On the morning of October 1, in a surprising move that we reported soon after it happened, Death Grips put up their newest album, No Love Deep Web, for streaming and free download. Why was that surprising? Well, they had signed a contract with Epic/Columbia to release two albums this year, and No Love Deep Web was supposed to be the second one.

Releasing it for free download didn’t seem like something your average big-name record label would approve. But Death Grips apparently wasn’t happy with the label’s decision to postpone release of the album until sometime in 2013, so they just self-released it anyway. At the time this happened, I wondered whether Death Grips really had given a big-time FUCK YOU to Epic, or instead had just launched a really clever marketing campaign that the label might have even known about and condoned.

Well, we got our answer to that question not long ago, because Death Grips posted on their Facebook page an image of a confidential e-mail dated October 1 from Epic’s chief in-house corporate counsel to the man who appears to be Death Grips’ manager, accusing the band of breaching their contract and demanding that the free download be stopped and that masters of No Love Deep Web be turned over to Epic immediately. To get a better look at the e-mail, click on the image above and you’ll see a bigger copy.

As we know, Epic’s demands weren’t met. So what are we to make of this? And where does this scuffle stand now? Continue reading »

In your formative years, you learn some things that stay with you. In my formative years, I learned that if you wore white socks and black shoes to school, you were just asking for abuse. Only helpless nerds whose mommas dressed them wore white socks and black shoes. Poor motherfuckers, it was even worse than duct-taped glasses and using pocket protectors with a half-dozen pens. Yeah, that’s how fuckin’ old I am.

At some point, it looked like Michael Jackson would make white socks cool, back before it came out that he was sleeping with little boys. But I think you needed to have patent leather shoes and a white glove to pull that off, and you needed to be cool in all sorts of other ways, too. And honestly, I thought he was still pushing his luck with that shit, even when he was at the height of his powers.

Well, motherfuckin’ Death Grips may succeed where Michael Jackson failed. That pic up there is the new alternate album cover for No Love Deep Web, the new Death Grips album that has become a case study in how to viral-market your music. In case you missed our earlier post about this album and didn’t see the news elsewhere, this is the album that Death Grips released for free download earlier this week despite the fact that they’re signed to the mainstream Epic/Columbia label, who presumably has rights to the music — and used a picture of an erect dick as the album cover.

Supposedly, something about that album art led to the band’s site being shut down, though that still doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. Web hosts don’t give  fuck what you put on your own web site and I can’t fathom how the band’s label could unilaterally have it shut down since the site pre-dated the band’s signing with them and presumably is paid for by the band.

But in any event, per a post on their Facebook page, Death Grips seem to have created a new alternate album cover, which is at the top of this post. Continue reading »