Boldy James & The Alchemist - The Price of Tea in China (Discussion Thread)

[Alvin]

Fire song. Glad it's on the deluxe.



I think Phone Booth is a perfect outro too. I kinda like Grey October where it is. Besides the intro/Carruth, everything besides Pinto is hard as nails, and then I think Grey October comes in nicely to slow things down a bit after a pretty intense section of joints. It does a good ob of leading into the final 3rd of the album IMO.

Plus, I never like it when a guest verse is the final verse on an album (like Mac Miller closing out the Pinata album). Ev is one of my favorite rappers and I love his verse, but it's be weird to me for him to close Boldy's album. And even though I like all 4 of the bonus tracks, Belvedere and Bernadines are the main ones that seem like they would've fit in the sequence. So to me the album really does end at Phone Bill.

Okay I'm done being an armchair A&R

Belvedere made me tear up, that beat was beautiful

 

[Rhyme 4 Rhyme]

Anyone have any luck with the TK release?

 

[LJLYDK!]

It was gone in literal 2 seconds. I had it in my cart swift as fukk and then it was sold out. All of em. Gotta be bots surely?

Gonna try for NOMTW On derapwinkel in 2 hours. Honestly expecting the same shyt to happen tho.

 

[areohbee824]

No luck on the Tuff Kong release. Sold out just as fast as the one on Alchemist's site, under a minute. Fastest I've seen a record go on Tuff Kong

 

[LJLYDK!]

Tuff Kong said it’s bots. And on their IG page they said bare with em their trying to sort it. So there’s hope yet!

 

[areohbee824]

The sharks got them up on eBay already ranging $300+ for standard copy and $500+ for the special one

 

[LJLYDK!]

TK are now doing an offline sale of it however that works

 

[areohbee824]

 

[Rhyme 4 Rhyme]

Do appreciate the intent but doubt it will benefit us.

Would be best if they reached out to their real customers ahead of time to give them the option to pre-order. With all the ways companies can sort through data these days, they should be able to find out pretty easily who their routine customers are.

And I'm not usually a fan of paying more for OBI strips but that arabic one was very, very dope.

 

[LJLYDK!]

fukk it. off to derapwinkel to try for No One Mourns The Wicked Reissue. Good luck everyone who’s trying to cop that

Expect more of the same

 

[areohbee824]

Not sure how they are going to fix this. There was a 1 copy limit for the colored one, 2 limit for the standard. Bots with 40 diff accounts ate these up

 

[LJLYDK!]

Anyone manager to cop No One Mourns The Wicked?

I got mine, Kinda makes up for the fukkery of the bots with price of tea

 

[TheDarceKnight]

Do appreciate the intent but doubt it will benefit us.

Would be best if they reached out to their real customers ahead of time to give them the option to pre-order. With all the ways companies can sort through data these days, they should be able to find out pretty easily who their routine customers are.

And I'm not usually a fan of paying more for OBI strips but that arabic one was very, very dope.

The system is broken. IMO the only way to win is not to play. I'm done with any and all limited pressing vinyl drops. Freddie Gibbs did it perfectly with Bandana and Alfredo. Pre-order windows. No stress.

I used to be able to get Al drops through Bandcamp, but since moving to Shopify I got burned on all the Tea in China drops. Shopify is just too easy for bots to get through. The people tweaking bots are always going to be ahead of any counter measures. It's just like how hackers or any kind of criminals are always ahead of the people trying to stop them.

@areohbee82 was telling me about a Frank Ocean vinyl drop that was a 24-hour window pre-order. I din't understand why not to just do that. Surely it's annoying for Al and Body to get annoyed Tweets and DMs from fans all day. I mean even just a 1-hour pre-order window would get rid of annoyed fans and it would allow the artists' to make more money, while keeping the (overrated IMO) idea of exclusivity and rareness.

This is an album of the year contender. Pressing up a thousand copies of it with the bot and resellers being as vulturous as they are right ow is fukking stupid.

I can't imagine how much of a nightmare the Lulu Deluxe drop is gonna be in the next month or two. I ain't even trying.

Tea in China is the most I've wanted an album on wax since Bandana. Definitely a bummer.

 

[TheDarceKnight]

Tuff Kong said it’s bots. And on their IG page they said bare with em their trying to sort it. So there’s hope yet!

Apparently some cat set up IP dresses in 40 different countries and used bots for each one.



The system is broken and needs to be overhauled from the ground up.

The hype beast shyt is so stupid. People that are real fans and want to listen to the album can't even do it because people that don't even listen to the music (but know how to use bots and plugins) and want to sell the shyt for 500 bucks on Ebay.

 

[TheDarceKnight]

Belvedere made me tear up, that beat was beautiful

same sample here too