1.24.2004
More Mr. Nice Guy!
It is 5:41 A.M., I have finally finished filing my CDs and, four months into my lease, I am officially "moved into" my new apartment. Carrying this Hua-size CD shelf a mile through painfully frigid weather was a character-building experience to be sure, but it was all worth it just to see Andre Nickatina, Nico, No Doubt, No Neck Blues Band, Nobody, N.O.R.E. and Ogurusu Norihide mingling in a row, like God intended.
I finally understand why filesharing is a terrible, terrible thing. I've been rocking my bootleg copy of Kanye West's 'College Dropout' for a couple weeks and I thought I'd attained some level of I-understand-how-I-feel-about-this-ness. Today, I got the final, mastered advance (complete with creepy anti-pirate whispers) and it floored me. The tracks I'd heard--the same ones that have been reviewed all up and down the web--seemed fine, but apparently the completed version features a few extra songs, beefier choruses and hooks, fleshier handclaps, rewritten verses and running skits that help drive the whole College Dropout thing home. More on this later but I guess it comes down to this: there are Kanye reviews by the armload out on that thar web, but what these loyal nerds (I got nothin but love) have reviewed are unmastered demos. Maybe, in some strange way, leaking shit early gives artists a chance to figure out what'll be heat and what'll be wack--Kanye, after all, has leaked half his album on his mixtapes. But I can't help but feel that the download-with-the-intent-to-buy shield that some foist against Lars Ullrich is foiled when said swappers form opinions on shit that isn't finished. It would be like if
I finally understand why filesharing is a terrible, terrible thing. I've been rocking my bootleg copy of Kanye West's 'College Dropout' for a couple weeks and I thought I'd attained some level of I-understand-how-I-feel-about-this-ness. Today, I got the final, mastered advance (complete with creepy anti-pirate whispers) and it floored me. The tracks I'd heard--the same ones that have been reviewed all up and down the web--seemed fine, but apparently the completed version features a few extra songs, beefier choruses and hooks, fleshier handclaps, rewritten verses and running skits that help drive the whole College Dropout thing home. More on this later but I guess it comes down to this: there are Kanye reviews by the armload out on that thar web, but what these loyal nerds (I got nothin but love) have reviewed are unmastered demos. Maybe, in some strange way, leaking shit early gives artists a chance to figure out what'll be heat and what'll be wack--Kanye, after all, has leaked half his album on his mixtapes. But I can't help but feel that the download-with-the-intent-to-buy shield that some foist against Lars Ullrich is foiled when said swappers form opinions on shit that isn't finished. It would be like if
