WAITING ON A RELEASE DATE

Do you remember when release dates were an event, when your favourite rappers used to have to push their albums forward by a week to avoid piracy, when the Internet and Napster were carefully taking over? Do you even remember Napster? How old are you? It was actually due to how the Internet made piracy so accessible that threatened release dates. In the old days, cave man days by music industry timeline, it took a while to get a physical pirated copy of a CD. I can attest to that, it usually took us about two weeks or so to see a pirated copy of our favourite rapper’s CD, maybe even three. We often had friends who lived abroad telling us that new Nas album was good before we got our hands on it. With the coming of the Internet you could hear that album within a week, because someone could upload it on the Internet before its release date and that made it easy to pirate quickly.

          

 Today, the event that is the release date has been marred by constant push backs. Everyone has conceded that you will be pirated, unless you’re The Throne in which case it might take a while before your album hits us, but then again Jay-Z and Kanye work for the Illuminati so they can do anything. That was a joke, do not take me serious… or not. Anyhoo, some rappers push their albums back due to sample clearance, case in point Drake’s Take Care album and some because they probably underestimated the work involved. The last two albums I ever remember being pushed forward were Eminem’s The Eminem Show and 50 Cent’s debut Get Rich Or Die Trying. They were avoiding Internet piracy. Oh, if they only knew there was no escaping it. Cue The Beatnut’s “No escapin' this”.

I bring all this up because I’m trying to get down with this British Council entrepreneurship competition (and I have to write something new) and because (and more importantly, truly this is the more important one and not as shameless as the first one) I’ve been waiting for Slaughterhouse’s sophomore album Our House since March when it was originally supposed to drop, then it went to April, then May, then June and now July. Either way you can’t get pissed about the delay, because you’re most likely not going to pay for it when it comes out (all you people with your Internet connection and download know-hows.) Now the only release date I’m waiting on after Slaughterhouse is The Faculty, but like all faculties in the Nigerian school system, there’s a lot of going back and forth before you get to see the supervisor, in this case, before we get to see an actual album, which I will buy, not download. No, come to think of it, I deserve a free copy to review. They owe me for this cheap publicity.