/ 2 October 2012

Twitter aflutter with Death Grips album leak

The Twitter feed for the American rap group
The Twitter feed for the American rap group

It began this week with a simple tweet.

"He came to me with money in his hand," said Californian hip-hop crew Death Grips.

The tweet – and those that followed – quoted sixties cult leader Charles Manson, which were also used as a sample on the opening track of the band's debut mixtape Exmilitary which was released in 2011.

But now the band were tweeting the sample, what was this about?

A few minutes later came a stream of tweets reading "October 1st" and finally, "The label wouldn't confirm a release date for No Love Deep Web till next year sometime. The label will be hearing the album for the first time with you."

Then came the track listing followed by a link.

Dispute
A clearer picture was starting to emerge. Death Grips were clearly in dispute with their label Epic about when their new album No Love Deep Web was to be released and the band had taken it upon themselves to leak the album to their fans.

The band's previous album, The Money Store, was only released in April this year so the label obviously felt that October was too soon for another album.

The internet went crazy, everyone was tweeting the event, while music news websites were scrambling to cover the story and eventually the band tweeted, "our sight just got shut down – BASIC AS FUCK"

According to the band, their record label Epic was rather peeved with the band leaking the album and had their website shutdown.

Epic have since denied that they were involved in shutting down the website.

Approval
There has been speculation that the album artwork was a sticking point as it features a rather large penis against the background of green bathroom tiles and scrawled all along the side of the penis is the album title No Love Deep Web.

According to Billboard Magazine  the top legally downloaded band on BitTorrent was Death Grips with a whopping 34.2-million downloads.

The move it seems was well received by their fans that were tweeting their approval in droves.

The cover of Death Grip's No Love Deep Web. (Supplied)

"@DeathGripz is the punkest shit I've heard in years. The Money Store was good but No Love Deep Web is fucking insane #guerilla," tweeted one fan who goes by the Twitter handle @BLKBLKBLKBLK.

Whatever happens from here between Death Grips and Epic, their album is out and taking on their label has just further enhanced their punk aesthetic.