And talking of Kanye, Mr West looks set to win the much previously reported slightly manufactured chart battle between him, 50 Cent and country star Kenny Chesney who, as previously reported, have all released new albums this week.
Reports seem conclusive that West's third album, 'Graduation' is outselling 50 Cent's 'Curtis' long-player by two to one - the former scoring first day sales of 437,000, the latter 310,000, both someway ahead of Chesney who shifted just 107,000 units of his new record 'Just Who I Am: Poets And Pirates' on day one. Indeed, many believe that West is set to surpass 750,000 first week sales with this record, which would not only outsell Fiddy and Chesney, but easily make his album the biggest first week seller of the year so far.
Fiddy has already begun to make excuses, perhaps wary of the pledge he made to quit music if 'Curtis' didn't beat 'Graduation'. Speaking on a New York radio station, he blamed his record company, Universal's Interscope, for his album's failure to match West's sales so far, saying: "I'm happy with the performance, but I'm not happy with the set up. We had conference calls and after we created this plan, nobody actually had a plan".
He then turned his attention to West's record label - Interscope's sister label Def Jam - who presumably had a plan - and pledged to release new material in competition with every priority release they have in the future, to get back at them for, erm, doing their jobs and marketing West well. I'm not sure what he thinks that will achieve, but whatever, this is what he said: "Hypothetically, if I came in under Kanye West, I would release a new album every time Def Jam had a priority. I would release a record verses every one of their top priorities". Couldn't he just accept defeat and take heart at how pissed off West was to go home empty handed from the VMAs?