Beyonce's '4' Leaks Before it's Time

Somebody’s going to get fired in Beyonceland.

It started Tuesday morning, when Twitter came alive with buzz (and links) that a Kanye and Consequence-produced track, “Party,” featuring Andre 300 had been leaked. Then came “Countdown,” a song tinged with Boyz II Men sampling. Soon after, Beyonce’s newest album, “4,” was leaked in its entirety to the World Wide Web.

Her legal team has been playing clean-up, sending frenzied cease and desist letters to popular online blogs such as That Grape Juice and PinBoard Blog to remove the singer’s songs from their sites.

Seeing as how the album is now chirping through the bird’s nest via Twitter and it will be virtually impossible to stop its circulation, the efforts of B’s legal team seems null and void.          

Beyonce has officially released two singles from “4,” the polarizing “Run the World (Girls),” which bounced unsteadily up and down the Billboard charts before settling in at No. 29 and the more radio friendly “Irreplaceable” spinoff, “The Best Thing I Never Had.” She introduced “1+1,” a romantic ballad hinting at the enduring love between her and husband of three years, hip-hop mogul Jay-Z, on American Idol May 25.

Although everyone is pretending to be hush-hush, as if their eardrums haven’t secretly bumped in cadence with the album’s offerings, reviews are in, with most enjoying the album, and most reporting that, unlike her previous unilinear works, “4” is refreshingly genre-neutral, a fact that Ms. Knowles concurs with.

"I don't know what genre my album is. There really isn't a genre for it," she said to Billboard Magazine. "But I wanted to focus on bridges and chord changes and chord progressions and melody. And also add my hip-hop influences, and keep some of the aggressive staccato melodies and singing as well.”

Hopefully the deluxe album’s bonus songs will make up for the unexpected leakage. What’s left to hear of “4” will be in stores June 28.

Listen to Best Thing I Never Had