Did Kanye West’s “Five-for-Five” Album Release Strategy Hinder Teyana Taylor’s K.T.S.E.?

Very few people can be the leader of the creative production behind the music on a given album and the marketing force behind said album at the same time. Normally, these roles are given to multiple people because it’s best to split delegation of these duties. Which is what Kanye West should have done with Teyana Taylor’s latest album K.T.S.E.

In this regard — i.e. another botched album roll out after an ill-fated decision to include Teyana Taylor’s album in a forced, multi-album release campaign — Kanye West hindered K.T.S.E’s initial potential. While the G.O.O.D. Music album extravaganza may have secured the attention that Kanye wanted, the blind side of such a strategy is that it overlooks the fact that, even with featured production by the same super producer, each artist is unique and therefore not necessarily suitable for a one-size fit all album roll out.

Every artist’s album needs its own distinct promotion and marketing campaign, its own breathing room for its initial bow onto the marketplace. A good marketing strategy is one that includes, among other things, the right timing and a singular approach. However, Teyana Taylor’s album was not fitted with a singular approach; instead it was packaged as part of a summer-set of Kanye West-powered album releases. As such, the album was tethered to the success or failure and expectations of the group as a whole. In this case, K.T.S.E. deserved its own space.

One could make the argument that if K.T.S.E. was not tethered to this string of five albums in five weeks, even fewer people would have cared. But marketing aside, albums have to do their own talking. In this scenario, less elbow room for K.T.S.E. meant that it was going to be received through the same prism of the “five for five” marketing scheme. You market projects this way when you want to showcase your label’s new talent, not when you want to spotlight individual artists who already have brands and strong followings. You also mount this kind of campaign when there’s a weak link that needs to be masked. K.T.S.E. was certainly not a weak link.

Further, I don’t believe that fewer people would have cared if K.T.S.E. was detached from the “five for five” roll out. Teyana has her own thing. A reality show on Vh1 (“Teyana & Iman”), a visible NBA Husband (who by the way, is actually nice with the rhymes), and a great New York backstory. That’s more than enough to drum up a distinctive marketing campaign, especially if you allow/trust the right people to help you.

Certainly, Kanye West’s value add in terms of production and music direction greatly benefited K.T.S.E. But while Kanye West receives praise for his willingness (and humility) to work with others to produce the best possible records, might it be that he also deserves criticism for his unwillingness to give up the reigns to the marketing approach to five albums that I just oversaw? Depending on market trends and the temperature of a given climate, sometimes it’s wise to move up the release dates for products, and sometimes it’s prudent to push them back. This is especially true in today’s world of music releases. That Kanye West, ever in love with the spotlight and any spectacle that can potentially show off his supposed genius, failed to recognize this basic point is terribly unfortunate for Teyana Taylor.

Even worse than tying Teyana Taylor’s album to an ill-fated, forced multi-album marketing campaign; even worse than another botched roll-out is this: The decision to go ahead and release Teyana Taylor’s album one week after Beyoncé & Jay-Z shocked the world with their surprise (and widely lauded) album, and days after the murder of XXXTenancion. There just really wasn’t enough oxygen left in the room by week’s end. If there was ever a time for an album to be pushed back, even as little as one week perhaps, it was now.

It also seems like Teyana Taylor actually wanted her album pushed back at least a week. In a an interview on Big Boy’s Neighborhood this past Tuesday, Taylor made a number of telling remarks:

• That she was “rushed”
• That “if it was the way that I wanted it to be, y’all probably wouldn’t have gotten it until, like…”
• “…I’m willing to wait for whatever [it comes right].”
• “…we’re fixing that” [as in things expected to be on the album were missing.]

Taylor also mentions that sampling clearances issues were a part of the problem: “‘Wait, does that mean they were able to get everything cleared?’ It was really just an honest misunderstanding of me thinking maybe some shit happened overnight.” But “samples not cleared” is the new “it’s politics;” an easy way to excuse an incomplete product. And samples never get cleared “overnight”. So for Taylor, putting part of the blame on sample clearance issues allows her to express her feelings about the rushed rollout of the album without actually throwing Kanye West (her label head and executive producer) under the bus.

To be certain, Teyana Taylor’s album is a good album that will catapult her higher regardless. But when the product is a delight, as is the case with K.T.S.E., you can afford to push it back a little to make sure that the climate is ripe for release, or at least more conducive to the best possible reception. So I can’t help but wonder that if Kanye West didn’t insist on being both the man behind the boards and the man behind the marketing would the initial rise of K.T.S.E. been higher?

When initially planned for 6/22, nobody knew that Beyoncé & Jay-Z were going to drop a joint album. And who could have predicted the murder of XXX. But a leader’s job includes absorbing late-breaking news and developing stories, and offering up a wise response. Sometimes making the decision to simply stay the course, despite a dramatically different landscape, is the wrong course of action. I think that was the case here. Kanye has the power and the goodwill to make a such a delay. He’s made delays before, and I mean the guy implied that slavery was a choice that enslaved Africans had made — and many people still waited for his new music with baited breath.

No matter how you look at it, though, the timing of the release of K.T.S.E. was going to be a lose-lose. But I arrive at this assessment from two angles. One, the “five for five” marketing scheme bet the house on the collective package, and essentially ensured that the album would be rushed out. Two, the release date (albeit pre-planned) was sandwiched in between two totally unpredictable conversation-shifting events and the very predictable “new Drake album” factor.

If someone else was steering the G.O.O.D. music marketing ship, would they have recognized this and advised that K.T.S.E. be pushed back? Maybe. But for all intents and purposes, Kanye West is the face of and brains behind G.O.O.D. Music. Which means he’s likely afforded the healthy number of yes-men that you would expect for someone in his position. So even if Kanye did receive such a warning (and perhaps someone did speak up), would he have listened? Would he have scrapped the last piece of his heavily marketed “five for five” release scheme just to preserve the best possible setting for one of his artist’s albums? I don’t think so. Let’s be clear here, to Kanye the G.O.O.D. music label was higher up on the marquee than any of the individual acts. Moreover, seems to me that Kanye was more concerned with delivering the package deal that he promised and promoted, rather than assuring a better lift off for Teyana Taylor’s K.T.S.E.

Lastly, we can’t overlook that the planning and execution of the marketing scheme was one aspect of the overall problem. The record was not finished. And since it wasn’t done anyway, the smart thing would have been to take the loss there and postpone the release of K.T.S.E. Part of the commentary that underscores what I write is this op-ed is that, given the fluidity of how albums can be released and pushed out to streaming companies, and given the reality of listener fatigue vs. new releases, I’m not convinced that going ahead with the release date as planned was the better loss to take. And it’s pretty clear that at least one person at G.O.O.D. Music agrees.