Back in April on a Tuesday, the whole blog world lit up over a reported collaboration between Dr. Dre and Jay-Z for the superstar producer’s long-long-long-long-awaited Detox album. There was even reports to the exact day the track would drop—that Friday. Of course, it never happened, but four days in blog time is like a year, so everyone had forgotten.
Then yesterday, the song, “Under Pressure” leaked and proceeded to underwhelm everyone with it’s anemic sound quality and half-assed verse from Jay. What made it worse, the track was loaded with “tags” from the New Music Cartel—which basically means some asshole shouting “New music cartel!” every 30 seconds or so over the song. Turns out the NMC is a collective of high-powered hip-hop bloggers—including several we cite here at URB quite often. We’re all for blogs getting their propers (whaddup Self-Titled!), but the tag was so obnoxious and lazy that it’s really got us wondering if these folks even care about the music anymore, or just their own paper-chase.
Dre, surprisingly spoke up today via the Interscope website, stating:
“I want to set the record straight for everybody who’s been waiting to hear my music. The song that’s on the internet is an incomplete song that I’m still working on. When it’s ready, you’ll be hearing it from me.”
It’s obvious the track isn’t finished, but it’s also a little hard to have faith in a guy that probably named his album during the same dinner when Axel Rose decided on Chinese Democracy. So what do we have then? A superstar artist paralyzed by expectations, a music media based on self-aggrandizing bloggers, and a low-quality demo version of a song compressed into MP3. Yeah, music’s never been better.
And no, I’m not posting the song here because it sucks and is not worth listening to.
‘And no, I’m not posting the song here because it sucks and is not worth listening to.’
But URB already posted it O_o
[...] week, we took a stand against the online shit show by not posting the link to this leaked Detox track as it was overwhelmed by unbearably obnoxious [...]
[...] VIEW ARTICLE SOURCE [...]
Damn Josh, comin’ at the NMC’s collective neck I see. But yea, tags or no tags, the song is unbelievably wack. End of story. I wouldn’t be surprised if Dre leaked the track himself just to gauge the people’s response, only to use the “unfinshed leak” excuse afterwards to explain the subpar material. Unfortunately, I’m 99% sure that no amount of polishing or re-recording is going to make it better… there’s always that glimmer of hope though.
Dan-
Having heard a LOT of unfinished, leaked, lo-res sample music over the years—both professionally and as a pirate—there’s a lot that can be done in the studio. The differences can be astonishing between early versions and finished product. We don’t even know where in the process the song is, or what Dre’s process is (although intentional leaks like that seem unlikely).
I guess you’re right. Upon listening to the song again I just noticed that it doesn’t even have a hook, which alone could make or break it. We’ll see what happens.
[...] check out a few words that URB had to share with the New Music Cartel. You can check out their words HERE. “I want to set the record straight for everybody who’s been waiting to hear my music. [...]
several we *cite* here often
“A superstar artist paralyzed by expectations, a music media based on self-aggrandizing bloggers, and a low-quality demo version of a song compressed into MP3. Yeah, music’s never been better.”
EXACTLY!
ahh jay had some lines in there.. but yeah dr dr x kraftwerk x nmc fail
[...] This is everything that’s wrong with the music media in 2010. [...]
That track was so horrible that the NMC tags were actually the best part!