The Prince Estate is gearing up to release a colossal box set reissue of Prince’s 1987 masterpiece, Sign O’ The Times next month, and in the lead-up, have been dropping a steady stream of previously unreleased tracks from Prince’s famous – and seemingly bottomless – vault. The latest to be unveiled is this recording of “Witness 4 The Prosecution (Version 2)” … listen to the track below.
Previous unheard cuts from the upcoming collection include “Witness 4 The Prosecution (Version 1),” “I Could Never Take The Place Of Your Man (1979 Version)” and most recently, “Cosmic Day.”
Prince | “Cosmic Day” [2020 Remaster]
The latest track to be released, “Witness 4 The Prosecution (Version 2)” was recorded by engineer, Coke Johnson at LA’s Sunset Sound, on October 6, 1986. A press release explains: “When country music artist Deborah Allen asked Prince if he could write a song for her, he decided to rework “Witness 4 The Prosecution” instead.”
“The original song contained contributions from the Revolution, but this re-recorded version is almost exclusively Prince (with the exception of Eric Leeds and Atlanta Bliss on sax and trumpet respectively), and it includes at least five different Fairlight keyboard tracks and seven layers of Prince’s own background vocals.”
“Prince decided to keep the song, and would instead offer her ‘Telepathy’, which had been recorded and mixed on the same date.”
Prince’s colossal Sign O’ The Times box set reissue will be available in a range of formats and due out September 25th – Pre-order, here.
Listen “Witness 4 The Prosecution” and more previously unreleased Prince tracks on Spotify:
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