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Lost/Missing/Unfinished albums


Brian Fowler

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Every once in awhile an album just doesn't happen despite being worked on, maybe even finished. What are the missing holy grails in your mind?

A few of mine

Zack De La Rocha/Trent Reznor untitled project: They reportedly recorded around 20 songs together. Only one has ever seen the light of day.

Anthrax Worship Music version 1: In 2008, Anthrax started working on Worship Music. In May 2009, it was officially being mixed. Various songs were performed live. It was officially announced and reportedly finished. A few weeks before the release date, newish singer Dan Nelson left the band. The release was scrapped. John Bush rejoined the band and they started work on him just doing new vocals over the same music. Then Bush left the band. Joey Belladonna rejoined the band for the first time in years. He replaced some vocals, they re-recorded some songs completely, dropped and replaced a few, etc. Album finally came out in 2011. The finished Dan Nelson version has never leaked, somehow.

Dr. Dre Detox: One of the most famous never finished albums. A few finished songs exist, and tons of partial tracks, often with Dre's beats and the vocals from whoever was writing that song with him. It was basically all trashed in favor of Compton, a decent album that was shockingly void of bangers.

Edited by Brian Fowler
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  • Bleedthrough by Nine Inch Nails, which supposedly evolved into With Teeth sometime during the recording process. I don't even know if this album really fits in with this topic, since it was technically finished and released as With Teeth. But it started as something closer to The Fragile, and ended up as "just a collection of songs that work well with each other" and that "punch you in the face". Which is just code words for a standard rock album. With Teeth had a theme, but it wasn't a concept album per se, like Bleedthrough was apparently supposed to be.
  • Child Rebel Soldier, which is Kanye West, Pharrell and Lupe Fiasco. I don't really like the last two artists, but more Kanye is never a bad thing. Good Ass Job was supposed to be the final release in Ye's college albums, but that album became My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy and it's a perfect album so I'm okay with how that turned out.
  • The Fugees were supposed to make a 3rd album, and someone from the label even gave a release date (2000). It's 18 years later. Speaking of... I'm still waiting on a follow up to The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill.
  • Cigarettes & Valentines by Green Day - all the songs were stolen, so the band decided not to re-record the songs and ended up making American Idiot.
  • The Weeknd recorded a more "upbeat" album, but after he broke up with Selena Gomez, we got the My Dear Melancholy EP instead. Which, while good, it's basically your standard Weeknd fare.
  • Ghostface Killah and MF DOOM's official, full-length collaboration album DOOMSTARKS/Swift & Changeable. I'm so mad that all we've ever gotten is unofficial mixtape and two "singles".
  • I'm not sure if Black Messiah by D'Angelo is the James River album he was working on after Voodoo was released or not. Either way, I'm kind of glad things turned out the way it did for D'Angelo, because being at Bonnaroo for his first on stage performance in YEARS during ?uestlove's superjam was pretty amazing.
  • Black Thought and DangerMouse were supposed to collaborate on his first solo album, but it never happened.
  • Drake & Rick Ross announced a collaboration album years ago, and I'm still waiting.
  • OutKast's follow up to Idlewild. That album sucked, but Andre 3000 and Big Boi are meant to record albums together. It's just not right having them be solo acts.
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Dio Magica II & III

Dio released Magica in 2000, and it was the best studio album featuring Ronnie James Dio since 1992's Black Sabbath Dehumanizer. It was the best Dio album since at least Sacred Heart in 85 if not The Last in Line in 84. It was a concept album, and almost immediately Ronnie started talking about the sequels. Then in 2002, the solid but unspectacular Killing the Dragon. More talk of the sequels, in 2004 the solid but unspectacular Master of the Moon was released. Big tour, Holy Diver live album, but no Magica follow up.

In 2007 he re-reunited with Black Sabbath as Heaven & Hell for three new tracks on a greatest hits collection and a tour. Magica sequels after the tour. During the tour, him and Tony decided to do an album together. Now, 2009's The Devil You Know got my first place vote on our best of the 00's ballot, so I'm not complaining.

He announced he'd begin serious work on II & III after the tour, but stomach cancer got him. He was writing for the albums right up until just before his death.

One track came out from Magica II, on the now out of print Magica deluxe edition. His wife says she has at least three unreleased songs, but I don't think she ever said if they are from II or just random tracks.

This one will, obviously, never be finished but it'll always break my heart.

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37 minutes ago, Casey said:

I prefer Lauryn Hill as a solo act if I'm being perfectly honest, but even then - 20 years since her last release of original material. That's a damn shame.

Amen. Miseducation is my favorite album of the 90's. I only have about half a dozen hip hop albums on vinyl, but it and The Score are both on that short list.

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Dr. Dre & Ice Cube Heltah Skeltah - This was supposed to an album on Death Row Records,  we had gotten "Natural Born Killaz" on the Murder was the Case soundtrack and the album was listed as "coming soon" on various Death Row releases.  Apparently they did work together for this project but because of busy schedules and Eazy E passing and all the commotion at Death Row it never came to fruition.  The D.O.C. wrote lyrics for Dre for that album but he left Death Row over a money dispute. D.O.C. ended up releasing an album with basically the same name using some of the lyrics he had for this release. I'm not sure if Dre and Cube finished any songs for the project but I think it would have been crazy; they were both in their musical primes at the time.  

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I am still waiting for that Shirley Manson solo project that she said was going to happen in THIS ISSUE OF DETAILS MAGAZINE~!

s-l1000.jpg

I STILL OWN A COPY THAT IS IN NEAR MINT CONDITION~! I AM NOT AT ALL JEALOUS OF GAVIN ROSS... FUCK.. YES, I AM~!

If I was Your Girlfriend, Scarlet Pussy, Strange Relationship, Housequake, Feel U Up, U Got The Look, Rock Hard In A Funky Place, Shockadelica, and a few other songs were supposed to be on a Prince concept album called Camille, which was the name of the feminine alter ego he assumed when he sang through now his infamous his voice mixer. 

Most of the Vocals By Camille tracks ended up on Sign Of The Times and The Black Album, and then on Prince's The Hits 1/2/The B-Sides, but they were never released in one collection..  Good Love ended up on the Bright Lights, Big City soundtrack.

"Camille" provided vocals for Partyman and that cut found its way to the Batman soundtrack.

I am shocked that the estate hasn't tried to make some cash by putting all of the Camille songs on one EP.

There was also supposed to be a Ghostface Killah / MF Doom collab that never happened.  Masked Avengers would've been some wild shit.

And oh yeah.  Yo, Dr. Dre.  WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO DETOX~?

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1 hour ago, Niners Fan in CT said:

Dr. Dre & Ice Cube Heltah Skeltah - This was supposed to an album on Death Row Records,  we had gotten "Natural Born Killaz" on the Murder was the Case soundtrack and the album was listed as "coming soon" on various Death Row releases.  Apparently they did work together for this project but because of busy schedules and Eazy E passing and all the commotion at Death Row it never came to fruition.  The D.O.C. wrote lyrics for Dre for that album but he left Death Row over a money dispute. D.O.C. ended up releasing an album with basically the same name using some of the lyrics he had for this release. I'm not sure if Dre and Cube finished any songs for the project but I think it would have been crazy; they were both in their musical primes at the time.  

Yeah, the Lady of Rage's follow up album to Necessary Roughness was also a casualty of the Death Row bullshit.

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5 hours ago, Brian Fowler said:

Amen. Miseducation is my favorite album of the 90's. I only have about half a dozen hip hop albums on vinyl, but it and The Score are both on that short list.

Wyclef's "The Carnival" is a better album.  I'll go to my grave believing that.

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2 hours ago, MORELOCK said:

Deftones shelved Eros when it was supposedly almost complete after Chi Cheng had his accident. 

I think there's some version of it leaked around, but I have no clue what the mixing is like on it.

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The Doom/Ghostface collab is the big one for me.

There was also supposed to be a second Danger Doom album that never came about. 

I'm starting to think MF Doom might not be the most reliable collaborator.

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15 hours ago, MORELOCK said:

Deftones shelved Eros when it was supposedly almost complete after Chi Cheng had his accident. 

Chino hates to perform Battle Axe live on stage because of Chi's death.  He says it brings back too many sad memories.

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There's also the 00's Black Sabbath studio album that they started work on, and Ozzy's label forced him to stop until he delivered a solo album, and then they never got back to. AFAIK, 13 was done from scratch with nothing from those sessions.

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How about best lost/missing albums that were finally found? Randy Holden's Population II (which was impossible to find for years) and Death (Detroit)'s ...For the Whole World To See come to mind. Also Pentagram's First Daze Here. 

EDIT: Also... I would lose my shit to hear a Ghostface/Doom collab

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4 hours ago, Curt McGirt said:

How about best lost/missing albums that were finally found? Randy Holden's Population II (which was impossible to find for years) and Death (Detroit)'s ...For the Whole World To See come to mind. Also Pentagram's First Daze Here. 

EDIT: Also... I would lose my shit to hear a Ghostface/Doom collab

Operation: Iron Man is a good mashup album between the two, but it's obviously not official and doesn't contain anything original. But it's still really good. And then you have a few songs scattered here that's actual collaboration between the two. Sniperlite by DILLAGHOSTDOOM, but it's sadly only 3 tracks long and doesn't even last 9 minutes.

This Reddit post has a nice history of the collaborations Ghostface and DOOM have had, up until 2016. The vast majority of it is just Ghostface with MF DOOM as the producer, though. Still quality stuff.

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How I own a copy of Fishscale on vinyl* and didn't know Doom did production on a couple tracks is beyond me. Poor ignored album...

* Taking the trash out at an apartment I used to live at one winter, I saw a box full of records sitting outside the dumpster with frozen water inside the box as well. Most everything was sleeves with nothing inside but there was a water-damaged copy of Fishscale sitting right there to salvage, vinyl untouched. I may have listened to it three times total in all these years.

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On ‎9‎/‎17‎/‎2018 at 10:57 PM, Brian Fowler said:

Zack De La Rocha/Trent Reznor untitled project: They reportedly recorded around 20 songs together. Only one has ever seen the light of day.

 

On ‎9‎/‎18‎/‎2018 at 1:30 AM, Niners Fan in CT said:

Dr. Dre & Ice Cube Heltah Skeltah - This was supposed to an album on Death Row Records,  we had gotten "Natural Born Killaz" on the Murder was the Case soundtrack and the album was listed as "coming soon" on various Death Row releases.  Apparently they did work together for this project but because of busy schedules and Eazy E passing and all the commotion at Death Row it never came to fruition.  The D.O.C. wrote lyrics for Dre for that album but he left Death Row over a money dispute. D.O.C. ended up releasing an album with basically the same name using some of the lyrics he had for this release. I'm not sure if Dre and Cube finished any songs for the project but I think it would have been crazy; they were both in their musical primes at the time.  

I just wanted to co-sign these choices, both records that I was really looking forward to.

My top 2 are both Buckethead records, one is Super Diorama Theater, which there has only ever been one track confirmed for, and the other is Buckethead Plays Disney, which he supposedly started working on in 1997 and was once listed as an upcoming release in a an Avant catalog. Avant being a Japanese vanity label that John Zorn started. As of today, no sign of either record, although he has released something like 300 albums since then.

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Weren't Dre and Cube working on a different never finished album during the Detox not happening years as well, at Aftermath. I seem to recall collabs with both Cube and Snoop being announced or rumored during those years.

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1 hour ago, Brian Fowler said:

Weren't Dre and Cube working on a different never finished album during the Detox not happening years as well, at Aftermath. I seem to recall collabs with both Cube and Snoop being announced or rumored during those years.

There was a brief N.W.A. reunion.  They had Snoop in place of Eazy E.  There were rumors of a full length album that they were working on.  They released the song "Chin Check" for the Next Friday soundtrack.  They also had the song "Hello" which was Cube featuring Dr. Dre and MC Ren on Cube's Peace Disc. I had heard of studio sessions. They made some appearances.  I remember one famous appearance was on Farmclub.com which you may remember as a short-lived music program on USA.  A full album never materialized. 

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