After they finished the track, Prince visited the band in the studio, and although Hoffs found him “semi-inscrutable,” she said he seemed surprised and pleased that the band had Banglesized his composition. “Manic Monday” became the Bangles’ first pop hit, going all the way to No. 2 — kept from the top only by Prince’s own “Kiss.” Later in life, Hoffs wanted to express her gratitude, but didn’t see her benefactor again: “It makes me sad that I never got an opportunity to thank him.”

Most of the songs on “Originals” were written with a specific artist in mind, often a woman. Melvoin was a romantic and creative partner for Prince in this era (and the twin sister of Wendy Melvoin, the guitarist in his band the Revolution). “He has a musical clairvoyance, this ability to project himself into you, as if he were another aspect of your artistic self,” she said, speaking of him in the present tense.

Jill Jones, also musically and romantically involved with Prince during these years, described that skill as a double-edged sword: “On some level that could be great, and on another level it could be disturbing, a little claustrophobic.” As she summarized it: “He thought he could be a better woman than you could.”

To better get in the heads of his collaborators, Prince asked them to keep journals that he could mine for lyrics. Jones already kept a journal — she hid it from Prince, but he found it and busted the lock. “He was a snoop,” she said, and laughed. “I snooped in his too.”

The song he wrote as a result of that bedroom espionage was “Baby, You’re a Trip.” “I was a little taken aback by the lyrics,” Jones said. “This girl, she was so desperate and submissive. I thought I was a lot tougher.”

Listening to these tracks, Questlove said he heard Prince tapping into “his machismo, what we would now call toxic masculinity”; expressing his vulnerability (which Questlove preferred to think of as his humanity rather than his femininity); and “trying to navigate his way to pop stardom and the top of the mountain.”