I guess Saigon and Just Blaze are just the latest in a long line of hip hop artists that have fallen victim to sample clearance issues. In a post from the SOHH forums, Just Blaze dropped in to explain why a couple of the snippets from "Greatest Story Never Told" sound different from the original leaks. Here is his post in full...
"I found out in the 11th hour that Atlantic had not paid for sample clearances. paperwork was done, but checks were not cut. Being that those deals were arranged 3 years prior, many of them would take a ton of follow up to finalize, which we did not have time for. We had 3 days and no budget to take care of this, so certain songs had to be changed. that being said, these are probably the best sample replays you will EVER hear, in terms of realism and feel. unfortunately "invitation" was the last one to get done and I was not able to fine tune it the way I would have liked to without the album being pushed back at least a month. Turning in an album even a day late when you have certain retail programs in place through an independent distributor can push your product back extremely because the indie has to basically get in line with what retailers offer them. Example, Joe Blow records has a program in place with FYE for placement for 4 of their products for the month of February @ 1 per week being at the front of the store, which JBR is paying for. Album 1 doesnt ship to manufacturing in time, and is ready the following week. However JBR is only allotted 1 "front of store" placement per week. They have to go with the album that was originally scheduled for release that week, and so on and so forth with the albums that were already slotted for their respective week. which means that album that was delivered only a day late now has to wait another month or possibly even more for a free slot to open up or another artist has to lose their release date when they had their material ready in time. It's not like a major who can have 10 products come out at the same time and have proper financial support across the board for all of them. This leeway is one of the few advantages of being on a major.
Anyway, i know that's a lot but I say all that to say, yes certain samples were changed but to be honest most arent even noticeable with the exception of "invitation". that being said I will eventually release the original one, but not until after the album been commercially available.
Oh yeah, what you guys know as the OG version of "preacher" was a demo that sai recorded when i first met him. might have been the first thing we ever did. the actual album version has been different since day one.
And "war" is not on the album. Not the song that's on youtube anyway. "
So I guess as it stands, we may hear the originals but not on the album itself. Slightly disappointing (especially in the case of "The Invitation" which was sounding like a certified early-2000's Just Blaze banger). But hey... that's the politics of the business. Charge it to the game and be happy the album will finally see the light of day.
You can listen to the original clips and the new snippets and compare for yourselves...
And as a bonus... Just even explains why the album cover got changed. Gotta love the internet.
Unfortunately all we ever had were small prints of the original cover shoot, which are in atlantics posession, not the full print quality materials. that's one area me and sai disagree on. he prefers the new cover, i much prefer the old. but it's his album end of the day. i think he's heard the opinions loud and clear tho. i was trying to get the OG cover to at least be the digital art. might still be a possibility.
No comments:
Post a Comment