Melz

3y

Two Shots is actually one of my favorite Wayne songs haha

sabbaroni

3y

at the end of the day, deluxe songs are just bonus content to enjoy. they’re not meant to be essential to the album; otherwise, they’d be on the standard.

deluxe albums should still feel like they only run through the standard album, but with post-credit scenes like they do in movies. you clearly know where the end of the movie is, but there’s a little more content just to give you that extra dose of joy. but this is kinda tough nowadays with the whole “new songs go to the front” format of albums lately (it just doesn’t hit the same at the front), so i manually move the deluxe content to the back.

of course, there’s also the rare case where the deluxe album re-orders the entire tracklist like with Wunna, which can give a whole different listening experience than the standard did. that’s kinda like a director’s cut version of the movie, i.e. the Snyder Cut of Justice League, which is considered what the artist’s original vision for the album would’ve sounded like.

but you’ve also gotta take into consideration how strong the tracklisting is meant to be. for example, Snoop Dogg said he’s never actually listened to Doggystyle from top to bottom all at once.

& ik my points are all over the place but that’s ADHD for ya lol. i just don’t see anything wrong with deluxe albums being created, since, if the extra content doesn’t really fit the album, you can just choose not to listen to it & still get the full album experience while still listening to a canon version of the album.

i get your point about Oxnard too tbh. there’s a few albums where the standard version had a couple songs at the end i would consider bonus tracks, like So Much Fun should’ve ended after Mannequin Challenge, since Boy Back feels like a NAV song tacked on as a bonus track like a commercial during a TV show for a different show made by the same people & The London feels more like a J. Cole song tacked on just because it was already a single. & iirc, the Thug x Juice album was gonna drop relatively soon after SMF, so Mannequin Challenge would’ve been the perfect transition to that as an outro.

tl;dr
i don’t disagree with what you said here, but i think i remember you being mostly anti-deluxe albums from previous conversations (though correct me if i’m wrong) so i addy-typed out a whole essay to respond to things that popped into my head i figured you might say

p r o v i d e r

3y

for sure i agree with most of your points, just thought that the examples OP was looking for in this thread would factor in a full complete listen. nobody is gonna argue against bonus content, it's always appreciated. i just may have misinterpreted the point of the topic because then every deluxe album would apply, no? lol

and i'm "anti-deluxe" when it comes to the new-age trend that really became popularized with uzi i think? i would always buy deluxe versions of albums back in the day because of course, more music = good. but i think this streaming era, deluxe announcement three days after the standard release way of doing things is super devaluing in most cases. but this is the music business so whatever. i've gotten used to it.

sabbaroni

3y

question:

it seems like your problem with the Uzi-style "deluxe" album is that it's a whole new album of content released so soon after the original album, which interrupts its entire promo cycle & distracts people from the original album because the new songs have time to breathe while the standard songs kinda become "old news"

if Uzi had released that "deluxe" a month or so later, would that have been okay? i don't see it as very different from a double-album releasing or the Blond(e) / Endless release (aside from the obvious nuances of Endless only coming out in video form at the time & a "single" album taking in all the streams/sales for Uzi), but i also think that if Uzi had delayed releasing the deluxe for much longer, he might not have released it at all, since these new gen artists get so fickle about their releases, and that would've been a huge loss for him AND his fans. that deluxe was really a fan-service, putting out anticipated snippets etc., so if he didn't put those songs out, they likely would've just leaked & some random hacker would've reaped all the profit, leaving Uzi, the producers, and the engineers unable to profit off their own work. so i mean, for Uzi's case specifically, i think that deluxe was kinda essential to his discography. that was him getting ahead of leaks for the first time, like his version of Slime Season.

p r o v i d e r

3y

good question. the thing is, when a trend begins i can never blame the originator. even though i didn't enjoy LUVVTW 2 as much as Eternal Atake, it was a fresh idea then and i thought it was pretty cool he was feeding the fans like that. and it was an entirely separate project, under a different name even if it was advertised as the EA deluxe so it's kinda an outlier to me. that's a great point about the leakers and how the actual creators would miss out on the profits too.

idk. maybe artists letting the standard breathe for a bit if they're gonna hit us with an LP's worth of "deluxe tracks" would make me feel better about it. but sometimes it just feels cheap, and i end up avoiding the deluxe projects altogether. just go back to putting out both versions the same day tbh there's no element of spontaneity or anything like there was when uzi did it. i just find it kinda contrived sometimes. but again, it's a business so why would it not be i guess.

you've made really strong points throughout our convo tho.

sabbaroni

3y

thanks! i love these types of convos where we both have our stances but it’s civil lol. i 100% agree with what you’re saying here. i sometimes avoid deluxe albums if i wasn’t extremely woo’d by the standard albums too, but i’ve been doing that since deluxe tracklists were only 2-4 songs longer, so i don’t entirely see that as a new development.

i think a large part of this convo also rests on if you listen to leaked demos from the artist, which typically have no legit tracklisting in the first place. bc if so, a large amount of songs releasing all at once as a deluxe is like if a bunch of songs leaked at once, except better bc they’re all mixed & mastered. but if you see something like “30 trippie redd songs leaked” and have no desire to check any of them out, that’s a good indication you would likely avoid a trippie redd deluxe album.

& yea, Uzi doing it first was wild, but then, when it got co-opted by everyone else, it didn’t have the same impact. maybe when NAV did it tbh. i don’t think i ever checked out the Brown Boy 2 deluxe album, but i remember his fans saying it was maybe even better than the standard.

p r o v i d e r

3y

X is the perfect example actually. Idk what Breezy was thinking making Drunk Texting the outro. the deluxe tho

lost in ya love

love more

don't think they know

FINE CHINA

p r o v i d e r

3y

oh yeah i've never been into the random mass-leak thing so that def may be a factor. i think the only cases that would apply for me in the past were official leaked albums (which i haven't really indulged in for the last few years, i just wait until release now), and WAY back in the day when DJs would make fake unauthorized mixtapes and "leak" Wayne or Gucci songs onto Datpiff or whatever. that was when i had much more time on my hands and my tastes were more one-dimensional. now i listen to a wider range of genres, and there's tons of music dropping every damn day. it gets overwhelming to be checking for s*** that the artist most likely never wanted to see the light of day, or at least not in that fashion (i.e. 30 trippie redd songs leaked).

so i guess it is overall better that the artists actually get to combat the mass-leaks and release their music how they intend to, even if it may be a lot to take in. you're really selling me here. lol

sabbaroni

3y

oh yea the leaks thing is why i think deluxe albums are a net positive for artists, especially if they’re clearly separate albums from the standard album. like imagine in 2008 if the C3 deluxe was a whole album’s worth of songs, including songs from The Leak EP, the songs already on the deluxe, La La La, PMW, Something You Forgot, Me & My Drank, Dinnertime, etc. Wayne would’ve been able to actually monetize some of his most revered songs instead of fans saying for over a decade that his best music was never officially released.

i basically see it as this: rappers nowadays have HUGE vaults of unreleased music. those songs are either gonna leak or stay vaulted if there’s no deluxe, and with how active hackers have been the last few years, it’s far more likely they’re gonna leak. why should they let other people profit off their work when deluxe albums provide an outlet for them to release the songs fans have been begging for without compromising their original vision for the standard album?

i suppose the alternative to that is NFTs nowadays, but i’d hate to see artists i like privately selling their unreleased music to the highest bidders instead of publicly releasing the songs. see: Martin Shkreli owning C5 before release

p r o v i d e r

3y

yup can't argue with this logic at all. some of them s***s should stay vaulted tho on the low haha they need a more secure lock and key

but i suppose quality over quantity can't really apply since it's all subjective. feed the people, i'm not mad at that

sabbaroni

3y

exactly

especially with artists who make a bunch of songs then pick their favorites for the album (rather than artists who make songs with the album specifically in mind like how Drake only made 25 songs for Take Care) quality is all subjective, so when artists drop these albums (which may or may not feel more like loose compilations in the first place, but that's for another thread), the songs they liked the most might not be the songs the fans liked the most from the music the artist had been previewing on social media (read: Young Thug, Lil Uzi Vert), so fan-service is appreciated in that case.

even for artists who make all their music with a specific album in mind, sometimes, when they put together the final tracklist, they realize that a great song is actually an outlier on the album, so it winds up getting completely scrapped (had this happen with a friend who makes music, i was devastated when he told me my favorite song had to get cut). but this scenario is more about shorter deluxes rather than full deluxe albums tbh.

lol @ some of them shoulda stayed in the vault though

p r o v i d e r

3y

hmmm i wonder does this introduce a different aspect we haven't brought up yet tho. artist vision/intention vs fan expectation/reception? maybe it depends on the individual artist which way they would sway more favorably toward? i kind of find it admirable that an artist has such a strong direction and layout for their art that they would be willing to sacrifice in order to deliver it the way they truly want to, as opposed to appeasing the fans/label/whoever else.

but i guess the extra deluxe disc is where that balance is struck. if i look at it from that perspective, as the deluxe simply being "fan service" as you've been referring to it, i can get behind the concept a lil bit more.

epiphanies being made itt

p r o v i d e r

3y

hmmm i wonder does this introduce a different aspect we haven't brought up yet tho. artist vision/intention vs fan expectation/reception? maybe it depends on the individual artist which way they would sway more favorably toward? i kind of find it admirable that an artist has such a strong direction and layout for their art that they would be willing to sacrifice in order to deliver it the way they truly want to, as opposed to appeasing the fans/label/whoever else.

but i guess the extra deluxe disc is where that balance is struck. if i look at it from that perspective, as the deluxe simply being "fan service" as you've been referring to it, i can get behind the concept a lil bit more.

epiphanies being made itt

p r o v i d e r

3y

X is the perfect example actually. Idk what Breezy was thinking making Drunk Texting the outro. the deluxe tho

lost in ya love

love more

don't think they know

FINE CHINA

lucid

3y

luv is rage 2

hell luvtw2 >>> ea

sabbaroni

3y

i typically view the standard as the artist's vision/intention & the deluxe songs as something to please the fans, except in cases like Wunna deluxe, where i think the deluxe was what Gunna wanted out but the standard was released as a marketing thing or something so people would get hyped again later on for a deluxe (haven't fully fleshed that thought out yet since it's such a unique case but i'll post anyways)

perhaps the medium of dropping a compilation album as a "deluxe" is a bit of a cash grab by the labels, but the end result is fans getting more content they enjoy officially released rather than downloading the songs on leak compilations months/years down the line, so i can't really hate on it