Happy Prince’s birthday! On what would have been his 60th, Prince’s estate has announced the September 21 release of Piano & A Microphone, a 9-song, 35-minute home recording of Prince noodling around at a piano. Recorded in 1983, the release will feature early takes on future classics like “Purple Rain” and “Strange Relationship” (which underwent a number of incarnations before officially landing on 1987’s Sign ‘o’ the Times in full Camille drag).
While instructive in terms of Prince’s process, this is hardly the type of legacy-expanding posthumous release that Prince diehards were hoping for when Troy Carter, who’s currently in charge of Prince’s vault, announced to Variety in April that a “full-length album” was on the way. For one thing, this session has been circulating on bootlegs for years. It also seems particularly odd to focus on solo piano material from 1983—at the time, Prince’s sonic palate was expanding by kaleidoscopic proportions. He sounds naked without his LinnDrum.
If those in charge of Prince’s estate are going to ever do the artist’s legendary vault justice, they’re certainly taking their time. That said, the first “single” from this release, Prince’s take on the pre-Civil War spiritual “Mary Don’t You Weep” is nice (if still laden with tape hiss):
“Mary Don’t You Weep” will play over the credits of Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman.