This figure, who, based on the fan’s description, Chav recognized as someone once in their inner circle, could have handed the album off to the hacker. According to the fan, who approached them in a sidechat on Discord, the hacker had done “business” with big-name artists before and had contact with another Discord member who was widely considered a figure in the music industry. Their suspicions were heightened by a longtime “super fan” of Electronica who they’d met multiple times in person at shows.
And while the members of Electronica’s team acknowledge they’ve used Jungle City Studios before, they say they never recorded any of Act II there, so it wouldn’t make sense for the file to be named after it. Their reasoning is based on perceived errors in the hacker’s story: Chav almost never uses his Dropbox to exchange files, he says, and he never used it to transfer Act II, which sits on two hard drives at his home. “The album has been nothing but positives for him.” “We weren’t going to get the album regardless,” he says when I ask him whether he believes he stole it. Looking through LEAKTHIS, you can see he’s shared unheard gems by beloved artists like TDE rapper Isaiah Rashad, the Weeknd, and Kid Cudi.Īnd then there’s his crown jewel, Act II. It seems to prove that he does hold at least some of the power that users on Reddit and LEAKTHIS claim, though. Whether he did this because he feels left behind or just because he wants to let me know I’ve chosen the wrong subject, I don’t know. “Great job, you guys interviewed a rapist, pedophile, animal abuser :-),” he captions the picture. He mistakenly thought I’d written a recent VICE feature on leaking culture and wants to expose the real identity of the 17-year-old hacker at the center of it. Once, after telling me he’s finished speaking with me, he pops up with a name and address accompanied by a blurry selfie picture of a teenage boy. He often goes silent for days, or if I push too hard on the wrong topic, he’ll leave the conversation altogether. My questions are frequently shut down, as he tries to avoid divulging any details that could lead authorities or other hackers to discovering his real identity. I’m speaking with him through an encrypted app that deletes our message history often. “But I also like collecting songs myself that will never leak or anything.” “I like providing music for people that otherwise they wouldn’t hear,” he explains when I ask him why he leaks projects. But despite his reputation as a reclusive figure, he quickly agrees to talk with me for this story. LEAKTHIS members share a mutual admiration for the hacker, often replying to his threads with a goat emoji.
“He won’t talk to you lol,” the user warns. I find the hacker’s online identity by tracing the digital footsteps of the album’s leak: first on Twitter, where whispers are circulating of a large purchase for the project, then on Reddit, where a user tells me of an infamous moderator on the forum LEAKTHIS, an online community with a collective interest in unearthing (mostly illegally) unreleased music. Although the hacker broke in looking for the album, he didn’t actually expect to find it.
Jay electronica patents of nobility zip#
zip file, its file names nearly identical to a tracklist released by Electronica in 2012. Act II, a coveted album that had gained folkloric status after being promised and pushed back numerous times over the years, was nestled neatly in a. It likely would have remained in that folder indefinitely if the hacker, who insists on remaining nameless but divulges he’s a college-enrolled male in the U.S., had not come across the names of Electronica’s inner circle and, on a whim, decided to break into each of their laptops.Īfter only a few minutes, he discovered gold. (Electronica’s collaborators dispute this claim). He claims it was located in a folder with a title that referenced Manhattan’s Jungle City Studios. The album sat in cloud storage of one of Electronica’s collaborators for eight years, the hacker says, a fact he deduced from the digital time stamp imprinted on it. And according to that hacker, it took only about five minutes to dig up Act II: The Patents of Nobility (The Turn), a project that was first announced in 2007 and, thanks to pressure brought on by the leak, released in an official capacity on TIDAL last month (before being taken down quietly not long after). The long-rumored album’s unlikely emergence occurred after it was leaked by a 19-year-old hacker. When one of hip-hop’s most mythical albums was finally unearthed, the artist behind it, Jay Electronica, praised Allah for its unforeseen release.
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