What Leaks Do To Rap Culture
By: Adam Thomson
The newest installment in Young Nudy’s discography, Gumbo, hit streaming services on February 28th. This release comes just over two months after Nudy had 172 songs leaked by a hacker. But Nudy hasn’t been the only artist affected by the mass leak, as contributions from 21 Savage to Lil Uzi Vert have also been compromised.
The leaking of artists' music is a phenomenon that began in the early 2000s when Metallica sued a website for posting a studio album before it was set to release. As hip-hop culture has been on the rise over the last two decades, leaking songs and albums has become synonymous with the genre. Hip-Hop culture is defined by artists expressing themselves by rapping about their own lives in a candid way that is unique. By leaking these artists’ music, creativity and self-expression are compromised because unfinished songs are not being listened to as intended by the artist.
The most prevalent example of leaks’ negative impact in recent years is the case of Juice WRLD. Even though the late Chicago native had a relatively short-lived mainstream career, he had hundreds of unreleased songs and snippets. Through the process of leaking, virtually all of these songs are available on platforms such as YouTube and Soundcloud. In Juice WRLD’s situation, these files were found in databases by hackers before being sold online for hundreds, sometimes even thousands of dollars.
Aside from the theft and exploitation of creative material, leaks have other lasting effects on rap culture. Artists spend months and even years building excitement within their fanbase for a project. As soon as a highly anticipated release gets leaked, all of the suspense vanishes, and the hype for a project is destroyed. Along with this, leaked music is more often than not a mere skeleton of the prospective product. The leaked tracks are rarely complete, and these versions typically don’t satisfy listeners. In turn, this can result in fewer sales for the projects/songs when eventually put out in their polished form.
Social media has only propagated these issues, with leaks spreading like wildfire on apps like TikTok, which is the biggest and fastest-growing social media platform released in the last decade. The introduction of leaks onto the app makes artists much more susceptible to having their music leaked to millions of people. The most prominent example of this is when Polo G's hit single, “Smooth Criminal,” leaked on TikTok. As the days went on, this sound began trending across short videos, with tens of thousands of users placing the audio in their TikToks. A few weeks following the leak blowing up, Polo G performed the song at the Rolling Loud Music Festival, and it hit streaming services shortly thereafter.
For all these reasons, listening to or downloading leaked music should be considered ethically incorrect – and it sadly looks like an issue that will likely plague rap culture for the foreseeable future. As the world we live in grows increasingly digital, it is becoming easier for hackers to gain access to these files and send them out on the web. But to me, leak culture has no place in the world of hip-hop.