Who’s really responsible for the Detox leak?

You can tell Detox is shaping up to be the epic fail we suspected it would be as soon as we hear "Under Pressure," just from how Dre is responding to it having leaked prematurely. Even if it were true that Dre has plans to do something to the song to change it from the shit sandwich we heard yesterday into something people might actually want to listen to, it wasn't a very strong PR move.

At some point between when "Under Pressure" hit the Internets yesterday afternoon and when I rolled off of the couch this afternoon, Dre posted a text message-length statement to the Interscope Records website (which apparently exists) in which he of course explained that the version of the song you heard wasn't finished, and as soon as he gets done working on it he'll be sure to let you know.

Duh! We could figure as much from the crappy sound quality, only part of which could be blamed on the douchebag who felt it necessary to keep shouting his name over it. Anyway, I don't seem to recall seeing anyone on Twitter complaining about how it didn't sound clear enough on their shitty laptop speakers. All I heard was people complaining about how shitty the song itself was.

Fidelity problems I can deal with. In some of my favorite pr0n, I can hardly even tell what's going on half the time, but I can still sense the overall, erm, spirit of it.

I'm not even sure if I buy that Dre himself didn't have anything to do with the leak, like these stories you usually hear, where a haX0r broke into someone's email, or somebody's weed carrier sent it to Nah Right, unbeknownst to them. Dre must have leaked this shit himself, because he knew it was way different from what people were expecting, and he wanted to see what the reaction would be. He was testing the waters, so to speak, like when a closet case starts constantly referring to his junk, for no apparent reason.

The dead giveaway is the fact that you've yet to hear anything about the TIs going after whoever was responsible for the leak, even though we know for a fact that Dr. Dre is a litigious sack of shit, as discussed in The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, the book that precipitated my career as a failed journalist. If he's willing to sue his fans for wanting to listen to his music, I'm sure he'd be willing to sue them for leaking his music before he's even able to charge for it - not only is that theoretically (not really) taking money from his pocket, but it could be damaging to his "brand," if said music sucks balls.

I've seen studies that show that having your music illegally downloaded on the Internets actually makes you money, though I'm not sure how true they were. They could have been conducted by someone who has an interest in being able to listen to music for free, i.e. pretty much everyone except the TIs. But it can't possibly make you money, if it only has the effect of causing people to expect that your album is gonna be a shit sandwich. Especially an album as highly anticipated as Detox. Less than 24 hours ago, Detox was one of the most anticipated rap albums of all time. Now, it's a collective reminder of the passing of time and the attendant deterioration of human ability.

Someone with the tools and the talent should try to put a dollar amount on just how much that douchebag who insisted on shouting all over "Under Pressure" cost Dr. Dre and Interscope. It'd be hard to measure, because it would involve determining how many people were interested in paying money for Detox before "Under Pressure" leaked, and how many people still are (significantly less, I'm sure), and there's no way you could come up with a completely accurate figure. But even a ballpark number would be instructive. Even if you rounded down to the nearest million, I'm sure it'd be a shedload of money.

And it's not like it'd be hard to find the guy responsible, since he went through such lengths to identify himself. If the FBI could find that guy on World Star who claimed to put poison in Gerber baby food (though they seemed altogether unconcerned with whether or not he killed Stack Bundles lol), catching this clown should be a piece of cake. You know the TIs and the FBI are tight like that. That's why they put those FBI logos on the back of CDs. Who ever heard of some shit like that? You don't see FBI warnings on any other products, now do you? I even heard they've got that fruit The-Dream working for them, recording secret messages in songs and shit. No wonder his music sounds so weird - it's been doctored by the Illuminati.

That's part of the reason why, as a general rule of thumb, I try not to fuck with any artist that seems like they'd do anything for a dollar.