The spirit of the Purple Rain singer is still very much alive. In an interview with the Rolling Stone, director Spike Lee reveals that his latest film BlacKkKlansman will feature an unreleased Prince song.
Lee's interview with Rolling Stone reveals that as the end credits roll, the background video will be footage of the 2017 Charlottesville riots, particularly "the moment a white supremacist drove into a crowd of counterprotesters, killing a young woman named Heather Heyer." Lee says that that's when Prince sings a "spiritual 'Mary Don't You Weep'"—one of the songs recorded on cassette, locked in the vaults of Prince's estate in Paisley Park.
"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," said Lee. "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."
BlacKkKlansman opens in theaters on August 10.
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