In a series of tweets this week, Kanye West took to social media to vent about his frustrations with the unknown person who leaked the music video for “Black Skinhead,” a single off of the album, Yeezus, which dropped on June 18. We've already heard a few tracks thanks to the "New Slaves" premiere and an SNL performance before the album dropped, but West chose to wait a bit to put together an official single, releasing “Black Skinhead” on the Fourth of July holiday. The music video was to have followed shortly, but someone close to the singer couldn’t wait and leaked the video before it was fully finished. Last night, West decided to roll with the punches and upload the footage himself, but oddly, it disappeared from his website this morning. Maybe he'll release it again later today. Maybe he won't. Either way, he clearly has a lot of anger related to what happened.
While some artists are known for leaking music early, other artists are sometimes surprised by leaks or even get really freaking annoyed by the prospect. In Kanye’s case, the artist was initially furious about the “Black Skinhead” video going live, and he made sure every single man, woman and child on the Internet knew about it. Check out the artist’s full Twitter rant, below.
The video appeared through a shady forum on some universal music site, rather than through West’s VEVO page, which made it pretty clear the whole thing was a leaked version. In the initial aftermath of the breach in security, the clip was taken down from most placed and replaced with a message that stated, “This video contains content from UMG, who has blocked it on copyright grounds.” Then, according to The New York Daily News, the official version went up on his website for a matter of hours, assumedly with his permission, before it disappeared again.
This isn’t the first time an artist has had something leaked in recent months. Back in May, Britney Spears’ single “Ooh La La” was leaked early, much to the delight of her fans. The 31-year-old singer also took to Twitter to mention the leak, but didn’t seem too distraught about it, although she did note a completed, professional version would be available sometime later.
West has always been a bit of a hothead. He likes things done on his schedule, but when it comes to music, sometimes that's just not possible. Leaks do happen, and if he's smart, he'll once again take ownership of the situation by putting the official version back on his website. Everyone will stop caring about the leaked version if they have easy access to the original.
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