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Prince’s new basement tape: Just him singing, playing piano

Posted at 11:00 AM, Sep 18, 2018
and last updated 2018-09-18 12:00:42-04

By JEFF BAENEN Associated Press
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) – 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 will be released 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.”

An inside look of Prince’s vault at Paisley Park, Photo Date: April 2018

Prince died in 2016.

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