Snipes’ Brown voice

Spike Lee was brought on to direct a biopic based on the life of James Brown a while ago. There still is no confirmation that this will be his next project but today he spoke about his lead Wesley Snipes and how he would use Brown’s voice for the musical numbers, rather than Snipes’:

“I want to hear James Brown’s voice… That’s just my personal taste… I know Joaquin Phoenix in ‘Walk the Line,’ he did some of the singing… I’m a purist.”

This is the first time that I’ve heard Snipes is playing James Brown. And don’t get me wrong I love Wesley Snipes, but is that really a good decision? Snipes phones in 90% of his roles nowadays with what looks like little to no preparation, so unless in Spike Lee’s mind James Brown was also a secret spec op mercenary with ninja training or something I don’t think the topless scenes are gonna correlate.