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An electronic musician and street artist pulled a prank on Justin Bieber fans on April Fools' Day by planting his own music disguised as Bieber's "Believe" CDs throughout stores in L.A.
Also, all the artwork inside on the actual discs were covered with pictures of cats, Doge (the viral dog meme) in a taco, and slices of pizza.
PAZ, the 25-year-old artist whose real name is Paz Dylan, planted 5,000 of these fake Bieber albums at big box stores like Best Buy, Target and Walmart, according to the AP. PAZ had posted on Facebook on April 1 about what he had done, with the title, "Every Justin Bieber CD in Los Angeles Is Missing."
The AP confirmed that his stunt (which PAZ says is "performance art") was real by buying copies of the shrink-wrapped CDs (complete with bar codes so they could be scanned at the registers) at different stores throughout L.A. and finding PAZ's Doge-covered discs containing his album, "From the Bottom of My Heart to the Top of Your Lungs" inside of them. (The album features collaborations and remixes with electronic artist like Dillon Francis, Porter Robinson and Gramatik.)
PAZ's reason for pulling this prank has a lot to do with independent art. On his Facebook page, he wrote:
Why did we do it? Because retail stores could be the most powerful outlets for the spread of independent art, but instead they've saturated themselves with commercially filtered noise.
So we turned stores like Best Buy and Walmart into artistic canvases by droplifting our art directly into the hands of consumers. If retailers make it impossible for unsigned artists to get into big box stores, we'll just force our way in.
This isn't PAZ's first stunt though. The AP reported that the artist sneaked in photos of himself on the walls of the Grammy Museum downtown.
PAZ summed it up best when he told the AP: "The world won't really miss a Justin Bieber record."
