Drake and Kanye West among rappers to have unreleased songs “leak”
Over the past few years, many tracks and albums have accidentally leaked, much to the delight of fans. Last year, the Dr Dre and Kanye West LP Jesus Is King 2 leaked via Reddit, and many called it a “lost classic”. That said, as well as West, Drake has also allegedly had several of his songs leaked.
It was recently reported that a slew of MCs have experienced unexpected leaks of their demo songs online, which typically mysteriously surface on Reddit threads. Kanye West, A$AP Rocky, Drake, Kendrick Lamar, and Travis Scott have all fallen victim to this.
Via a process known as “group buy”, Reddit users pay money to an anonymous account (seemingly run by audio engineers) to receive audio rips of rough, unreleased tracks high-profile artists have recorded in the studio.
Some leaks even include audio stems, leading to unsolicited remixes. Some MCs, such as Lil Yachty, capitalise on accidental leaks. The Atlanta native’s 2022 track ‘Poland’ was a leak. However, due to its popularity, he officially released the leaked version and monetised the viral track.
Nevertheless, other musicians try to crack down on the leak or abandon the song altogether. One leak that is currently priced at $30,000 on Reddit is an unreleased collaboration between Kanye West and Travis Scott entitled ‘Can U Be.’ The price also factors in 130 unreleased songs from Gunna.
An alternate version of A$AP Rocky’s 2018 EP Testing is also available. However, some claim that the so-called “leaks” are not real and could be scams made possible by AI. Regardless, many avid music fans are still throwing money at these reportedly exclusive unreleased tracks.
Some artists purposely leak music if they have already determined they will not use a track or want to test the waters with a project secretly. Yet, they rarely upload a whole project to the internet for free with no marketing or update.