Leaks are now one of the most prevalent hindrances to album releases in the modern music landscape. Most of the time, leaks of songs and albums from hackers usually occur while an artist is prepping to put out the music in the near future, derailing the entire process and sending said artist back to the drawing board. One of the first instances of this came back in 1999 when Nas was getting ready to drop his third studio album I Am… The Autobiography.
Videos by American Songwriter
The LP was meant to be a double-disc release, where Nas sensationalizes the story of his life as a birth, death, then re-birth. However, as MP3 players were emerging in the market and became more accessible, hackers ended up leaking and bootlegging the album before it could earn an official release. This led to Nas scrapping practically half the songs from the track list, as he eventually changed the album to I Am…, arriving in April of ’99.
[RELATED: The 25 Best Nas Quotes]
But now, it appears that I Am… The Autobiography will finally get the commercial release it always deserved. According to Record Store Day’s website, it will be selling an official vinyl copy of the widely-coveted album on Black Friday this year (November 24).
Executed by Legacy Recordings and dubbed as an “exclusive release,” the copy of I Am… The Autobiography will include “2 unreleased tracks, as well as many other rarities that have been on limited vinyl and 12″ previously, as well as deluxe packaging,” per Record Store Day. This likely means that the LP will be restored to its double-disc edition.
In the years after the initial release of I Am… 24 years ago, Nas decided to put out some of the album’s scrapped songs onto future full-length efforts of his such as Nastradamus, released in 1999, and Lost Tapes Vol. 1 (2002). But now, fans will finally be able to soak in Nas’ third album the way he truly intended.
Photo by Daniel Knighton/Getty Images
