Grammy-winning rapper Lil Wayne's Rebirth has reportedly been pushed back from its February release date and will feature new tracks according to a Universal Motown representative.
Reports also claim roughly one million copies of the project have been printed.
Neither the crew album nor the experimental passion project has a proud commercial legacy in hip-hop. But for Rebirth, at least, Lil Wayne's label had sizable expectations. According to Billboard, around one million copies were printed, one-third of which were distributed to retailers. (Lil Wayne's last album, Tha Carter III, has been certified triple platinum, meaning three million copies were shipped.) For 500 or so fans, the physical CD of the original Rebirth is a collectible. For the untold thousands who downloaded the album's songs free, they're just grist for the mill, placeholders until something else comes along, preferably better. According to a representative for Universal Motown Records, a new version of Rebirth is now slated to be released in the first quarter of 2010.
Young Money President Mack Maine recently addressed the confusion about Lil Wayne's Rebirth album accidentally being released ahead of schedule and promised a "new" version was in the works.
"Young Money will be on the Monique show 2nite!!!!! Check ya local listings for specific times!!!!," he wrote Wednesday (December 16). "RT @GUDDA1: DEC.21ST DEC.21ST >>> "W R YOUNG MONEY" IN STORES MONDAY!! RT @KarenCivil: Leaked 09 Rebirth isn't going to be 2010 Rebirth.."
Despite the project being pushed to February, early copies were released earlier this month.
About 500 Amazon customers who pre-ordered the album are enjoying the record already, thanks to a shipping mishap. According to sources and an e-mail to Billboard from an Amazon customer, the online merchant sent copies of the album to some customers who pre-ordered "Rebirth." The album began arriving in mailboxes on Monday, Dec. 14, despite a change in the street date from Dec. 21 to February 1. Although Amazon received the word to return the Lil Wayne album, supposedly about 500 copies were sent to customers. An Amazon spokesman didn't respond to an e-mail request for a comment.
In light of Wayne's leaked album, SOHH spoke with rappers like Lil Scrappy to see how they battle their music illegally being released.
"You make a lot of music," Scrappy told SOHH, "when you making albums, I think you should do two albums. You should make the same amount of songs on both the first time you hit it hard, bam, then you gotta prepare yourself. Like, it's digital right now so sh*t can happen, get drunk in the car playing CDs and your man got d*mn press the button and be like 'Yo [everybody,] I got that new Scrap.' [laughs] If he's smart, he'll go bootleg it and if it's hot, you gonna bootleg it so my best thang to tell a n*gga is to make two albums, you know what I'm saying? And we do this anyway, so it ain't hard, you feel me?"
Check out Lil Scrappy speaking with SOHH about album leaks below:
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