2006 - The year of the pushed back album...

What's becoming as big a trend as downloading music in recent years is the pushing back of artist’s albums. Normally the two are closely linked like the case of past big releases like Eminem and 50 Cent and has happened again this year with Lupe Fiasco.

But the following albums from Pharrell, The Clipse and Rhymefest have all had months of delay with no valid reason. In the case of Pharrell it could be that they couldn’t follow up the success of Can I Have It Like That because the material was of no good and so it was back to the drawing board. This could explain the inconsistent end product. But more of that in the review coming later this week.

Although I've yet to check it out myself the Blue Collar album by Rhymefest has gone down well and could become quite an underrated album when those end of year lists come around. Sadly it took eight months to get it out when it had perfect leverage with the Kanye West assisted track Brand New.

Now we are finally getting a firm date for the release of the much anticipated Clipse album, four years after Lord Willin and about two after we first heard flashes of news that one was on the way. Pusha T and Malice have now recorded the album from scratch and ditched the material that they previously sat on ahead of the October release of Hell Hath No Fury.

Are the two previous artists mentioned examples of albums being pushed back due to poor material, or does the blame lie with incompetent label heads not knowing what to do. I'm pretty sure that it's similar to when an artist puts back his album after heavy downloading; the sales are never as high as what they might have been. Now with these albums not being released after their first singles we can expect the same results. Pharrell was flogging his third single before his album saw the light and the bandwagon for that has slowed so it will be interesting to see the numbers for when the Clipse and Lupe Fiasco drop.