As most of you hip-hop fiends know, Kanye West’s highly anticipated new album "My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy" leaked online Tuesday afternoon. Now remember, the album doesn’t officially come out until November 22nd. But has that ever stopped the internet before? Of course not. What’s funny is, to our generation, the day the album leaks online is the real release date. Who cares when it comes out in stores?
And the bootlegging business is more serious than ever nowadays. Shit, you even saw Kanye putting in extra effort this time to get us vigilantes on the net to support his new record. He knew it was gonna leak early, and he was showing us how G.O.O.D. of a dude his was by releasing damn near another album’s worth of material one song at a time every Friday. Sure…maybe he was also trying to win fans back after the whole Taylor Swift incident. But for me, personally, I really could give a fuck less about that scandal. In my opinion, any real hip-hop fan who got butthurt about that can kick rocks. Yeah – it was a dick move. It was the action of someone who let his ego get the best of him. But does that mean that Kanye doesn’t deserve 73 minutes of my undivided attention while I listen to his new album for free? Hell no. Which brings us to today’s story…
My Beautiful, Dark, Twisted Reality Downloading Kanye’s New Album…
Yesterday started out like any other day. I was dicking around at the mall when the homie called and said, “Hey, the new Kanye record leaked. You’ve gotta check it out. It’s tight as fuck.” Immediately, I threw my iPhone on the ground, ran straight to the parking garage, and got the fuck out of dodge. There was no way in hell that another second could pass in this world without me hearing the final version of “All Of The Lights” without any goddamn DJ tags. OK…it wasn’t that dramatic, but I was definitely looking forward to downloading it when I got home.
When I finally got back to my house, I hopped on the computer, and…guess what? No internet. No fucking internet! The last time the internet crashed at my house was like three years ago. “What are the odds of this horseshit happening NOW?,” I asked myself as I threw a copy of Pharrell’s “In My Mind” CD across the room and watched it shatter into a million little pieces. Whatever. Fuck that album anyway. I was pissed off now, and it was serious. Channeling my inner-Kanye, I called my internet provider and acted like a total douchebag on the phone to the customer service rep for about 20 minutes. Eventually, I got bored and hung up. I was calm now, and hopefully things would stay that way.
This morning, that cocksucker The Internet was back up and running. And that meant one thing. It was time to get to business.
Whoa, bitch, whoa. Clean!? I have a real beef with clean versions of hip-hop records. I wouldn’t listen to that bullshit when I was 10 years old and I was forced to by my parents, and I’m sure as hell not gonna give to that now as a grown ass man.
But…shit. Something weird came over me. The idea of listening to this album was a burning desire, almost to the degree that it was like craving a Gatorade after playing basketball outside on a hot day for two hours. I just fucking wanted it, and there was no reason left in me to tell me otherwise.
Now, I’m not saying that I downloaded or bootlegged Kanye’s album. To quote Will Ferrell from “Old School,” “That’s not exactly street legal!” And, as you know, me and the rest of the HotNewHipHop team are respectable people. But as this beautiful, dark, twisted reality continued, the album was on my iPod. In fact, I almost missed my train to Los Angeles this afternoon because I got too wrapped up in loading the album on and I lost track of time. It was all good though. I jumped on the train without even buying a ticket because I heard somewhere that I could grab my ticket in my seat once I boarded. Finally, everything was all good. I had three-hour trip to look forward to, and nothing but time.
I took a seat on the train and popped the headphones on. After all this bullshit, it was time to hear the record. And damn, the first track just pulled me in. You know how it goes…you just kind of get into the music, and you forget about everything else. I even closed my eyes, which I hate doing in public places. By the time the second track “Gorgeous” with KiD CuDi and Raekwon came on, I was zoned out. Right when I started drifting hardcore, I felt someone tap on my shoulder. Fuck. “Are you seriously gonna interrupt my Kanye experience at this point, you bastard?” I opened my eyes, and it was the train operator, saying, “Hey, can I have your ticket please?”
Cool. “Yeah, well I don’t have my ticket yet, I wanna buy it now,” I said nonchalantly. He looked pissed. “I’m gonna have to ask you to get off the train at the next stop. You can’t buy a ticket once you’re on the train.” What the FUCK!? I was about to get hosed in a real way. The next train didn’t leave for another two hours. Now I was gonna be stranded at some train stop and watch the rest of my day go down the toilet, all because I spent the last two days feenin’ over the Kanye album instead of living in the real world. I guess it was just time to eat shit.
After I got kicked off the train, I had a lot of time to think while sitting with a bunch of homeless people in the dark. What happened? I just let this Kanye album get the best of me, and I really took my hip-hop obsession too far this time.
But then, I realized, “Who gives a shit?” I had two hours to kill now, so I finally listened to the album. And it was great! I think it’s probably the best album of the year.
So, the moral of the story, ladies and gentleman, is…fuck it. Anything can turn into an ego trip, or a disaster, and those same events can turn into something good at the same time. If Kanye didn’t do his bullshit with Taylor Swift, would this album have been as hard as it is? Who knows? I’m writing this column now from my hotel room, where I got in two hours later than expected. Oh well. What did I really miss? Two hours of “Family Guy” re-runs on TBS? At least I got a story to tell out of it…