Crack in the Road was the first place to post about the album, which they’d supposedly discovered trawling Bandcamp for new releases. I saw their news post and, from the couch in my apartment on a Saturday morning, quickly posted it to The FADER with the headline “Download Jai Paul’s Self-Titled Debut LP.”

This was five months before Beyoncé pulled the first Beyoncé, and the surprise drop was a move seemingly in line with the Jai Paul mythos. As I noted in my post at the time, XL’s Richard Russell had previously said the way Jai Paul operates is “baffling,” and to self-release a long-rumored project on a Saturday morning without any announcement from your record label just seemed like a badass Jai Paul thing to do.

Someone at XL tweeted an opaque “Surprise!” and someone else pointed out that a week earlier Noisey had published a speculative post entitled “Is Jai Paul's Debut Album Coming Out Later This Month?” The email address associated with the leak Bandcamp was unfamiliar, but the secondary address linked to the Jai Paul account was the same one that had registered his website a few years earlier on the same day that the album leaked.

And then Owen spoiled the fun. It made me uneasy to know this had been released without Jai Paul’s consent. At the same time, I remember agreeing when someone said, “Is he gonna ask us to stop listening to this? Because I can’t.” Sure, there were some major red flags with the music itself. There was the presumably unclearable sample from Harry Potter. The bitrates varied widely, the compression was absuuuurd, and the mix favored bass past the point of detriment on any respectable set of speakers. But, like, fuck, wouldn’t it be cool if that was all intentional and final, done because pop’s secret-best producer cared more about other stuff?

To this day, I haven’t resolved my feelings about the leak. Partially that’s because I don’t really know what happened. It’s odd that it took XL three days to release a statement, and it’s odd that Jai Paul never released any solo tracks after this. Part of me believes that the story about a stolen laptop is untrue, and the leak was intentional but botched; a bigger part of me hopes that Jai Paul cashed in somehow, maybe getting paid out by XL, whether he was more at fault or whether it was down to them. Not every genius is meant to be a star, and maybe this was his way out.

Demos and rough drafts always fascinate me. In the errors, you learn more about why the thing was made. As I’m typing this, I’m listening to Jai Paul’s leak for the first time in a few years, and there hasn’t been much better since. —DUNCAN COOPER