Secretly listening to Prince during recording (7)
I believe the answer is:
tapping
'secretly listening' is the definition.
The answer and definition can be both to do with perception as well as being present participle verbs.
Maybe you can see a link between them that I don't see?
'prince during recording' is the wordplay.
'prince' becomes 'p'.
'during' means one lot of letters goes inside another.
'recording' becomes 'taping' ('tape' can be a synonym of 'record').
'p' put into 'taping' is 'TAPPING'.
'to' is the link.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for tapping that I've seen before include "accessing source" , "See 9" .)