"I received a call from Prince saying I think you should be your own artist and not back up anyone else. I'm going to write you a song and if you like it, you can record it," she remembered during an interview on OWN. "The name of the song was 'Carmen on Top.' My name is Tara, so I was confused. I loved the song. I loved it, but he said, 'You're not a Tara. You're not Tara. You're Carmen."

As the saying goes, the rest was history. Prince soon became the guiding force behind the emerging star's entire look. 

"He controlled everything, but I loved that about him," she told E! News. "How I dressed, the music, hairstyles. He was genius at all that."

The pair even dated, though the relationship came to an end in the early 1990s. 

"I told him I wanted to live in LA and he spent as much time here as he did in Minnesota. He wanted me to move back to Minnesota and I said no. I broke it off with him and stayed in LA," she explained. "I gave up everything with him to live here and make my own career. It was a hard time. I ended up calling him and he hired me to dance at his club in LA. I made $90 a week. I wasn't his girlfriend anymore, but I was one of his girls. This was after we split."