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Jay-Z calls Samsung's troubled 'Magna Carta Holy Grail' app experience 'not cool'

Jay-Z calls Samsung's troubled 'Magna Carta Holy Grail' app experience 'not cool'

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Jay-Z Holy Grail album cover
Jay-Z Holy Grail album cover

Following the launch of his highly anticipated album Magna Carta Holy Grail, Jay Z has spoken about his partnership with Samsung and the issues some users had when trying to download the new release. In an interview on New York radio station Power 105.1, the rapper branded the experience "not cool" and "disheartening" after fans were unable to access the album right away.

Jay Z was careful not to implicate Samsung, instead focusing on the demand for the album itself. "It was 20 million hits for the app and it broke," he said. "No one is expecting it, there's no way in the world for you to calculate 20 million hits. It's not even a number you can fathom. You cannot prepare a service for that." As part of its exclusive deal with Jay Z, Samsung gave away 1 million free copies of Magna Carta Holy Grail to Galaxy S III, Galaxy S4, and Galaxy Note II owners on July 4th (almost a week ahead of the public release), as long as they downloaded the promotional app.

Jay Z's Samsung remarks can be found at the 18:44 mark.


As fans rushed to download their copy on release day, Twitter lit up with complaints about gateway errors when users tried to obtain the release from the company's servers. With one million people requesting the album, Samsung's service was quickly overwhelmed with multiple requests after it stopped responding. Jay Z accepts that being one of the first major artists to test the app distribution model has its drawbacks (namely the frustation of his fans) but believes it will ensure other artists do it right in the future. "For me, that's not cool. That's a loss. That has to get better," he told Power 105.1. "Someone else is going to figure that out and the next person will now know how to go into it better. That's my job. I took the hit for that."

"For me, that's not cool. That's a loss."

Before his radio interview, the rapper conducted a rare Q&A session on Twitter. While he spent much of the interview discussing rap music, his new album, and sport, he also explained his curious Twitter silence: "I can't be on Twitter, it's like weed. I like it but too much of that is not good for me."