No! It’s simply an album release without the marketing, a wholly imbecile arrangement for everyone involved.

The very first surprise album drop, let’s just say Beyoncé’s self-titled fifth album to stay out of the weeds, rainbows, and torrent histories of sub genres, gained the most traction, notoriety, spectacle, and, therefore, value from it’s surprise release.

From that moment forward, especially because of the global magnitude of her brand, the surprise album drop would never be the same, slowly degrading it’s overall value.

An analogy: the first surprise birthday is also the last surprise birthday.

What I mean is that surprise can only occur once in a vertical, whether music, birthdays, comebacks, etc. it is momentary both personally and culturally.

In fact, a surprise cannot escape the fact that it is a surprise as that becomes it’s context, which is especially detrimental if you are the 6th, 7th, or 8th surprise album release or re-re-re-release of 2016.

However, there are brilliant nuanced ways to play the surprise album drop card and Frank Ocean may have just played one by saying he’d do something and then not doing, a la Kanye.

Another example of a well played surprise release was Kendrick Lamar’s release of “Untitled Unmastered”, which merely was a ‘rarefied’ b-sides dropping in the traditional format of the E.P..

The platforms may change, but the surprises will still lose value even when the cyclical tides of music brings us the inevitable surprise (insert favorite genre here) record that many of us have been desperately waiting for. 🙃