The winter of FAIL

Oh,  what it must be like to be a fly on the wall in the Def Jam building right about now.

Things there must be in a total state of disarray, given the fact that a) the new Kanye West album just leaked to the Internets, and it fucking sucks balls, b) the new Jay-Z album has been postponed indefinitely, and c) I'm not even sure if there's anyone in charge.

I'm gonna have to tread lightly when it comes to that final point, since I already had to be reminded that, while the black community might be ready for its own president, it's gonna be a while still before we're deemed grown enough to appreciate satire. (Actual satire, not whatever it is you thought satire was.)

Maybe President-Elect Obama can invest more in literacy programs in the black community. Or is there just some natural, ingrained deficiency that we're just not gonna be able to overcome. At any rate, suffice it to say that there's a desk in the Def Jam building without anyone to sit in it.

I wonder what that means. Aside from the obvious (i.e. I wouldn't be surprised if Jadakiss or somebody has decided to set up shop there, for his own personal amusement), I wonder who's in charge there now that the other guy is indisposed. Permanently.

I'm not even sure who his number two was, but whoever it was, I don't know if I'd want to step into his role now, given the amount of FAIL that's about to take place at that label. I wouldn't want to be the guy left holding the bag once people realize what a shit sandwich 808s & Heartbreak is, that there's no new Jay-Z album, and that probably no one's gonna give a shit about that new Ludacris album either, if I didn't have anything to do with signing off on any of that shit in the first place.

If they had named me Jay-Z's successor at Def Jam six months ago (for what it's worth, I have a college degree in business, as well as an incomparable ability to tell a good idea from a bad one), it would have been nothing for me to put my foot down when Kanye West proposed the idea of crafting an entire album of songs that are at least as bad as "Love Lockdown," if not worse, just in time for the holiday shopping season.

Having him wait until he gets his mind right, next year or whenever, probably would have been out of the question, given the extent to which Def Jam has become reliant on a few big tent pole releases each year. Nullus. But if Kanye West tried to spring 808s & Heartbreak on me, I would've said no, then I would've released a collection of throwaways from the last few Kanye West albums in its place. Didn't labels used to do shit like that all the time when artists would crack up like this?

At the very least, I would have hired a team of five well-endowed whores to hunt him down and try to suck him back into sentience. Regardless of how "high-priced" they were, I'm sure it would cost less than the L Def Jam is about to take this quarter. And you know how Kanye West feels about white chicks with huge fake cans. He feels the same way we all feel. It's just that his mother raised him to be especially honest.

Major labels buy prostitutes for people, right? Yo, Jackpot, did you get some stank on your hanglow while you were down in Cabo? If not, you got gypped. I heard Fiddy flew a bunch of people out to Vegas before The Massacre came out and got them taken care of. Next time Fiddy decides to pull a stunt like that, XXL needs to send me. Because I'm fucking. Fuck the dumb shit.

You guys know I could use the action. Look at this post, fer chrissakes.

But I digress. Now where was I? Oh yes, the state of disarray in the Def Jam building.

I suspect there's also a coverup going on there with regard to Ne-Yo's sexual orientation a growing rift between Jay-Z and Kanye West. At MTV News today, there's a story about how there isn't gonna be a new Jay-Z album this winter, but if you notice, they spoke to Kanye West for it, not Jay-Z. As if those dudes don't have Jay-Z's cell.

Kanye West, for his part, claims that him and Jay-Z completed an album, and it was "phenomenal." It's just that Jay-Z saw the success of "Swagger Like Us," and he wants the entire album to be just as good.

Hmm...

That doesn't sound very much like Jay-Z, now does it? I mean, this is the same guy who put out Kingdom Come as the album that was supposed to herald his return to rap music. How bad did the version of the Blueprint 3 him and Kanye just put together have to be for it to be deemed unfit for release? Plus, you know this was supposed to be his last album with Def Jam. If it gets pushed back to next year, it's gonna fuck up his deal with Live Nation. He's not gonna be able to put out an album with them until 2010 or some shit.

It's too bad no one can catch up with Jay-Z and have him give us his take on this issue. Only thing is, I'm not sure if he'd be willing to tell us how he really feels. He might not think he's got enough money yet to express his opinions in public. How sad it must be to live a life like that.