After unveiling the album artwork for his latest record, Magna Carta Holy Grail, in an exhibit with the real life Magna Carta yesterday, overnight, Jay-Z released his latest album to 1 million Samsung Galaxy users.
As part of the $20 million deal with the Korean smartphone company – a move that also prompted the RIAA to change its Gold and Platinum certification rules – Jay-Z’s twelfth studio album was made available to Samsung users who downloaded the #magnacarta app, among the first to hear the new album ahead of its official July 9th release date next week.
The launch was less than smooth however, with The Verge reporting that social media lit up with complaints from users having significant troubles with downloading the album through the app; reporting crashes, issues loading, or getting the ‘clean’ version of the record instead of the explicit version.
The reviews on the Google Play download page for the #magnacarta app show a heavy leaning towards one-star or fiver-star reviews, with users detailing their frustrations with the Samsung launch. “What’s the point of downloading this if it’s not going to work!?” lamented one user; “You offered to give away a million copies for people who downloaded the app so why on release day has the system crashed due to high demand?” queried another.
“I see Jay-Z & Samsung just pulled one over. History making my a**!” complained user ‘Brandis Wells‘, “just hoodwinked everybody. Put that in your next 16 bars jigga.” “We don’t have any rules, everybody is trying to figure it out. That’s why the internet is like the Wild West. We need to write the new rules.” – Jay-Z
To add to the frustrations, at the same time Samsung users were having difficulty accessing what was meant to be exclusive content, Magna Carta Holy Grail leaked online, with torrents and rips of the explicit version of the album beginning to crop up on illegal file sharing website within hours of the Samsung roll-out.
In the surprise promotional video announcing the Samsung/Magna Carta campaign, the rapper talked up the game-changing nature of the new deal, which takes on a new significance now the album has been spilled all over the internet. “We don’t have any rules,” says the man born Shawn Carter, “everybody is trying to figure it out. That’s why the internet is like the Wild West. We need to write the new rules.”
The album leak also showed that was was supposed as the ‘official’ tracklisting, featuring a ‘cover’ of Nirvana’s ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit‘, is in fact slightly different to the final, 16 track offering (which can be viewed at the bottom).
The Nirvana nod is in actual fact a quick few couplets sung by Justin Timberlake in the opening track ‘Holy Grail’, which Pitchfork points out turned up on Jay-Z’s website Life + Times along with a Soundcloud link.
You can listen to the opening track of Magna Carta Holy Grail as well as view the album art and official tracklisting below. Magna Carta Holy Grail is out July 9 through Roc-A-Fella/Roc Nation/Universal.
Magna Carta Holy Grail Tracklisting
1. Holy Grail (feat. Justin Timberlake)
2. Picasso Baby
3. Tom Ford
4. FuckWithMeYouKnowIGotIt (feat. Rick Ross)
5. Oceans (feat. Frank Ocean)
6. F.U.T.W.
7. Somewhere In America
8. Crown
9. Heaven
10. Versus
11. Part II (On the Run) (feat. Beyonce)
12. Beach Is Better
13. BBC (feat. Nas, Justin Timberlake, Beyonce, Swizz Beatz, Pharrell & Timbaland)
14. Jay-Z Blue
15. La Familia
16. Nickels & Dimes
