Listen to “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” Prologue Soundtrack With Tems’ “No Woman, No Cry”

July 26, 2022

With the Black Panther: Wakanda Forever trailer exploding with 172 million views in 24 hours, a lot of people wanted to know, who’s cover of Bob Marley’s iconic “No Woman, No Cry” can be heard throughout it? The answer is the Nigerian artist Tems, and her cover is one of the three tunes that Hollywood Records and Marvel Music have released in a prologue soundtrack.

Tems’ version of “No Woman, No Cry” also includes a Kendrick Lamar sample of “Alright,” with Tems singing “We gonna be alright” from Lamar’s song while the trailer moves through images of the country of Wakanda and some of Wakanda’s most familiar faces—Letitia Wright’s Shuri, Lupita Nyong’o’s Nakia, Angela Bassett’s Ramona, Danai Gurira’s Okoye, and Winston Duke’s M’Baku—who are all mourning the loss of Chadwick Boseman’s T’Challa. Boseman died tragically in August of 2020 from colon cancer, and how Wakanda Forever handles his tragic passing has long been one of the film’s central mysteries. The trailer gave us a few clues, and set to Tems gorgeous version of the Marley classic with the Lamar motif, revealing a sense of mourning and grief that amplified the first half of the trailer. Then, it was time for Namor the Sub-Mariner (Tenoch Huerta), the film’s villain, to step in, and the vibe gradually changed to one of defiance.

The other two songs on the prologue soundtrack speak to the elegiac and mournful spirit—”A Body, A Coffin” by Amaarae, and “Soy,” by Santa Fe Klan.

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever comes from director Ryan Coogler, from a script he co-wrote alongside his Black Panther collaborator Joe Robert Cole. Joining the above-mentioned familiar faces from the original Black Panther and Tenoch Huerta as the film’s villain are new cast members, including Dominique Thorne (playing Riri Thomas, who will soon have her own Marvel series on Disney+, Ironheart), Michaela Coel, Alex Nivilani, and Mabel Cadena.

Have a listen to Tems’ “No Woman, No Cry” below. Black Panther: Wakanda Forever hits theaters on November 11.