SoundCloud’s Head Of Marketing Maurice Slade Talks Leaking J. Cole’s ‘Born Sinner’ To Get It To The Top Of The Charts

You could imagine the road ahead since J. Cole was gearing up to release his second project “Born Sinner,” which coincided with the release date of Kanye West’s sixth studio album “Yeezus.”

Both talents were dropping on June 18, 2013, and Slade’s goal was to ensure J. Cole would secure the No. 1 spot. Therefore, they strategically released J. Cole’s music prematurely through a SoundCloud link and hosted an exclusive listening party.

“We felt like we had a big album,” Slade said. “So, one of the strategies that we used was for people to hear the music before it was released because it would garner that chatter that we wanted going into the next week to get the numbers done. So funny enough, we did two things. We leaked the album online through SoundCloud and put it on his website so a lot of people could hear the song. People were then talking about how they felt ‘Born Singer’ is better than ‘Yeezus.’ So, that was the back and forth that we wanted before the release.”

He continued: “We also did a listening session in New York City for press and fans. It was maybe 100 to 150 people in the theater that we showed the visuals, and we had the album playing. Everyone was wearing headphones. While the album was playing we also used an application to have ten different stations around the country where people could listen to J. Cole’s album at the same time as we were having this listening session.”