Hurry Up & Wait – Remember When Release Dates Mattered?

Fomer XXL employee Jackpot and I were talking about how no one’s album comes out on time anymore. Didn’t it feel like back in the day rap albums would come out on, you know, a schedule? Nowadays you're lucky if your ish comes out at all, let alone on time.

Think about it, Big Boi’s been promoting his sophomore solo effort, Sir Luscious Left Foot: The Son of Chico Dusty for close to three years—with his latest date being July 6. How about The Game, he was supposed to drop the R.E.D. Album last year only to get moved several times before yesterday's announcement of June 15 (which I highly doubt will come out on the same day as Drake, who was also pushed back). Drizzy was initially set to put out his much-hyped Thank Me Later around Valentines Day, before being moved to May and then June.

It's nothing new, though, 50 Cent’s Before I Self Destruct had a handful of different dates kicking around for over a year, while his label head Eminem failed to deliver Relapse 2 in 2009 as promised. And let’s not even talk about Dr. Dre. Detox has been in the works for close to a decade, and when Jimmy Iovine said the disc's Jay-Z assisted lead single, "Under Pressure"  was going to drop last Friday (April 9), they couldn’t even premiere one track on time.

The king of push backs last year had to be Lil Wayne, though. Universal changed dates on his experimental Rebirth album so many times, amazon.com messed up and shipped it out months in advance.

Albums aren’t the only things that get pushed back. Rappers have been neglecting to even drop their mixtapes in the time period promised. Fabolous, Cam’ron, Game and Jim Jones are all guilty.

Question is, with all these album push backs, whose album (or mixtape) do you think is really worth the wait? —Jesse Gissen