Today is June 18, 2013, the ballyhooed release day for three highly anticipated albums: Kanye West's Yeezus, J. Cole's Born Sinner, and Mac Miller's Watching Movies With the Sound Off. The competition is a bit uneven—Kanye is predicted, predictably, to walk away with the week. But it got us thinking about other legendary sales battles in hip-hop history.
Which in turn made us think about how different release dates are now. This week's Twitter anticipation was very different from unwrapping your Aquemini and Hard Knock Life CDs back on September 29, 1998.
For those of you who just steal music, or download it from iTunes, back in the day, buying a CD involved a laborious process of removing plastic wrap and carefully peeling away a sticker that, if you weren't careful, could scar your CD case with sticker-glue for the rest of time.
What was it really like on some of history's more epic release dates? Just in time for June 18, we've got 18 of history's most legendary release dates, and give you a picture of what was going on at that time.
These are Great Days In Rap Album Release History.
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