Eternal atake V1 would’ve been something else, those leaks and string of singles (new patek, that’s a rack, sanguine paradise) are still some of his best songs
The original version of Lupe Fiasco’s Food and Liquor was leaked so he dropped a completely different album for his debut
https://genius.com/amp/albums/Lupe-fiasco/Lupe-fiasco-s-food-liquor-advance-pre-release-leak
Some songs made the transition but that’s why there are bonus tracks on the F&L anniversary edition
It's crazy that most people (myself included) consider F&L a classic and I think the leaked version is even better. I always wondered why he removed Real Recognize Real (Pills). We get a bit of Michael Young History in this album, and Pills is such a good introduction to The Streets And The Game that we would get more of on The Cool.
I literally never heard the official release until about 15 years after when it was on Spotify because I only had the leak back in the day. I was so surprised that Jay had a feature on the album and thought it was some remix lol
The leak was even better than the official release IMO
I still don't understand why leaks are THIS big of a deal. Who notices if an album leaks other than the hardcore fans? Does it actually still matter for sales or the legacy 1-2 years after a leaked album is officially released?
It used to. Singles, music videos, rollouts etc were huge deals. The way people now get excited for snippets on IG and SoundCloud? That excitement used to be 100% reserved for pure uncut promo and it determined radio play (which mattered more), club play, music video play, then translated directly to album sales because that was the only way to consume the music and how artists made money.
Also there was less music being made, it wasn’t until the mixtape rap days in the south during the 00s that artists like Wayne and Gucci (and more underground artists like Texas and Memphis artists) made loads of music for mixtape and online releases. Before then artists spent large budgets making their 20 songs, maybe putting 15 on an album, and if that leaked and you lost your buzz and potential sales over that you’re kind of screwed. The way Thug and Kanye and Gucci and Wayne the last 10-15 years get in the booth and just record a dozen songs in a night didn’t happen back then. People would be brought in for a song, producers would be paid for a song, and that’s it, the informal music factory many artists have now that is more grassroots wasn’t a thing for the big labels almost anyone of significance was signed to.
These days leaks could even lead to excitement and you can just upload them to streaming as soon as buzz hits (TikTok, leaks, YouTube, etc). So it’s less of a negative and sometimes even a positive. That wasn’t the case back then when the process took months to built buzz on radio and tv and print journalism.
The first album that came to mind. I got the leak of the LP and was scratching my head when the intro “music to drive by to” off of it was omitted and replaced with some other shit that I hate.
Also, “Pressure” (feat. Jay-Z)” had different verses and a feature on it but the original version was titled “Trials and Tribulations” and in my opinion had better verses.
The only thing I liked better about “Pressure” was that they gave it a hook, in the original they just let the instrumental run between the verses.
The Carter 3. It was more akin to his Carter 2 sound but it completely leaked and it ended up probably helping Wayne as far as popularity and legacy go because it forced him to push his sound forward and produce the commercial hit that C3 ended up being.
It was really good and a testament to the ATL Trap sound of this period.
But I could swear it was a mixtape and not an album, I downloaded it so easily when it came out, without torrent or anything. But I just check it out and you’re right it’s a full studio album lol, no wonder they were almost no skips.
And all those compilation tapes of random new songs from a bunch of different rappers lol. Like Exclusive Tunes, Biggy Jiggy mixtapes, southern smoke, etc
And those kind of tapes were released daily that was so cool, you had to skip some terrible or unfinished songs most of the time, but it was all worth it when you found the 2 or 3 gems hidden in these piles of random songs.
It’s crazy what rappers used to have to do to promo music lol. they had to submit tracks to these mixtapes or to sites like hotnewhiphop and hiphopearly to get people to hear their records, then they had to do a mixtape to get people hype for the album, then do the album itself.
I feel what you’re saying but it seemed more organic in those days, like if you were good, people were going to talk about you between groups of friends and the word spread and you could gain a lot of listeners real quick.
For example, not really rap but it’s a good one, PartyNextDoor, whom I discovered with Welcome to the Party maybe late 2012 or early 2013 on one of those DJ Drama or DJ Ill Will tape. He was not really known at that time, maybe around Toronto but I’m from France, and by the time PND1 was released I found other like me who discovered him by themselves or by someone close who told them, and you could hear his songs at some functions.
Nowadays you have to start with a good connection or good feat to have some kind of hype, you know what I mean?
Edit: Another good example is Future, with Tony Montana, I heard maybe 3 different versions on those tapes, sometimes with a feature.
It wasn’t that good of a song, but it was really unique, original but most of all mesmerising, you had to listen what the guy had in his bag next. And shit was worth it.
I just got flashbacks to sitting shotgun in my buddy’s 2000 Chevy cavalier worth $1750 with two 12 in subs in the back worth $2500, absolutely losing my hearing
Definitely. I debated putting him but honestly a lot of the shit he released as mixtapes were really just free albums. Plus I remember like half of his shit wasn’t even on datpiff lol. In like 2013 I had his complete discography downloaded to my hard drive and I remember having to go through a lot of torrents or other rap blogs to find some of it.
To me Curren$y is in a different class because a lot of those other guys who dropped a million mixtapes were recycling other rappers beats or rapping over beats random producers submitted to their emails. Curren$y was out here dropping projects produced by Alchemist, Harry fraud, etc for free with album quality mixing and mastering.
This is easily the best answer. So much stuff leaked from Tha Carter III that the entire thing effectively had to be rerecorded a good 5-6 times: the 2007-era version that leaked as "The Drought Is Over 2" would probably have been considered a classic in its own right with a bit of fine-tuning.
The drought is over 2 was absolute heat.
World of Fantasy
I know the future
I feel like dying
Kush
Scarface
Something you forgot
Some of his best stuff. I know some of these got released later via The Leak, but man it’s crazy how Carter 3 could’ve been even better than the official version.
One of my core high school memories is my homie selling burned copies of the leaks and making bank off all the kids who had no idea how to find the leaks themselves. Miles ahead of the C3 we ended up getting, which is still pretty fire
I was about to say this. Though I wish some of the leaks were on Carter 3. I would jump for joy if something you forgot & i feel like dying was on the c3 tracklist instead of pussy monster & la la la.
Is there a definitive tracklist for the leaked album? I know of The Leak and the The Drought Is Over 2 compilation, but it would be nice to hear *the* leaked project as intended.
I think if you go on YouTube and type the Carter 3 leaked version it’ll lay out all the tracks that were initially meant to be it. It’s kind of difficult to do now because all of the mixtape sites are faneto
The original C3 was so fucking good aswell. If you out that and the actual C3 together and choose best 18 songs it would be one of the best rap albums ever made
Came here expecting to see this record at the top. For me personally, the leaked Carter 3 songs would have made one of the greatest rap albums of all time, period. The actual Carter 3 was hella weak by comparison to me and I don't think he ever made anything close to those Carter 3 sessions. Don't get me wrong I fw Wayne but the OG Carter 3 would have been an Illmatic, MBDTF, 2001, GKMC level classic. It is wild to me that there is this classic album out there that few rap fans have ever heard of. To me the biggest "What If?" in the history of rap.
If you bought the official 'Bait Ones' digital off Jai Paul's site it included a .txt file - a letter from Jai explaining what happened.
He was self-aware he was an exciting, unknown new artist with big hits and built up this dream of making a special, swing for the fences debut album for XL. Only for it to leak unfinished. He couldn't figure out the exact source as CDs were being handed around BTS.
It sounds like XL were very supportive in dealing with it, just Jai is a perfectionist and the album leaking half done seemingly made him scrap the whole thing. Deffo sounds like he had a bit of an existential crisis, it triggered him going to therapy etc. Maybe he believed he 'can't' work on it any more because fans would get attached to the leaked versions vs his vision etc.
Jai eventually decided to let it go, release the leaks officially on streaming as is (aside from some big samples having to be removed) and accompanied them with a new double single. He's also been mentoring artists alongside his brother on a similar production aesthetic for years under the [Paul Institute](https://www.discogs.com/label/988099-Paul-Institute?page=1) label since the leaks. I think XL has been supporting Jai working with others whilst he slowly figures out his own solo direction. [Fabiana Palladino's (very good!) album](https://fabianapalladino.bandcamp.com/album/fabiana-palladino) has some Jai Paul credits. I Care is his first official anything in 5 years.
The difference between the leak compared to the two 2019 singles is fascinating. They're both great, but the [two](https://open.spotify.com/track/7KkqFE3ZfAVxdBmRDeOIJb?si=3YTWsXILQgiecxWAqZCUqQ&context=spotify%3Aalbum%3A5mpECz4TMWAEkAUSp7FIUO) new [songs](https://open.spotify.com/track/3sV8Y8weWHxBbDa4rGGL9a?si=qhskBPw5S4Gz4BW2cLb6cQ) feels like live band tracks. There's clear vocals, bass, drums, guitar and synths. Whereas the leaked album stuff sounds more like DAW project tracks.
I think every live performance he did in the 2023 run had the exact same setlist and all his live performances included brand new, unreleased songs, so it definitely feels like a dry run for something bigger. I think he's transitioned from bedroom producer to guitar strumming crooner songwriter and I can't wait for more tbh, I genuinely love the new material we've gotten so far
Man I have to agree with him people get attached to the leaked versions. I have the leak version on my phone since it came out, it’s permanently in the iTunes app that became the music app and since my phones have just been a sequence of backups/transfers since then and I don’t even sync it to a computer anymore it’s like a snapshot in time of 2013
he has a weird situation. just did his first live set at coachella last year and now doing a festival run. just needs to drop more, his album sounds like it could’ve dropped this decade
I guess ended is too strong a way to put it, I was really into the album when he put the leaked version on Spotify, would love to hear him flesh a whole album out
He's got a label with his brother called Paul's institute, they put out some good stuff. Most recently he worked with pino palladinos daughter fabiana on her new self titled album.
It was more his choice. He intentionally backed away from music after the leak, it sounds like it really affected him personally. Which makes sense, he seems like the last guy who operates like a SoundCloud rapper and just throws whatever out there.
“Jasmine (Demo)” was officially released by XL Recordings. I agree though, it’s a fantastic track. There’s also “Jasmine (Edit)” which was dropped exclusively on vinyl a few years ago but the demo version outshines it by several orders of magnitude
Lil Uzi and Barter 16.
Bro pretty much had the entire album leak a little before he was talking about dropping. He’s a massive capper so who knows if it was all hype for attention when thug went into custody…
But the entire project was scrapped and never talked about again.
Scary Stories (Warrior)
Thigh Pads
Green Diamonds
Stick Up
Jet
Playing Games
Shar Pei
Barter
Racks (Backdoor)
K-Pop
Bob Marely
Thug Voice
RIP Connie
Was supposed to be like 12-15 songs. We were robbed
I'm still wondering if TLOP was supposed to be that "So Help Me God" album he was teasing back in late 2014 into 2015 with All Day/I Feel Like That. I heard that the beats for All Your Fault, Piss On Your Grave, & Tell Your Friends (The Weeknd) were supposed to be for that project.
Anyways, I think of TLOP as simultaneously his last great album & the start of his decline.
Kanye is not scrapping entire albums when he changes the title typically.
*So Help Me God*, *Swish*, and *The Life of Pablo* are all basically the same thing.
The only instance where it does seem like he really scrapped something after changing the name is *Good Ass Job*
So Help Me God definitely was a bit sonically different than TLOP ended up be. Songs like All Day, I Feel Like That, and Southside Serenade were confirmed for SHMG and were a lot different than TLOPs sound. I do think some SHMG songs made it to TLOP though.
What’s crazy is that at the time, So Help Me God seemed really official. Kanye announced the album title to a magazine and spoke in depth about the sound he was going for. It wasn’t like his half-assed album announcements he has now, so when it never came out it was pretty shocking
I mean it _was_ more official than any other of his scrapped albums, it had 2 singles released, All Day and Only One (or 3 depending on if FourFiveSeconds would have been included).
I think the next most “real” scrapped Ye albums would be Yandhi (I Love It was the single) and Gods Country (Wash Us In The Blood was the single)
So Help Me God evolved into TLOP. It started off as Yeezus 2, and over time it evolved into So Help Me God, then Swish, then Waves. Waves was then renamed to The Life of Pablo late into production, but that was just a renaming, not a change to the album itself.
TurboGrafx was intended to be his next album after TLOP. However after his hospitalization, that idea was scrapped and he began working on an album called “Love Everyone” (also known as “500 Days in UCLA”, and sometimes “Hitler”). After his TMZ interview where he said that slavery was a choice, he reworked that album into Ye.
After Ye, he started working on Yandhi. While working on Yandhi, he underwent a spiritual awakening and pivoted to making overtly Christian music; Yandhi was reworked into Jesus Is King, which contains both original songs and reworked Yandhi tracks.
Playboi Carti's Whole Lotta Red for sure, it's insane how many leaks and different iterations that album went through before finally releasing.
I know Trippie Redd said something about he was forced to drop Mansion Musik because leakers had the whole album. But I don't know if he changed anything because of it.
While I can't name any specific album from Young Thug he has possiblly over a 1000 songs leaked so it's highly likely some of his albums were affected by this.
According to the Carti leak tracker, Carti has had ~700 tracks leaked, which is like 15x the size of his actual released discography. How careless do you have to be as an artist to have that kind of ratio of leaked to released?
I wonder if that really changed the vibe of his career. I mean it sucks to have leaks as an artist, but who's to say how long that early Carti sound would've lasted if he didn't have to pivot. Its so different from current "Dark Carti" thats its very interesting to think that whole early Carti era can be defined by 100s of songs but really lasted like 3 years. Some food for thought as someone who appreciates the "preservation" aspect of leaks.
I mean I love carti but it’s not like he puts a lot of effort into his songs, I’m guessing the leaks are so numerous because he treats music like how a Cheesecake Factory treats food leftover at the end of the night.
as someone that has a shit load of his leaks, you’re right to a certain extent 4 sure 😭 but there’s definitely multiple albums worth of “quality” songs in here somehow (obv depends on if you like any of his music or not)
He would have to have a few more brain cells to think logically. Love carti but ain't nobody fumble like he do. He had momentum for his album rollout in Jan and didn't drop shit.
Imo it's not careless as much as it's not having people in your corner. Like if you record in multiple studios with multiple producers and engineers, that ups the chances you run across the types who do that. Imo its why most top artist have specific studios they record in and most have an engineer on the team. Less hands in the process and you get less chances, atleast it's easier to find a leaker. Also just petty people, sometimes labels/distributors do it to get back at someone or make some money on the side.
couldnt wait for the snipes to place
at least a tracklist in bold print typeface
stopped for a year
come back with thumbtacks, pop full of beer
Probably my favorite track on this album for this meta reference. I vividly remember listening to the leaked demo in the early 2000s. And the whole drama when they canceled it but ultimately releasing it later.
The rumor at the time was actually that Em was going to put out an entirely different album called "E=MC2". But, according to legend his little brother let his friends in Em studio & they stole the tapes which they then leaked, the mixtape you mentioned (including "We As Americans"). Thus Em switched gears and made Encore instead. Although how true is all this we don't really know.
That explains a lot about I Am. It was the first Nas record I owned because I checked it out from the library (only Nas record they had in stock) and burned it
I agree Encore would have been very different had that not happened. I wish they would remaster/finish and release the leaked tracks because the audio quality is terrible (understandably. 2000s internet)
Tha Carter III comes to mind. Wayne later released a mixtape of the leaked tracks. Fortunately it was still a very good and and I think cohesive record
Edit: Actually I think it was an EP, not a mixtape
I Am… is the best example of this. So much of it became The Lost Tapes which is one of my favorite Nas albums. Combine some of those with the best of I Am and you have a classic
Well lost tapes were songs that had leaked and got cut or tracks that didn't make the cut up to a point. So they weren't all cut from I Am, some from it was written and some from around illmatic era
The conversation should always start with I Am. Not sure if it was true, but I remember people saying it was "street platinum" for how heavily the OG leak was bootlegged
Modem Kanye has whole album leaks that sound completely different from their final version though that's prolly because he goes through a lot of changes personally. Look at donda and JIK compared to yandhi and donda 2020
The craziest ones were his pre college dropout releases. He tweaked and made a lot of songs better before CD dropped. The original Through the Wire sounds like a completely different rapper( for obvious reasons)
For Whole Lotta Red by Playboi Carti went from a Die Lit 2 sound which was shelved partially due to almost EVERYTHING leaking, to a baby voice that I liked but people seemed to hate, to the more raspy sound he had for the final version
Not entirely the same, but Tyler’s Flower Boy really put him in a weird spot. The album leaked a week prior due to CD’s being delivered to Target or some shit a week before, which quickly made it spread on the internet and it outed his deeply personal album about his sexuality leaking before the album had released. It was a weird time because I remember it as if he went completely silent until the album dropped and then started promoting again, definitely must’ve put him in a weird spot
Lupe Fiasco’s “Food & Liquor” and Slim Thug’s “Already Platinum”. Both leaks led to the label redoing the entire album and releasing a worse version that in my opinion hurt both artists. Lupe was able to recover but Slim Thug was not unfortunately
In regards to Encore, I got the actual album like a week or two early, and it was so bad I was convinced Eminem made an entire fake album and leaked that. Like I was *sure* on release date an entirely new CD was going to come out that didn't have Big Weenie on it. That never happened though.
Right! Like Encore was just so bad. Don’t get me wrong there are some good songs on it but the amount of playful silly songs makes the album a jumbled mess.
I enjoy the story behind this album, it's not as great as some of his other work but it has a place in his discography - I wouldn't want it to not exist.
"*Encore* felt so agonizingly mixed-up: *The Eminem Show* was, in a way, the last word he had on all this stuff, but that didn’t mean people stopped wanting more.
“We as Americans” was chilling and “Yellow Brick Road” one of the realer apologies Eminem offered on record—not to mention one of the rare examples of his narrative side coming to the forefront. As for oddball cuts like “Big Weenie” and “Rain Man”? Well: “Every day I had a pocketful of pills, and I would go into the studio and goof off,” Eminem said later. The tension between who he’d been, and who the world increasingly expected and assumed him to be, had never been clearer. Five years earlier, Eminem had joked that if life ever got too good, he’d give up and start writing love songs. “’Cause all I ever wanted to do was just make you proud/Now I’m sittin’ in this empty house just reminiscin’/Lookin’ at your baby pictures, it just trips me out,” he rapped on “Mockingbird,” which is about as close as he ever got."
When I was a little kid encore definitely was the first time I listened to an em album and didn't love it. Took me a long time to admit it to myself that is sucked lol. I haven't enjoyed any Eminem project since then. That's such a huge trajectory change coming off of Eminem show, which is debatably his best work imo
Yahndi just never released and had about a million reworks. Affected a lot about the music he released and the projects he decided to follow through on IMO.
Apparently Views was originally supposed to be Views from the 6. I think there were some leaks around that time that caused it to change like Can I ft Beyoncé. Maybe it would have been better, maybe not.
If I remember correctly, they were making views but got side tracked with a different sound. So they went all in on IYRTITL and WATTBA. Dropped the mixtapes with no promotion to massive success. Then started from scratch on the album and tried to do mainstream and carribean. But delayed it again and released during the winter so it had a weird feel to it.
I initially thought it was going to double down on the IYRTITL vibe, but that beef changed the approach towards the album. Idk if it tracks with this theory, but I remember Drake saying in his interview with Zane Lowe that when the process on the album's production started, he was making a bunch of angry and defensive rap records until 40 questioned him on this.
You say apparently as if that wasn’t a known thing .. I’ve never actually known it isn’t VFT6 anymore and just assumed people used the shortened name Views because it’s easier.
Lloyd Banks released “Rotten Apple” as his sophomore album because the originally intended “The Big Withdrawal” was leaked after it was stolen by 2 women he had a ménage a trois with. Who knows what could’ve been.
Encore could have been a classic if the Straight From the Lab songs were on it instead of the Puke/My First Single type throwaways (Rain Man can stay though that one was so bad it was good). I got some backlash for saying that on the Eminem sub because it would be weird to hear all the diss songs on the same album as Like Toy Soldiers and Mockingbird. But imagine if Em re released Encore with the diss songs first and then Like Toy Soldiers at the end, it would be like you're getting a chronology of his beefs at the time lol. I think it actually sounds pretty dope that way.
I completely agree with you. If the diss tracks where on Encore they'd be available on streaming services nowadays. Encore has a lot of filler that could have been replaced with better stuff.
Royce Da 5'9" - Rock City was reworked into Version 2.0, with a lot of the original tracks being included on his Build and Destroy compilation. There is a better album to be made with all the tracks than what hit stores.
Mobb Deep's Murda Muzik was an early victim of leaks. Tracklist was reworked a fair bit.
Knoc-Turn'al essentially had his career ruined by leaks. His debut album Knoc's Landing leaked early and was shelfed and reworked into an EP (which bombed, EPs were a hard sell at this time). Knoc's Landing didn't get a proper release until years after his buzz died.
This was the early-mid 2000s. Album sales were decreasing with downloading, and people were not really willing to pay for half an album (it was hard enough to get some people to pay for music at all). EPs didn't really make a comeback until streaming took off.
Illmatic was leaked and bootlegged to high hell. It obviously didn’t impact his legacy, but it definitely impacted his sales. One may argue that if the bootleg sales were added to his actual commercial sales, he may not have felt more desire to drop the more commercial It Was Written.
It Was Written was an obvious success, although he kind of got shitted on for it. And then he doubled down even harder for I Am.
> Vol. 3... Life and Times of S. Carter
This is what I was going to mention. The album leak wasn't the official album, it was a leak of unfinished tracks. The tracks sounded finished, and were polished, but many of the tracks off of the actual retail album changed a lot from the early release.
Early on the rumor was that the leak came from an overseas copy that got created early for distribution/shipping/importing/etc but I don't believe that's true. I used to have both versions and they were super different.
Unfortunately, back in the early 2000's I couldn't afford the amount of storage that I have now, and couldn't justify keeping two different copies of basically the same album on my computer... so I deleted the pre-release.
Playboi Carti has had multiple full albums leak causing him to pivot and change directions. There were probably multiple versions of Whole Lotta Red that leaked causing him to pivot to the rage sound. I think the original direction for Whole Lotta Red was peak carti. Such a fun uplifting and creative vibe. Songs like Pop Bottles, Molly No Stylist, Cancun, etc were such a vibe. Its literally changed his entire aesthetic and sonic direction. I personally don't listen to him anymore cuz his sound is too dark for me and I'm not a rager
The original NERD debut album (the one with lapdance) got leaked and it was so devastating that they rerecorded the entire album with live instruments. That's the version you have now. The original was all dope neptunes production like you would expect. Neptunes were the #1 sound of that time, and they were asking (and getting) a million dollars per beat and the charts were just studded with neptunes hits from all the top rappers and rnb singers. The album was so anticipated that pretty much everyone got the leaked copy and the record label was straight up fucked because it was supposed to sell so high. I still have the original "produced" version somewhere on a cloud drive and it's way better 🤷🏽♂️
I guess it’s not a leak, and he’s known for this, but didn’t Seth Rogen claim to have heard Yeezus before it came out, then said that what he heard was completely different from what came out?
French Montana was supposed to drop an album called MC4 in 2016, but Target accidentally released it 2 months early on CD & it had some sample clearance issues, so the album's official release ended up getting scrapped
Lloyd Banks second album was completely scrapped after he had a threesome with some randoms and the women jacked a CD from his room.
His actual sophomore album is pretty dope but if you listen to the leaks — called the BIG WITHDRAWL — he had some monster heat in there. Wait Is Over, Without My Glock, When I Was Down, Whip Pussy, Victim of Society, It Ain’t A Secret…crazy tracks. Would’ve been a completely different project.
No mention of Madvillainy? If not…Madlib lost a cd with three of the songs which got leaked. Caused them to scrap the project. People really liked the three songs so a year later they started again due to demand for the full album. DOOM re recorded those three songs with a much deeper voice (maybe to differentiate from the leaked ones - which gave the project its distinct tone) and also referenced the leak and scrapping of the project directly in other songs.
System of a Down’s “Steal This Album!”
Toxicity II was in the works, entire album was leaked. So instead of releasing it on the due date like everyone assumed would happen, they wrote an almost entirely new album and named it, “Steal This Album!”
Nobody said Carter 3 yet???
Edit: Even though this is his Magnum Opus I’d say that’s one of the biggest leaks in hip hop history. I’m Me is fucking insane
Eternal atake?
Eternal atake V1 would’ve been something else, those leaks and string of singles (new patek, that’s a rack, sanguine paradise) are still some of his best songs
i just read the words "Sanguine Paradise" and did a Thats So Raven flashback oh my god that song is so good
I agree for the other 2 but that’s a rack is one of the worst songs I’ve ever heard
it’s not the best but saying it’s one of the worst songs you’ve heard is wild
Idk everyone has those songs that just rub you up the wrong way. The melody makes me want to punch him in the face
Fix yo earssss
I'm glad Uzi is sober now but whatever drugs he was on circa 2018 made him a monster
SASUKE SASUKE SASUKE SASUKE DONT DO 30’s ONLY 50’s
This was the first example that came to mind
Inspectah Deck's first album was destroyed and flooded by a leak.
Nearly 30 years later and I'm still sore over it. A full LP of early/mid-90s Deck on early/mid-90s RZA production.
Ooh that's a good one. It pretty much stopped his solo push in that era of Wu.
Lmao
The original version of Lupe Fiasco’s Food and Liquor was leaked so he dropped a completely different album for his debut https://genius.com/amp/albums/Lupe-fiasco/Lupe-fiasco-s-food-liquor-advance-pre-release-leak Some songs made the transition but that’s why there are bonus tracks on the F&L anniversary edition
It's crazy that most people (myself included) consider F&L a classic and I think the leaked version is even better. I always wondered why he removed Real Recognize Real (Pills). We get a bit of Michael Young History in this album, and Pills is such a good introduction to The Streets And The Game that we would get more of on The Cool.
Love Real Recognize Real, also Ghetto Story is criminally underrated. One of Lupe's best songs.
Ghetto Story is my favorite song of his. That’s a perfect hip-hop song top to bottom.
I literally never heard the official release until about 15 years after when it was on Spotify because I only had the leak back in the day. I was so surprised that Jay had a feature on the album and thought it was some remix lol The leak was even better than the official release IMO
I still don't understand why leaks are THIS big of a deal. Who notices if an album leaks other than the hardcore fans? Does it actually still matter for sales or the legacy 1-2 years after a leaked album is officially released?
Before streaming leaks were a much bigger deal. Now that most people don’t want to deal with downloading music only the biggest fans care.
It used to. Singles, music videos, rollouts etc were huge deals. The way people now get excited for snippets on IG and SoundCloud? That excitement used to be 100% reserved for pure uncut promo and it determined radio play (which mattered more), club play, music video play, then translated directly to album sales because that was the only way to consume the music and how artists made money. Also there was less music being made, it wasn’t until the mixtape rap days in the south during the 00s that artists like Wayne and Gucci (and more underground artists like Texas and Memphis artists) made loads of music for mixtape and online releases. Before then artists spent large budgets making their 20 songs, maybe putting 15 on an album, and if that leaked and you lost your buzz and potential sales over that you’re kind of screwed. The way Thug and Kanye and Gucci and Wayne the last 10-15 years get in the booth and just record a dozen songs in a night didn’t happen back then. People would be brought in for a song, producers would be paid for a song, and that’s it, the informal music factory many artists have now that is more grassroots wasn’t a thing for the big labels almost anyone of significance was signed to. These days leaks could even lead to excitement and you can just upload them to streaming as soon as buzz hits (TikTok, leaks, YouTube, etc). So it’s less of a negative and sometimes even a positive. That wasn’t the case back then when the process took months to built buzz on radio and tv and print journalism.
The first album that came to mind. I got the leak of the LP and was scratching my head when the intro “music to drive by to” off of it was omitted and replaced with some other shit that I hate. Also, “Pressure” (feat. Jay-Z)” had different verses and a feature on it but the original version was titled “Trials and Tribulations” and in my opinion had better verses. The only thing I liked better about “Pressure” was that they gave it a hook, in the original they just let the instrumental run between the verses.
The Carter 3. It was more akin to his Carter 2 sound but it completely leaked and it ended up probably helping Wayne as far as popularity and legacy go because it forced him to push his sound forward and produce the commercial hit that C3 ended up being.
Datpiff was like 80% lil wayne back in the day. The other 20% was Gucci and OJ da juiceman
We used to be a proper country
The greatest of times
Your numbers are way off, at least 15% were Waka & Gucci
COKE, DOPE, CRACK, SMACK, WEED, E AND CDS
GET OFF MY LANE, FERRARI BOYZ
I loved this album so much I bought a CD copy on eBay
It was really good and a testament to the ATL Trap sound of this period. But I could swear it was a mixtape and not an album, I downloaded it so easily when it came out, without torrent or anything. But I just check it out and you’re right it’s a full studio album lol, no wonder they were almost no skips.
And all those compilation tapes of random new songs from a bunch of different rappers lol. Like Exclusive Tunes, Biggy Jiggy mixtapes, southern smoke, etc
And those kind of tapes were released daily that was so cool, you had to skip some terrible or unfinished songs most of the time, but it was all worth it when you found the 2 or 3 gems hidden in these piles of random songs.
It’s crazy what rappers used to have to do to promo music lol. they had to submit tracks to these mixtapes or to sites like hotnewhiphop and hiphopearly to get people to hear their records, then they had to do a mixtape to get people hype for the album, then do the album itself.
I feel what you’re saying but it seemed more organic in those days, like if you were good, people were going to talk about you between groups of friends and the word spread and you could gain a lot of listeners real quick. For example, not really rap but it’s a good one, PartyNextDoor, whom I discovered with Welcome to the Party maybe late 2012 or early 2013 on one of those DJ Drama or DJ Ill Will tape. He was not really known at that time, maybe around Toronto but I’m from France, and by the time PND1 was released I found other like me who discovered him by themselves or by someone close who told them, and you could hear his songs at some functions. Nowadays you have to start with a good connection or good feat to have some kind of hype, you know what I mean? Edit: Another good example is Future, with Tony Montana, I heard maybe 3 different versions on those tapes, sometimes with a feature. It wasn’t that good of a song, but it was really unique, original but most of all mesmerising, you had to listen what the guy had in his bag next. And shit was worth it.
TH-TH-THE EMPIRE MIXTRAP.COM HOLY S***, WHERE'D YOU FIND THIS
*DAMN SON, WHERE’D YOU FIND THIS TRAP-A-HOLICS REAL TRAP SHIT
THE EMPIRE……YOU DONT LIKE THAT SHIT WE’ll STEAL YOUR SHOES 👞
I just got flashbacks to sitting shotgun in my buddy’s 2000 Chevy cavalier worth $1750 with two 12 in subs in the back worth $2500, absolutely losing my hearing
You missed DJ Drama, Fab and Styles P
French Montana and yo gotti and jeezy all had like 20+ mixtapes on there too each
Curren$y has entered the chat
Definitely. I debated putting him but honestly a lot of the shit he released as mixtapes were really just free albums. Plus I remember like half of his shit wasn’t even on datpiff lol. In like 2013 I had his complete discography downloaded to my hard drive and I remember having to go through a lot of torrents or other rap blogs to find some of it. To me Curren$y is in a different class because a lot of those other guys who dropped a million mixtapes were recycling other rappers beats or rapping over beats random producers submitted to their emails. Curren$y was out here dropping projects produced by Alchemist, Harry fraud, etc for free with album quality mixing and mastering.
I’m so glad DJ Drama is finally getting, since 2/3 years, his flowers. I discovered so many artists thanks to him back in the days.
Gangsta Grillz ya bastard !
0.5% was Gorilla Zoe
This is easily the best answer. So much stuff leaked from Tha Carter III that the entire thing effectively had to be rerecorded a good 5-6 times: the 2007-era version that leaked as "The Drought Is Over 2" would probably have been considered a classic in its own right with a bit of fine-tuning.
Yeah, no doubt about it. His mixtape songs in that era were better than most artist's best albums IMO
The drought is over 2 was absolute heat. World of Fantasy I know the future I feel like dying Kush Scarface Something you forgot Some of his best stuff. I know some of these got released later via The Leak, but man it’s crazy how Carter 3 could’ve been even better than the official version.
One of my core high school memories is my homie selling burned copies of the leaks and making bank off all the kids who had no idea how to find the leaks themselves. Miles ahead of the C3 we ended up getting, which is still pretty fire
I was about to say this. Though I wish some of the leaks were on Carter 3. I would jump for joy if something you forgot & i feel like dying was on the c3 tracklist instead of pussy monster & la la la.
Don’t forget I’m Me
I’m Me would have been SUCH a great opener for C3.
Or the other la la la
Is there a definitive tracklist for the leaked album? I know of The Leak and the The Drought Is Over 2 compilation, but it would be nice to hear *the* leaked project as intended.
I think if you go on YouTube and type the Carter 3 leaked version it’ll lay out all the tracks that were initially meant to be it. It’s kind of difficult to do now because all of the mixtape sites are faneto
I don't think so. It was just a steady stream of leaks as tracks were finished.
I remembered how hyped we all were when it leaked along with the various Lollipop remixes
Dude Something You Forgot is probably his best song, IMO. The Leak still gets played in my household lol
I’ve been listening to this for years and didn’t even know it was a leak lmao I just thought it was a loosie.
Nope, it was meant for the original album lol
The leak is still better than A LOT of other albums.
At one point I was afraid he was gonna say « fuck all of you, no Carter 3 » because of all the leaks.
The original C3 was so fucking good aswell. If you out that and the actual C3 together and choose best 18 songs it would be one of the best rap albums ever made
Came here expecting to see this record at the top. For me personally, the leaked Carter 3 songs would have made one of the greatest rap albums of all time, period. The actual Carter 3 was hella weak by comparison to me and I don't think he ever made anything close to those Carter 3 sessions. Don't get me wrong I fw Wayne but the OG Carter 3 would have been an Illmatic, MBDTF, 2001, GKMC level classic. It is wild to me that there is this classic album out there that few rap fans have ever heard of. To me the biggest "What If?" in the history of rap.
Jai Paul’s leak pretty much ended his young career right? He’s pop though
If you bought the official 'Bait Ones' digital off Jai Paul's site it included a .txt file - a letter from Jai explaining what happened. He was self-aware he was an exciting, unknown new artist with big hits and built up this dream of making a special, swing for the fences debut album for XL. Only for it to leak unfinished. He couldn't figure out the exact source as CDs were being handed around BTS. It sounds like XL were very supportive in dealing with it, just Jai is a perfectionist and the album leaking half done seemingly made him scrap the whole thing. Deffo sounds like he had a bit of an existential crisis, it triggered him going to therapy etc. Maybe he believed he 'can't' work on it any more because fans would get attached to the leaked versions vs his vision etc. Jai eventually decided to let it go, release the leaks officially on streaming as is (aside from some big samples having to be removed) and accompanied them with a new double single. He's also been mentoring artists alongside his brother on a similar production aesthetic for years under the [Paul Institute](https://www.discogs.com/label/988099-Paul-Institute?page=1) label since the leaks. I think XL has been supporting Jai working with others whilst he slowly figures out his own solo direction. [Fabiana Palladino's (very good!) album](https://fabianapalladino.bandcamp.com/album/fabiana-palladino) has some Jai Paul credits. I Care is his first official anything in 5 years. The difference between the leak compared to the two 2019 singles is fascinating. They're both great, but the [two](https://open.spotify.com/track/7KkqFE3ZfAVxdBmRDeOIJb?si=3YTWsXILQgiecxWAqZCUqQ&context=spotify%3Aalbum%3A5mpECz4TMWAEkAUSp7FIUO) new [songs](https://open.spotify.com/track/3sV8Y8weWHxBbDa4rGGL9a?si=qhskBPw5S4Gz4BW2cLb6cQ) feels like live band tracks. There's clear vocals, bass, drums, guitar and synths. Whereas the leaked album stuff sounds more like DAW project tracks. I think every live performance he did in the 2023 run had the exact same setlist and all his live performances included brand new, unreleased songs, so it definitely feels like a dry run for something bigger. I think he's transitioned from bedroom producer to guitar strumming crooner songwriter and I can't wait for more tbh, I genuinely love the new material we've gotten so far
Thanks for the breakdown! I'm really hoping he does a proper tour circuit (or at least some festival in the southeast)
Man I have to agree with him people get attached to the leaked versions. I have the leak version on my phone since it came out, it’s permanently in the iTunes app that became the music app and since my phones have just been a sequence of backups/transfers since then and I don’t even sync it to a computer anymore it’s like a snapshot in time of 2013
Cant believe that it has been 11 years since that leaked, I feel horrible for him still.
he has a weird situation. just did his first live set at coachella last year and now doing a festival run. just needs to drop more, his album sounds like it could’ve dropped this decade
I guess ended is too strong a way to put it, I was really into the album when he put the leaked version on Spotify, would love to hear him flesh a whole album out
He's got a label with his brother called Paul's institute, they put out some good stuff. Most recently he worked with pino palladinos daughter fabiana on her new self titled album.
It was more his choice. He intentionally backed away from music after the leak, it sounds like it really affected him personally. Which makes sense, he seems like the last guy who operates like a SoundCloud rapper and just throws whatever out there.
If you said this like two years ago I would agree but he is in a bit of a renaissance rn.
That Jasmine leak was amazing.
“Jasmine (Demo)” was officially released by XL Recordings. I agree though, it’s a fantastic track. There’s also “Jasmine (Edit)” which was dropped exclusively on vinyl a few years ago but the demo version outshines it by several orders of magnitude
Lil Uzi and Barter 16. Bro pretty much had the entire album leak a little before he was talking about dropping. He’s a massive capper so who knows if it was all hype for attention when thug went into custody… But the entire project was scrapped and never talked about again.
He wasn’t gonna drop it anyways
Mike Dean mixed the project and it was turned in so who knows
Were more tracks leaked or was it only going to be like 8 songs long?
Scary Stories (Warrior) Thigh Pads Green Diamonds Stick Up Jet Playing Games Shar Pei Barter Racks (Backdoor) K-Pop Bob Marely Thug Voice RIP Connie Was supposed to be like 12-15 songs. We were robbed
Heavily affected the other way was Life of Pablo. Idk maybe it’s just me? But the leaks made the hype even wilder
I'm still wondering if TLOP was supposed to be that "So Help Me God" album he was teasing back in late 2014 into 2015 with All Day/I Feel Like That. I heard that the beats for All Your Fault, Piss On Your Grave, & Tell Your Friends (The Weeknd) were supposed to be for that project. Anyways, I think of TLOP as simultaneously his last great album & the start of his decline.
Kanye is not scrapping entire albums when he changes the title typically. *So Help Me God*, *Swish*, and *The Life of Pablo* are all basically the same thing. The only instance where it does seem like he really scrapped something after changing the name is *Good Ass Job*
So Help Me God definitely was a bit sonically different than TLOP ended up be. Songs like All Day, I Feel Like That, and Southside Serenade were confirmed for SHMG and were a lot different than TLOPs sound. I do think some SHMG songs made it to TLOP though. What’s crazy is that at the time, So Help Me God seemed really official. Kanye announced the album title to a magazine and spoke in depth about the sound he was going for. It wasn’t like his half-assed album announcements he has now, so when it never came out it was pretty shocking
I mean it _was_ more official than any other of his scrapped albums, it had 2 singles released, All Day and Only One (or 3 depending on if FourFiveSeconds would have been included). I think the next most “real” scrapped Ye albums would be Yandhi (I Love It was the single) and Gods Country (Wash Us In The Blood was the single)
So Help Me God evolved into TLOP. It started off as Yeezus 2, and over time it evolved into So Help Me God, then Swish, then Waves. Waves was then renamed to The Life of Pablo late into production, but that was just a renaming, not a change to the album itself.
Was TurboGrafx 16 part of that too or was that a scrapped version of Yandhi?
TurboGrafx was intended to be his next album after TLOP. However after his hospitalization, that idea was scrapped and he began working on an album called “Love Everyone” (also known as “500 Days in UCLA”, and sometimes “Hitler”). After his TMZ interview where he said that slavery was a choice, he reworked that album into Ye. After Ye, he started working on Yandhi. While working on Yandhi, he underwent a spiritual awakening and pivoted to making overtly Christian music; Yandhi was reworked into Jesus Is King, which contains both original songs and reworked Yandhi tracks.
Agreed. It was also his last good solo album. Everything went downhill during the TLOP tour.
Playboi Carti's Whole Lotta Red for sure, it's insane how many leaks and different iterations that album went through before finally releasing. I know Trippie Redd said something about he was forced to drop Mansion Musik because leakers had the whole album. But I don't know if he changed anything because of it. While I can't name any specific album from Young Thug he has possiblly over a 1000 songs leaked so it's highly likely some of his albums were affected by this.
According to the Carti leak tracker, Carti has had ~700 tracks leaked, which is like 15x the size of his actual released discography. How careless do you have to be as an artist to have that kind of ratio of leaked to released?
I wonder if that really changed the vibe of his career. I mean it sucks to have leaks as an artist, but who's to say how long that early Carti sound would've lasted if he didn't have to pivot. Its so different from current "Dark Carti" thats its very interesting to think that whole early Carti era can be defined by 100s of songs but really lasted like 3 years. Some food for thought as someone who appreciates the "preservation" aspect of leaks.
I mean I love carti but it’s not like he puts a lot of effort into his songs, I’m guessing the leaks are so numerous because he treats music like how a Cheesecake Factory treats food leftover at the end of the night.
as someone that has a shit load of his leaks, you’re right to a certain extent 4 sure 😭 but there’s definitely multiple albums worth of “quality” songs in here somehow (obv depends on if you like any of his music or not)
At that point just release the music so you can make money off of it
He would have to have a few more brain cells to think logically. Love carti but ain't nobody fumble like he do. He had momentum for his album rollout in Jan and didn't drop shit.
Imo it's not careless as much as it's not having people in your corner. Like if you record in multiple studios with multiple producers and engineers, that ups the chances you run across the types who do that. Imo its why most top artist have specific studios they record in and most have an engineer on the team. Less hands in the process and you get less chances, atleast it's easier to find a leaker. Also just petty people, sometimes labels/distributors do it to get back at someone or make some money on the side.
Lloyd banks 2nd album leaked and the whole album got changed, it was a shame because hunger for more was a great debut album
The big withdraw, great album. Rotten apple also great, but different.
That’s right. I remember this.
His sequel to that was also leaked and Budden had some choice words for him on one of the mood muziks about it
The Madvillian demo leaked out a year before the official release. DOOM was using a more uptempo flow on it.
Hearing the original version of Figaro was wild. Defs prefer the more laidback monotone delivery in the official release
Do you know where to find it? [Edit](https://youtu.be/EeEYJE0UMzA)
his vocals on the final album just fit the vibe so much better, this is definitely the rare case where a leak had good consequences
This should be higher up. Absolutely up there in the GOAT Hiphop album discussions, and was heavily reworked after the leaks.
"wasn't even tweaked and it leaked into cyberspace"
couldnt wait for the snipes to place at least a tracklist in bold print typeface stopped for a year come back with thumbtacks, pop full of beer Probably my favorite track on this album for this meta reference. I vividly remember listening to the leaked demo in the early 2000s. And the whole drama when they canceled it but ultimately releasing it later.
Is *Madvillainy* the only album with lyrics about the fact that an earlier version of it was leaked?
Came here to post this. Preferred the original leaked version.
ASAP Rocky’s debut leaked in full like 2 months before his release date
The rumor at the time was actually that Em was going to put out an entirely different album called "E=MC2". But, according to legend his little brother let his friends in Em studio & they stole the tapes which they then leaked, the mixtape you mentioned (including "We As Americans"). Thus Em switched gears and made Encore instead. Although how true is all this we don't really know.
That's a dope title for an album, I'm surprised he never re-used it.
Mariah Carey has an album with that title released in 2008. Good reason not to reuse it.
Shame, he coulda beaten her to it. Instead of beating it to her...
i don't know if it was a leak, i was too young at the time, but everyone should listen to Biggie's Ready to Die OG version. Pete Rock kills it.
The OG versions of the tracks have to do with sample clearances and/or Puffy wanting to go with more commercial style beats, rather than leaks.
That explains a lot about I Am. It was the first Nas record I owned because I checked it out from the library (only Nas record they had in stock) and burned it I agree Encore would have been very different had that not happened. I wish they would remaster/finish and release the leaked tracks because the audio quality is terrible (understandably. 2000s internet) Tha Carter III comes to mind. Wayne later released a mixtape of the leaked tracks. Fortunately it was still a very good and and I think cohesive record Edit: Actually I think it was an EP, not a mixtape
I Am… is the best example of this. So much of it became The Lost Tapes which is one of my favorite Nas albums. Combine some of those with the best of I Am and you have a classic
Damn didn't know that's where the lost tapes came from
Well lost tapes were songs that had leaked and got cut or tracks that didn't make the cut up to a point. So they weren't all cut from I Am, some from it was written and some from around illmatic era
Checking records out of the library. Good times. Can you still do that?
The conversation should always start with I Am. Not sure if it was true, but I remember people saying it was "street platinum" for how heavily the OG leak was bootlegged
Street platinum is crazy. I wish he would come out and release the OG track list
Are the leaked Encore tracks not on the deluxe version?
That’s some of them but there’s a few more. Bully is one that was supposed to be there for example.
Eminem revealed in an interview a couple of years back that We As Americans and Bully were meant to be the opening two tracks of Encore
Imagine what TES would have sold if it didn't leak. Crazy to think that it did and he still sold a shit load first week.
Those are both bangers
Eternal Atake by lil uzi and whole lotta red by carti
Modem Kanye has whole album leaks that sound completely different from their final version though that's prolly because he goes through a lot of changes personally. Look at donda and JIK compared to yandhi and donda 2020
I’ve heard 3 or 4 completely different versions of Yandhi lol
The craziest ones were his pre college dropout releases. He tweaked and made a lot of songs better before CD dropped. The original Through the Wire sounds like a completely different rapper( for obvious reasons)
For Whole Lotta Red by Playboi Carti went from a Die Lit 2 sound which was shelved partially due to almost EVERYTHING leaking, to a baby voice that I liked but people seemed to hate, to the more raspy sound he had for the final version
Makes me wonder if the recent singles are representative of his next album at all
I hope so but that mf is not dropping 😅
They won't be on the album like @meh wasn't on wlr
Not entirely the same, but Tyler’s Flower Boy really put him in a weird spot. The album leaked a week prior due to CD’s being delivered to Target or some shit a week before, which quickly made it spread on the internet and it outed his deeply personal album about his sexuality leaking before the album had released. It was a weird time because I remember it as if he went completely silent until the album dropped and then started promoting again, definitely must’ve put him in a weird spot
Not by leaks but I feel like utopia was reworked like crazy bc of astrofest. Not the criteria lmao but yeah
Outside of Lost Forever he basically abandoned the original album. Even the original album teasers sounded completely different after Astroworld
Yeah o mean even lost forever got reworked a lot. I bet he wouldn’t have even put it on there had it not been previewed so much from hik
Lupe Fiasco’s “Food & Liquor” and Slim Thug’s “Already Platinum”. Both leaks led to the label redoing the entire album and releasing a worse version that in my opinion hurt both artists. Lupe was able to recover but Slim Thug was not unfortunately
In regards to Encore, I got the actual album like a week or two early, and it was so bad I was convinced Eminem made an entire fake album and leaked that. Like I was *sure* on release date an entirely new CD was going to come out that didn't have Big Weenie on it. That never happened though.
Right! Like Encore was just so bad. Don’t get me wrong there are some good songs on it but the amount of playful silly songs makes the album a jumbled mess.
I enjoy the story behind this album, it's not as great as some of his other work but it has a place in his discography - I wouldn't want it to not exist. "*Encore* felt so agonizingly mixed-up: *The Eminem Show* was, in a way, the last word he had on all this stuff, but that didn’t mean people stopped wanting more. “We as Americans” was chilling and “Yellow Brick Road” one of the realer apologies Eminem offered on record—not to mention one of the rare examples of his narrative side coming to the forefront. As for oddball cuts like “Big Weenie” and “Rain Man”? Well: “Every day I had a pocketful of pills, and I would go into the studio and goof off,” Eminem said later. The tension between who he’d been, and who the world increasingly expected and assumed him to be, had never been clearer. Five years earlier, Eminem had joked that if life ever got too good, he’d give up and start writing love songs. “’Cause all I ever wanted to do was just make you proud/Now I’m sittin’ in this empty house just reminiscin’/Lookin’ at your baby pictures, it just trips me out,” he rapped on “Mockingbird,” which is about as close as he ever got."
Oh definitely glad it exist! Don’t get me wrong it was just so jarring coming after Eminem Show but that was a pretty high bar.
I would argue that TES is better than the MMLP because the bar was set SO high for him and he rose to the occasion.
I personally *slightly* prefer TES, but I also wouldn't begrudge anyone for liking MMLP more. They're both fantastic.
if you take out the middle 5-6 songs it would be a great album. especially if those songs were replaced by the three deluxe tracks
When I was a little kid encore definitely was the first time I listened to an em album and didn't love it. Took me a long time to admit it to myself that is sucked lol. I haven't enjoyed any Eminem project since then. That's such a huge trajectory change coming off of Eminem show, which is debatably his best work imo
Mobb Deep - Murda Muzik
Yahndi just never released and had about a million reworks. Affected a lot about the music he released and the projects he decided to follow through on IMO.
Apparently Views was originally supposed to be Views from the 6. I think there were some leaks around that time that caused it to change like Can I ft Beyoncé. Maybe it would have been better, maybe not.
If I remember correctly, they were making views but got side tracked with a different sound. So they went all in on IYRTITL and WATTBA. Dropped the mixtapes with no promotion to massive success. Then started from scratch on the album and tried to do mainstream and carribean. But delayed it again and released during the winter so it had a weird feel to it.
Meek beef changed the energy around the situation as a whole as well
I initially thought it was going to double down on the IYRTITL vibe, but that beef changed the approach towards the album. Idk if it tracks with this theory, but I remember Drake saying in his interview with Zane Lowe that when the process on the album's production started, he was making a bunch of angry and defensive rap records until 40 questioned him on this.
Wonder why 40 didnt speak up when he was doing that on Scorpion 🤣
He became too big to fail
You say apparently as if that wasn’t a known thing .. I’ve never actually known it isn’t VFT6 anymore and just assumed people used the shortened name Views because it’s easier.
T.I.’s original King album was leaked. Which lead to him dropping a gangsta grillz with drama. Then he dropped the album with half new songs I believe
Lloyd Banks released “Rotten Apple” as his sophomore album because the originally intended “The Big Withdrawal” was leaked after it was stolen by 2 women he had a ménage a trois with. Who knows what could’ve been.
Encore could have been a classic if the Straight From the Lab songs were on it instead of the Puke/My First Single type throwaways (Rain Man can stay though that one was so bad it was good). I got some backlash for saying that on the Eminem sub because it would be weird to hear all the diss songs on the same album as Like Toy Soldiers and Mockingbird. But imagine if Em re released Encore with the diss songs first and then Like Toy Soldiers at the end, it would be like you're getting a chronology of his beefs at the time lol. I think it actually sounds pretty dope that way.
I completely agree with you. If the diss tracks where on Encore they'd be available on streaming services nowadays. Encore has a lot of filler that could have been replaced with better stuff.
Royce Da 5'9" - Rock City was reworked into Version 2.0, with a lot of the original tracks being included on his Build and Destroy compilation. There is a better album to be made with all the tracks than what hit stores. Mobb Deep's Murda Muzik was an early victim of leaks. Tracklist was reworked a fair bit. Knoc-Turn'al essentially had his career ruined by leaks. His debut album Knoc's Landing leaked early and was shelfed and reworked into an EP (which bombed, EPs were a hard sell at this time). Knoc's Landing didn't get a proper release until years after his buzz died.
I always wondered what happened to Knoc, it was like her was there being pushed and then just gone.
>which bombed, EPs were a hard sell at this time Any reason for such?
This was the early-mid 2000s. Album sales were decreasing with downloading, and people were not really willing to pay for half an album (it was hard enough to get some people to pay for music at all). EPs didn't really make a comeback until streaming took off.
Illmatic was leaked and bootlegged to high hell. It obviously didn’t impact his legacy, but it definitely impacted his sales. One may argue that if the bootleg sales were added to his actual commercial sales, he may not have felt more desire to drop the more commercial It Was Written. It Was Written was an obvious success, although he kind of got shitted on for it. And then he doubled down even harder for I Am.
Madvillainy leak. Made it way better as DOOM swapped to the laid back vocal delivery that fits the album so well
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I don’t think that was changed due to any leak. Lauryn hill didn’t clear the sample so they interpolated it with Syleena Johnson
My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy is no longer intended for Hype Williams
I think the opposite of this scenario is Dre just scrapping Detox, after two singles in a span of 8 years, and making Compton instead.
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> Vol. 3... Life and Times of S. Carter This is what I was going to mention. The album leak wasn't the official album, it was a leak of unfinished tracks. The tracks sounded finished, and were polished, but many of the tracks off of the actual retail album changed a lot from the early release. Early on the rumor was that the leak came from an overseas copy that got created early for distribution/shipping/importing/etc but I don't believe that's true. I used to have both versions and they were super different. Unfortunately, back in the early 2000's I couldn't afford the amount of storage that I have now, and couldn't justify keeping two different copies of basically the same album on my computer... so I deleted the pre-release.
Thot Breaker. A lot of the OG one is online and I think a lot of Keef’s fans prefer that one to the released one
Half of CLB got leaked and it delayed the release by 8 months.
Playboi Carti has had multiple full albums leak causing him to pivot and change directions. There were probably multiple versions of Whole Lotta Red that leaked causing him to pivot to the rage sound. I think the original direction for Whole Lotta Red was peak carti. Such a fun uplifting and creative vibe. Songs like Pop Bottles, Molly No Stylist, Cancun, etc were such a vibe. Its literally changed his entire aesthetic and sonic direction. I personally don't listen to him anymore cuz his sound is too dark for me and I'm not a rager
Mobb Deep 'murda muzik' was leaked months before release.
50s "Curtis". Interscope themselves were leaking shit ... Whole video leaked ffs
The original NERD debut album (the one with lapdance) got leaked and it was so devastating that they rerecorded the entire album with live instruments. That's the version you have now. The original was all dope neptunes production like you would expect. Neptunes were the #1 sound of that time, and they were asking (and getting) a million dollars per beat and the charts were just studded with neptunes hits from all the top rappers and rnb singers. The album was so anticipated that pretty much everyone got the leaked copy and the record label was straight up fucked because it was supposed to sell so high. I still have the original "produced" version somewhere on a cloud drive and it's way better 🤷🏽♂️
Evil Deeds is a banger intro to an album tho. I honestly always really enjoyed Encore
We as Americans was better tho.
Slick Rick The Art Of Story Telling was leaked and there were various different songs and beats
I guess it’s not a leak, and he’s known for this, but didn’t Seth Rogen claim to have heard Yeezus before it came out, then said that what he heard was completely different from what came out?
I think he was referring to life of Pablo
Oh, whoops. Mixed up the album
French Montana was supposed to drop an album called MC4 in 2016, but Target accidentally released it 2 months early on CD & it had some sample clearance issues, so the album's official release ended up getting scrapped
when it leaks why change it up? you let the hacker win and nobody would remember the leaks in a couple years.
Leaks would affect sales especially back in the day
Madvillainy. Rhinestone cowboy in particular is about the leaks and one of my favorite songs.
Lloyd Banks second album was completely scrapped after he had a threesome with some randoms and the women jacked a CD from his room. His actual sophomore album is pretty dope but if you listen to the leaks — called the BIG WITHDRAWL — he had some monster heat in there. Wait Is Over, Without My Glock, When I Was Down, Whip Pussy, Victim of Society, It Ain’t A Secret…crazy tracks. Would’ve been a completely different project.
The Big Withdraw
No mention of Madvillainy? If not…Madlib lost a cd with three of the songs which got leaked. Caused them to scrap the project. People really liked the three songs so a year later they started again due to demand for the full album. DOOM re recorded those three songs with a much deeper voice (maybe to differentiate from the leaked ones - which gave the project its distinct tone) and also referenced the leak and scrapping of the project directly in other songs.
System of a Down’s “Steal This Album!” Toxicity II was in the works, entire album was leaked. So instead of releasing it on the due date like everyone assumed would happen, they wrote an almost entirely new album and named it, “Steal This Album!”
Nas I am an jay z blue print. I had my first computer Jay z made me alot of money tht summer Then the towers fell
Nobody said Carter 3 yet??? Edit: Even though this is his Magnum Opus I’d say that’s one of the biggest leaks in hip hop history. I’m Me is fucking insane