Death Grips Leak NO LOVE DEEP WEB in Dispute With Epic Records
After apparently disagreeing with their label, Epic Records, over a release date for their newest album "NO LOVE DEEP WEB", Death Grips released it for free via numerous channels. Though it's unclear whether or not the temporary outage of their website was related to Epic in any form, the album has remained available online.
Death Grips is known for an uncompromising take on art and marketing so perhaps uncompromising takes on disagreements with labels should stand to reason. After tweeting that they were unhappy with Epic Records delaying their next album "till next year sometime", they leaked NO LOVE DEEP WEB in a move likely to surprise their label Epic Records.
Their website subsequently crashed. This unexpected outage led to claims that Epic was involved but the site eventually returned to operation with no clear reason for the downtime.
The full artwork for NO LOVE DEEP WEB is currently available on Death Grips' site but the album is served from SoundCloud.
Death Grips – NO LOVE DEEP WEB
Media reaction has ranged from indignation to album reviews:
Death Grips Leak New Album: Marketing Ploy or Middle Finger?
Death Grips' 'NO LOVE DEEP WEB' Leak: Our Impulsive Reviews
Is Death Grips Brilliant or just Attention Starved?
Turns out you can make money off of Death Grips’ new album NO LOVE DEEP WEB
With a tour coming up, Death Grips is off to a noisy start. We'll see how Epic responds though stepping back might be the best move.
More: Death Grips: The Weird Turn Pro[motional] With The Money Store
Hypebot Senior Contributor Clyde Smith (Twitter/App.net) blogs about music crowdfunding at Crowdfunding For Musicians (@CrowdfundingM). To suggest topics for Hypebot, contact: clyde(at)fluxresearch(dot)com.
you gotta wonder why death grips are on a label in the first place if they’re not interested in working with them. it’s supposed to be a partnership. releasing the entire album on their own is an extreme reaction, and seems a little immature. if you don’t want a partnership you have no business being on a record label.
I think Mason’s got a same point, but…with a tour coming, you know the reason the album is scheduled for 2013 is because of bureaucratic inertia — which many Hypebot readers could testify is the primary product of any major label. So really, the problem is that Death Grips found out it’s a partnership with several hundred other partners, all of whom were already waiting in line.
And fuck waiting in line, right?
“A sane point,” that, that is what Mason has.