Yesterday Twitter and the blogs were alit with rumors of Kanye West releasing an album on October 23 entitled Black American Psycho. Today, the website, blackamericanpsycho.com, was altered to reveal the truth. It is not an album, nor is it affiliated with Kanye West or Def Jam. It's a school project.
Most are reporting it as a hoax. Others are still sceptical, claiming it's awfully elaborate for a hoax. We're here to tell you, it's a school project. Being a 10-year old magazine, wisdom comes to you overtime regarding hype. We've been through enough non-albums, April Fool's jokes, and actual hoaxes to know one when we see it. Some of us even made projects like this in our Graphic Design 101 class in high school.
Journos, you realize the chap who made the school project didn't pull a hoax, right? Blogger on Twitter who tweeted “Well done, Internet”, like it's the scapegoat, you are kidding, right? This couldn't possibly be your doing and your doing alone, guy who wrote 1000 words theorizing the nature of this release based on a shell of a website.
This doesn't happen if a person is patient and awaits a press release, or seeks out a publicist or phones a label and demands to speak to someone who can clear up this curious website they discovered. This probably doesn't even happen if you think about how detrimental announcing a new album five days after releasing his label compilation, Cruel Summer, would be to sales. You think Kanye's ego is so outrageous that he'd shit on his label comp with a new solo before making five to six theatrical videos? You think Def Jam is going to allow Kanye West to compromise one of its best selling records of the fall with a solo record? This does not happen to journalists, it only happens to traffic-hungry bloggers and the Twitterati. There is no kid who made a school project to hunt down. There is no evil Internet to blame.
