BTDubb: Calm down with the weekly leaks!

Timbaland recently announced via Twitter that he would be jumping on the bandwagon of leaking new music weekly. Crooked I started doing his thing on a weekly basis over 3 years ago with his Hip Hop Weekly series, but the trend did not really pick up steam until Kanye West kicked off his G.O.O.D. Friday series in August. Since then, several artists have followed suit, including RZA with Wu Wednesdays, Lloyd Banks with Blue Friday, Joe Budden with Mood Muzik Monday, and Swizz Beatz swizzing up Budden's day with Monster Monday (or Miserable Monday, as we have renamed it). Timbaland decided he would be taking on "Timbo Thursday" and then, before releasing a single track, promptly announced that he would be postponing it.


Why has this movement become so popular? New music is great, but are we really so ADD that we need something new every week from every artist? Especially considering at least some of these offerings are inevitably going to be rushed, sub-par tracks (or in the case of Swizz, all of them will be god-awful). The G.O.O.D. Friday series is great, but "Take One For The Team" sure wasn't, and "Lord, Lord, Lord" was completely swizzed up by Swizz's terribly mixed verse (but to be fair, that verse would have sucked no matter how well it was mixed).

G.O.O.D. Friday works because Kanye is a supreme talent in his own right, and he has the resources to work with Hip-Hop's biggest names week in and week out.  No other artist currently making these weekly installments has this same luxury - we love RZA and Joe Budden, but we don't really need to hear new music from them every week. And was anyone actually excited about Lloyd Banks' leaks? Furthermore, what kind of success can artists like Swizz and Timbaland expect when they can't create an albums-worth of good music even after having years to work on them.

We are not saying that artists should never leak music. If its good, leak it when you're ready (what Joe Budden has traditionally done). If its not, keep that to yourself (what Swizz needs to learn to do). Just don't force yourself into unreasonable deadlines that will only leave us all disappointed.  We recommend that instead of "Monster Monday" or "Wu Wednesday" or "[Insert Next Rapper's Name Here] Tuesday", artists should be focusing on a different installment: "Good Album 2011".