Warner Bros Records is releasing new music by Prince.
Piano & A Microphone 1983 is from a 35-year-old cassette Prince recorded of himself playing piano and singing at his home studio in Chanhassen, Minnesota. It released on Friday.
The tape sounds clean and is presented start to finish as Prince recorded it. Among the songs are 17 Days, Purple Rain, Joni Mitchell’s A Case of You, International Lover and Strange Relationship.
A highlight is Prince’s singing of the spiritual Mary Don’t You Weep, which plays over the end credits of Spike Lee’s movie BlacKkKlansman.
Album archivist Michael Howe loved the heavily bootlegged tape and found it in Prince’s vault. Howe says you can hear Prince “strapping the rocket engine on that would propel him to superstardom.”
Prince died in 2016.
