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Beyoncé’s ‘4’ leaks online, three weeks before release

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Not even Beyoncé is immune to the dangers of leaks.

On Tuesday morning, Twitter was abuzz with folks tweeting about the leak of yet another track, ‘Party,’ an André 3000-assisted midtempo produced by Kanye West and Consequence.

That song’s premature release was quickly followed by the surfacing of the Boyz II Men-sampling “Countdown.”

Clearly someone had their hands on Beyoncé’s highly anticipated disc “4,” which isn’t scheduled for release until June 28.

It didn’t take long for the full album to surface, though her label is attempting to chase the offending sites down.

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Popular music blogs including That Grape Juice and PinBoard Blog have removed “Party” and “Countdown,” reportedly due to cease-and desist notices from the singer’s legal team, and after reporting the album had leaked in full, Oh No They Didn’t, the largest community on LiveJournal, is removing links to the album in its comment section.

But that isn’t stopping people from taking to Twitter to throw up links, as it’s a bit trickier to stem this flow. Could this be a potential hazard? The album’s first single, the dancehall jam “Run the World (Girls),” didn’t perform like previous first singles “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It),” ’Déjà Vu” and “Crazy In Love” (though at No. 29 on the Billboard Hot 100, the track is at its highest entry). Reps for the singer didn’t return requests for comment.

Up until now, the singer has carefully offered a taste of the disc. After performances on both the Billboard Awards and ‘The Oprah Winfrey Show,’ she debuted the power ballad “1+1” on “American Idol.” This before releasing the second single, “Best Thing I Never Had.” The only song that managed to leak without the aid of the label (or maybe not) was the Fela Kuti-inspired “End of Time.”

Lady Gaga’s anticipated disc “Born This Way” leaked a few days before its release, which is about normal these days, and still logged an astouding 1 million copies its first week, so who knows how much the leak will damage Beyoncé’s bottom line.

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Beyoncé severs management ties with father

-- Gerrick D. Kennedy

twitter.com/gerrickkennedy

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