Jay-Z And Kanye Went To Ridiculous Lengths To Prevent Watch The Throne Leaks

Have you ever seen The Ghost Writer, the Roman Polanski film about a writer played by Ewan MacGregor who’s hired to ghostwrite the autobiography of a former British prime minister played by Pierce Brosnan? Well, in the film absurd lengths are gone to in order to prevent any manuscript leaks from taking place. So it was the first thing I though of when I read this Billboard story about the ridiculous anti-leak precautions that were taken to insure that Watch The Throne never hit the web prematurely.

Conceived during three iterations in Australia, New York City and Paris, “Watch the Throne” was kept secure by three core engineers — Mike Dean, Anthony Kilhoffer and Noah Goldstein — who disabled their computers’ Wi-Fi at pop-up studios constructed in hotel rooms. Due to compromising hacker attempts for West’s 2010 release “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy,” outside producers such as the RZA and Swizz Beatz were asked to appear in-person for works-in-progress — no emailed song drafts were allowed.

To combat pre-release piracy, Kilhoffer, Grammy Award-winner for West’s Graduation and John Legend’s Get Lifted, claims that all sessions were saved offsite to hard drives in Goldstein’s locked Pelican briefcase over the course of nine months. “Everywhere we went in hotels, we were locking hard drives and Noah took them with him,” says Kilhoffer, who now travels with external memory units that can only be accessed by biometric fingerprints.

The technology, which Kilhoffer implements while traveling on West’s current European tour, takes a live scan of one’s finger to serve as key to access protected material. For less than $100, devices such as the Eikon Digital Privacy Manager and Zvetco Fingerprint Reader measure the finger’s ridges and valleys with conductor plates, transmitting imprints through a USB cord to safeguard hard drive contents. While on the road, Kilhoffer and Dean are the sole gatekeepers to unlock the digital safes.

And while boosting album sales would appear to be the main reason to go to such extraordinary lengths to avoid leaks — and sales are through the proverbial roof, btw — Billboard reports that it was all motivated by a desire to recreate an old-timey release day feel that used to exist pre-internet.

Cracking down on pirates and freeloaders wasn’t the primary motivation. Instead, according to a Roc Nation executive, the anti-leak strategy was born out of a desire to ensure that all fans would have access to the album at the same time, in a nostalgic attempt to emulate the pre-Internet days when leaks didn’t give Web-savvy fans an advantage over others.

“That was the driving force of it–to create that moment of unwrapping the CD and listening to it for the first time,” says the executive, who asked to remain anonymous. “It was a very old-school way for things to happen. People really were anticipating an album on a certain day and everyone got to experience it simultaneously.”

Well done fellas. And much appreciated. Now lean back, Yeezy, lean back.

(HT: Hypervocal. “Otis” video gifs via Best Rooftalk Ever.)

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