Don't Believe the Hype: Highly Anticipated Albums That Didn't Deliver

After a four year hiatus and speculation of a breakup, Bloc Party finally returned in 2012 with their new album Four. When Bloc Party first gained popularity for the crunchy, energetic sound of Silent Alarm, it felt like we were watching the emergence of a band who we'd see get better and better over the next years. Unfortunately, it's been the opposite.

By the time 2012 came around, the band had released two other decent albums as band members shifted, rumors started spreading, and the magic of Silent Alarm faded into the past. But there was hope. After a four-year hiatus, the original lineup was back together, and Four was the chance to pick up where they left off. Except that wasn't the case. Four was like Bloc Party taking one last stab at remaining relevant, and while it wasn't terrible, it was disappointing in that it became clear that this band was a thing of the past.

When an artist explains that their album won’t be coming out due to complications with their label, there’s not much fans can do but express their disappointment. Lupe Fiasco’s fans on the other hand are more proactive than that. When Lupe announced that his album Lasers was finished but was waiting for Atlantic Records to release it, fans began a petition for its release.

The petition spread quickly, gaining over 5,000 signatures immediately. After the success of his first two albums Food & Liquor and The Cool, fans expected his third album to be just as good, if not better. However, after years of anticipation and all the hard work put into the release not all fans were happy with the result. The anticipation from fans translated in decent sales, but the end result of Lasers didn’t meet expectations, even Lupe's own. He said in an interview with Complex:

I listen to it and I’ll like some of the songs. But when I think about what it took to actually get the record together and everything that I went through on this record—which is something I can’t separate—I hate this album. A lot of the songs that are on the album, I’m kinda neutral to."

Joint albums between two major artists are always sure to spark interest. When Metallica and the legendary Lou Reed announced that they would be joining forces to create an album in 2011, the initial response was mixed, but it was hard not to be curious. The idea for a collaborative album came about after Reed played with Metallica the 25th Anniversary Concert for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. But just because two things are great on their own doesn’t necessarily mean that they’ll be better together.

When their joint album Lulu came out, it received painful reviews. Lou Reed claimed that by that point he felt he barely had any fans left so he was just having fun. Reed's contribution to rock music over his long, influential career will forever cement his spot as a music legend, but Lulu is one ugly little stain.

Any time Jay Z announces a new project, that automatically causes excitement. The level of excitement was even more extreme in 2006 when he dropped his Kingdom Come album because it came three years after he announced his “retirement” from rap. Although he had previously done joint albums with R. Kelly and Linkin Park, Kingdom Come was his first solo effort since The Black Album—an almost impossible act to follow.

Commercially the album did fairly well, but in comparison to The Black Album (and most of his other work for that matter) it was a bit of a let-down. Last year, Jay-Z ranked all of his albums from best to worst and placed Kingdom Come at the bottom of the list. So there you have it folks.

After 15 years of silence, Guns N’ Roses reunited and released Chinese Democracy in 2008. The huge gap between Chinese Democracy and their previous album The Spaghetti Incident? was mainly due to internal issues, and it left fans waiting through a decade and a half of rumors and delays. Unfortunately, Chinese Democracy is widely regarded as the band's worst work. Even Slash, who was vocal about the band's disfunction over the years, said the album sounded “exactly what I thought it would sound like,” which hardly seems like a compliment.

Usually the success of an artist’s mixtape foreshadows the success of the debut album to come. Before the release of Attention Deficit, in November 2009, Wale dropped The Mixtape About Nothing and Back to the Feature. The response to his mixtapes was so positive that it earned Wale a well-deserved spot as a rapper on the verge of blowing up in a major way.

But his debut album just didn’t quite meet the bar he had already set for himself. It sounded overly produced, less focused, and that raw intensity and local flavor of the DC native's mixtapes was missing. In the end, the title was unfortunately fitting, as Wale put out an effort that was patchy at best.

In 2007, 50 Cent and Kanye West both set their albums to be released on September 11th. Since only one person can have the top spot, the promotion for both albums became a head to head competition. With all of the hype around Kanye’s Graduation and 50’s Curtis, both albums were expected to be great, and the fact that 50 Cent’s previous album The Massacre sold over a million copies in just the first week also added to the high expectations.

But Curtis didn’t exactly live up to all of the hype. This could be partially because it was overshadowed by Graduation but really, it’s singles “Straight to the Bank,” “I Get Money” and “Ayo Technology” with Justin Timberlake still just weren’t strong enough to gain long lasting interest. Sadly, since then 50 has never been able to return to the form of his early 2000s peak.

After Eminem’s 2004 release Encore, there was a five year gap until his following album. His hiatus from music was initially intended to be time for him to produce records for other rappers on his label but it wound up being a much harder time for him. During this time he divorced his wife Kim for the second time, became addicted to prescription drugs and was deeply affected by his best friend and D-12 member Proof’s death.

All of these factors obviously changed Eminem and that showed in his 2009 release Relapse. By this point, it seemed as if Em was trying to appeal to a younger generation than the fans that had originally grown up listening to him. For a new Eminem fan, this album could and probably does get a pass. But for older fans who already hadn’t been too pleased with Encore and anxiously waited five years to hear something new, Relapse just didn't cut it.

Eminem will go down as one of the true greats, and his ability to rap at the very highest level is absolutely unquestionable, but with that status comes heightened expectations, which relapse definitely did not live up to.