Spike Lee’s forthcoming movie BlacKkKlansman will end with an unreleased Prince song. In a new interview with Rolling Stone, Lee revealed that the film’s end credits will be paired with Prince’s cover of the Negro spiritual “Mary Don’t You Weep.” Lee also explained how he got his hands on the song.
“I knew that I needed an end-credits song. I’ve become very close with Troy Carter, one of the executives at Spotify [and a Prince estate advisor]. So I invited Troy to a private screening. And after, he said, ‘Spike, I got the song.’ And that was ‘Mary Don’t You Weep,’ which had been recorded on cassette in the mid-Eighties,” Lee said. “Prince wanted me to have that song, I don’t care what nobody says. My brother Prince wanted me to have that song. For this film. There’s no other explanation to me. This cassette is in the back of the vaults. In Paisley Park. And all of a sudden, out of nowhere, it’s discovered? Nah-ah. That ain’t an accident.”
It was recently reported in July that the Prince estate was sorting through “as many as 1,000” unheard songs. His estate will also release Piano & a Microphone 1983 on June 7, a set of nine new recordings, on Sept. 21. The album is based on home studio cassette recordings of Prince and his piano at his Kiowa Trail home studio in Chanhassen, Minnesota. The 1983 recordings also include the creative process behind “17 Days” and "Purple Rain," which would be released one year later.
