14 DAY TRIAL // The music industry is filled with feuds, be they between rappers or pop stars. One such feud started half a year ago, when a bad count almost gave rapper The Game the number one spot in the album chart, when it deservedly belonged to heavy metal band Slipknot. Because of this, the nine members of the band still resent The Game and the music industry, as they reveal in a brand new interview with Rolling Stone.
Although it was clear that their album, “All Hope Is Gone” belonged on the first spot, the band members say, SoundScan was quick to announce that the winner was The Game with his “LAX” material, even before the count was officially over. As expected, this continues to annoy them, and they plan on making themselves heard really clear, especially since they see the incident as the most obvious sign that the industry wanted them to fail.
“Any time we get something, it’s almost like we had to steal the [expletive] thing. We had to fight for that, in true Slipknot fashion. They didn’t want to just [expletive] respect us and wait until all the [expletive] numbers were in. They were like, ‘No, you didn’t have it – you got beat by 13 CDs.’ We’ve come so [expletive] close so many goddamn times, and this was our time.” frontman Corey Taylor tells the publication. His point is that SoundScan announced that Slipknot had lost to The Game by just 13 items, although not all the numbers had been added.
A re-count showed that “All Hope Is Gone” was, indeed, the number one album, moving over 1,000 items more than “LAX.” Still, this was clearly a move on behalf of the industry meant to show that a nine-member band from Iowa, famous for the masks they wear but also for the music they make (which, by all counts, is nothing close to mainstream), had no place at the top of the charts.
“This is no disrespect to the Game, we don’t know him, and it could have been anyone, but they’re upset that they lost? You want to talk about upset, you want to talk about disrespect for sacrifice? Everyone has tried to keep our ideas, our dreams, our art, down, and there was no reason for that, because our art is love, too.” Shawn “Clown” Crahan tells Rolling Stone. Frontman Taylor echoes the same sentiment: “I truly believe that every time we win, it just makes so many people angry. Right out of the gate, we should not have been successful.”
“All Hope Is Gone,” the fourth studio album from Slipknot was released in August 2008.