Kanye West Upset Over Unauthorized Leak of New Video

Takes to Twitter to complain about the release of an unfinished version of "Black Skinhead"

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Dimitrios Kambouris / Getty Images for Dom Perignon

Kanye West in Miami, on Dec. 6, 2012.

Kanye West has close to 10 million Twitter followers — and they got an earful from the Yeezus rapper yesterday. West took to the social network to announce that the clip from the music video for his song “Black Skinhead” — at that time, rapidly spreading across the internet before getting pulled — was not an authorized release.

West, who is working on the video with fashion photographer Nick Knight, despite his earlier proclamations that there would  be no singles released off Yeezus, tweeted his dismay about the leak, “Me and Nick Knight have been working on this video for 5 months and for creatives it’s heartbreaking when something like this happens.” The link that was making the rounds on Monday took fans to a Universal Music Group WordPress development page that has since been password protected. It’s unclear whether the leak was a deliberate act or merely a technical glitch.

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The widely circulated video features the visuals that West had unveiled during his performance at the Governor’s Ball festival in June, along with the same nightmarish imagery of snarling Dobermans and black KKK hoods, that have marked the aesthetics of his provocative Yeezus album and his performance on SNL. The clip also shows a shadowy, animated version of an extra-muscular West (shirtless, wearing a gold chain) rapping the angst-filled and fiery track from the new album and occasionally turning into various futuristic monsters. The computer-generated West dances and jumps — and even offers a glimpse of full-frontal nudity, continuing the provocative bent of West’s latest work.

The video was quickly yanked offline, though, and West took to Twitter to denouce the leaker and assure fans that a complete version of the video is on the way. West tweeted, “The final version will be ready within the next week.” He then asked, “So any website that may have the unapproved / unfinished ruff… I ask you to please take it down,” continuing “Allow me and Nick to give the world what we’ve been losing sleep over.”

As a final tweet, Kanye rightly railed against the person who leaked the clip: “And to who ever leaked the video, F– YOU!”

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