Axl Rose And Kanye West To Get In The Retail Ring

noah | November 10, 2008 12:30 pm

Kanye West’s 808s And Heartbreak had its release date moved up from mid-December during a fit of pique the blog-happy MC had a few weeks back, and now it’s official: Instead of coming out on “NOVEMBER SOMETHING,” the album’s coming out on Monday, Nov. 24. (Ludacris’ Theater Of The Mind and the Killers’ Day And Age are also being released on that Monday.) Some sites have speculated that the release dates are being moved from the traditional Tuesday drop date to Monday as a way to take advantage of the pre-Thanksgiving sales rush, but it’s pretty obvious to me that the real reason 808s is coming out early is to maximize its sales totals in the first full chart week for another high-profile release: Guns N’ Roses’ Chinese Democracy.

Axl Rose’s forever-in-the-making opus comes out the day before at Best Buy (thanks to the big-box store’s release week), and while I suspect that first day will see a lot of sales, things will really heat up at week’s end, thanks to Black Friday and its potential for people falling over themselves to score $49 DVD players for their friends and relatives. Who will “win” this battle is a bit up in the air–and much less fraught than the Kanye Versus Fifty Oh My God battle that we devoted so much virtual ink to last year–but I’m going to give the edge to Axl, thanks to the sorta-lukewarm response many self-proclaimed Kanye fans on the Internet have given to the already-leaked tracks, the extremely pent-up demand for this record (it has, after all, been 15 years of silence) and the likelihood that Best Buys everywhere will be filled with huge displays of the record. Now, if Detox somehow got into the mix, the story could be very different…

The best day for music this year? [HamptonRoads.com]