The-Dream Creates a Nightmare for Music Blogs

I’m a bit surprised that this story has slipped below the radar: Did you know that pop singer/songwriter The-Dream has been working in union with the FBI in order to “catch” “music pirates”? Amazingly, The-Dream had no qualms with admitting to it out in the open, taking to his Twitter page to explain:

Job Done As u know there have been several leaks around many records I do I am please to say the Record Champagne which was apart of a FBI [LINK]

investigation, has lead to the three individual's who's been hacking us for the last two years. im sorry u guys have to here unfinished [LINK]

music so i took it into my on hands to have every record i make since Nov 2009 logged with a Federal encripted Tag & will also appear on LK. [LINK]

And Champagne is not on LK! it never was! [LINK]

Call it what u want to! The only people who have something to say are the ones that usually don't work for anything they have! If sombody [LINK]

Stole your car you call the police, if your mother gets robbed in the parking lot she calls the police! Don't try to act like y'all down [LINK]

To let someone contiinue to take from you when the people who are doing it are being directly disrespectful to what I put my hard work In to [LINK]

I'm not going to kill anyone so since everybody got something to say tell me what would u do! This isn't about people who buy they shit [LINK]

So what's the problem , oh yeah that's right y'all never worked for anything! So u would feel away, it's 99 cent nigga u ain't got a dollar [LINK]

get a job buy your shit the same way you pY the Man for gas and lights! I guess we all down with the Feds then! Buy yo shit! Don't steal [LINK]

From me Im running a legitimate business! As long as they taxing me 40% the Feds work for me and anybody else that pays taxes! This ain't [LINK]

The Trap! This is what Apple does, this is what Coca Cola would do! Stop fakin like y'all just got money to give away cause I don't!! [LINK]

Eskay recently posted a great article – I told you it’s no love lost! – titled On Rap Blogging and Music Leaks. In essence, it’s a verbal 187 on Lupe Fiasco and his diva-esque tendencies to flip the fuck out whenever one of his songs springs a leak. I’ve always been put off by Lupe’s pissy stance on so-called music piracy, particularly because it’s based on a true ignorance of how it all boils down in the grand scheme of things. As Eskay writes: “Once a song has been leaked onto the internet, it’s a wrap. It’s over. There’s nothing you can do about it, and by asking a few bloggers to take it down, all you’re doing is pissing off those few bloggers in your futile attempt to stop the unstoppable.” Technical foul on Lupe Fiasco! Now if that’s a TO, then The-Dream just earned himself an ejection.

I’ve always been weary of marrying “hip hop” to “R&B”, as so many “urban” radio stations have done (the “home(s)” for “hip hop and R&B”). (Let’s put aside the fact that current “R&B artists” are nothing more than “pop” acts. Real R&B artists are people like Albert King, Lowell Fulson, Bill Doggett and so on. But I’ve lost that debate years before I was even born.) Whenever I hear R. Kelly beefing with Jay-Z or Mariah Carey going at Eminem – on records, mind you – it makes me want to jump in front of a moving truck. But one hip hop/R&B comparison is apt: if Rick Ross lost some credibility when he was outed as a former C.O., then what does that make The-Dream? An informant? A rat? A stoolie? What ever happened to Stop Snitching? Wouldn’t it be appropriate to expect a unified effort by the blogosphere – particularly by the NMC, a.k.a. the taste makers – in boycotting any and all tracks and features by The-Dream? Bloggaz R N Dainja! I know I sure as hell won’t be posting any more of his music...