Another year, another confusing Dean Blunt development. It's January 2nd, a lot of people are still fried from New Years, and the music industry is slowly, fitfully twitching itself awake. It's pretty much the worst day of the year to try to grab the attention of the public, which means it's exactly the kind of day where you might expect a guy like Blunt to bait the press. Since December, dude's been releasing a steady stream of colorful, heterogenous missives on former girlfriend and Hype Williams bandmate Inga Copeland's cplnd SoundCloud page—all of them featuring a lady by the name of Joanne Robertson, whose nasal, expressively out-of-tune crooning you may recall from his 2013 Hippos in Tanks LP, The Redeemer. He dropped two new ones in the past 24 hours—a synth-y, ambient number by the name of "DEF freestyle," and an ambling, country-ish rock tune called "50 Cent"—advertising the latter via a mysterious mass email that I received this morning with the subject line, "Dean Blunt and Hippos in Tanks are no longer affiliated." At least, I think he was the person behind that email, though it was sent to me by a person called "denna frances glass." Regarding Blunt's rupture with his label, I guess we'll have to wait and see what's real and what's not, though I wouldn't expect the British singer-songwriter to relay the truth in a more straightforward way.
