musician for a performance of What Have You Done for Me Lately at the Rio Hotel & Casino in April 2007, when Prince wanted to “see if he could play it all.”

The Diamonds and Pearls crooner “called” him up and gave his guitar to him, as the Hurt You singer said, “They were playing a funk song and I think he was testing me to see whether I could play.”

“And then, I played it, and he said, 'Oh, you can actually play that thing. You actually can play funky.’ So, I got invited back after that, but it was a test. It was like, 'I want to see if you can even play it all,’” Babyface recounted.

He admitted that moment reminded him how important it is to be “versatile enough to learn things.”

“I think it's been a journey, in the sense of never limit yourself to one type of music, one genre, because there are doors that can open. And as a musician, I think you should always be able to go into different worlds. It keeps the door open for you to be able to explore and not be put into a box, so to say. So, if you pick up the guitar, you've got to be able to play funky.”

“I'm the kind of musician, a lot of the things that I write, I forget them after I write them. I'd have to go learn them all over again on the piano. I don't sit there and practice every day. So, it's one of those things where I'm a writer and a musician, but I'm a writer first, then a musician as needed,” Babyface explained.