West is known for soaking up sounds from around the zeitgeist and elevating them to exciting new levels, and here he soaks up in particular the rise of electronic dance music in recent years, fusing industrial and trap music with the sounds he’s more traditionally known for. That all changed with the leak, with listeners discovering a dark and abrasive album more or less devoid of any commercial radio single. Outside of previews of “ Black Skinhead” and “ New Slaves” on Saturday Night Live and on projections around the world (and, for a few friends and critics, at a private listening party on Monday), little had been heard or revealed about the album. Just when it began to seem like Kanye West’s Yeezus would never leak-Yeezy has been known to take extraordinary precautions to prevent leaks, including moving mixes only in locked Pelican briefcases and on “ hard drives that can only be accessed by biometric fingerprint readers“-the album made its way onto file-sharing services this afternoon, a few days ahead of its June 18 release date.

Kanye west 808s and heartbreak leak