Prince's "Mary Don't You Weep" Video is a Stirring Meditation on Gun Violence

Directed by Salomon Ligthelm

On Friday, the Prince Estate released a collection of songs discovered on a cassette, presumably locked in The Vault™since his passing. The painfully intimate nine-track project, Piano & A Microphone 83', is a portrait of the late icon on the cusp of superstardom, patching new ideas with old haunts in total isolation.

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Ahead of its release, the single "Mary Don't You Weep" teased the magic of a solo acoustic Prince album and was later included in the credit roll of Spike Lee's BlacKkKlansman. But along with the album, a stirringly somber video for the track has been released from director Salomon Ligthelm. The surreal short follows the spirit of a young black man watching over his own body, the procession of mourners at streetside memorials, and eventually his own funeral, bookended with quotes from Prince and statistics on American gun violence. You can watch it above.

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Prince's Piano & A Microphone 83' is out now via Warner Bros. and NPG Records. Hear it it below and hit your preferred streaming platform to put an ear to one or all of the nearly two dozen Prince albums seeing their first rotations on the cloud, including 20ten, Musicology, 3121, and more.