OPERATION CANCELLED.

Album cover for OPERATION CANCELLED. (2015), showing an extremely darkened photo of Stewart.

## Singles

### Single #6

LUST.

***OPERATION CANCELLED.*** is the eighth studio album by American-Romanian singer-songwriter Nicholas Stewart. It was released on November 30, 2015, by Sunrise Records, recorded between 2014 and 2015 while his personal struggles were highly publicized and overshadowed his professional projects. Stewart remained secluded from the press and from social media for more than a year and began working his new record while on recovery. Following the release of his genre-spanning seventh studio album *Nicky Stew* (2012), noted for its rap metal hooks and trap production, the media questioned the validity of Stewart's status as a rock artist. Influenced by late 90s/early 2000s hip hop music, Stewart shifted away from his previous styles and leaned on full hip hop. The album won all of its three nominated categories at the 59th Annual Grammy Awards.

*OPERATION CANCELLED.* was met with widespread acclaim, becoming his most critically-acclaimed release at the time, and also experienced massive success, propelling Stewart back to mainstream status. It became his first Diamond certified album in America after *In Colors* (2007) and debuted at #1 on all countries. It became the best-selling album of 2015 and 2016, selling 11 million pure copies as of December 2026. It was supported by six singles throughout 2015-2017, "OUT OF ORDER.", "HOAX.", "BRAP BRAP PEW PEW.", "NO REMORSE.", "SMASH.", and "LUST.". Stewart wrote the songs inspired by the consistent backlash he's been receiving and his near-death experience in late 2013. Some of the songs on the album were speculated to be a reference to numerous mass school shootings that happened every year. To promote the album, he embarked his WORLDWIDE OPERATION. tour starting April 2016 and had its last show in October 2016, grossing $802 million upon completion

*OPERATION CANCELLED.* topped *The Village Voice*'s Pazz & Jop critics poll and was named one of the best albums of 2015 and the decade by several other publications. It became the first non-jazz or classical work to earn a Pulitzer Prize for Music and won Best Rap Album at the 2017 Grammy Awards, as well receiving winning Album of the Year at the ceremony. In 2020, the album was ranked 10th on *Rolling Stone*'s updated list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, along with his 2017 album *Ozymandias* ranked 5th on the same list.

## Background and Production

After being discharged from the hospital on January 2014, Stewart had to undergo a year-long therapy following the severe injuries he suffered from the ambush and abduction a month prior. Sunrise Records gave him an option to cancel his final album to be released before his contract with the label ends but Stewart refused and told them to give him an indefinite rest and some time to figure it all out. Stewart's eldest daughter Caroline was given custody to his ex-wife Walterz, for twelve months to to make way for his recovery. During his seclusion from the public, Stewart alone worked secretly on something new for his next record as early as mid 2014, without telling anybody, including his psychologists and his family. He told Rolling Stone in a 2017 interview that he would write new verses every day instead of suppressing his loud thoughts inside his mind or screaming out loud. He would start making his songs on his piano and later develop a random beat. He took inspiration from the music of Dr. Dre, Eminem, 2Pac, and DMX, to make a hip hop record to convey his overloading and screaming thoughts unburdened by heavy trap beats.

Stewart began his recording sessions in October 2014, playing his recorded demos to his executives. He then decided to work his new record and made his first-ever official full rap album, *OPERATION CANCELLED.* Stewart was inspired to have a new direction on his music after having given more creative control during the conception of his 2012 release *Nicky Stew*. Influenced by late 90s/early 2000s hip hop music, Stewart severed ties with the rock sound of his previous albums, and marketed *OPERATION CANCELLED.* as his "first documented, official rap album." By June 2015, Stewart had already finished the polishing of the album.

## Music and lyrics

*OPERATION CANCELLED.* contains eleven tracks with a duration of 50 minutes and 50 seconds, coincidentally matching the trendy number pair 50/50. All of the tracks of the album were made first on Stewart's piano before he made random beats on synthesizers. During the album's production, Stewart wasn't in mind to work with different producers and continued his status as becoming a single-producer of his albums. The album tracks incorporate different styles of trap and hip hop.

The opening track and lead single, "OUT OF ORDER", begins with a piano instrumental on its first fifteen seconds, following by a heavy beat drop and Stewart's verses. The song depicts an experience of a few moments before passing out and getting out of consciousness. The second track "SMASH." mostly references the physical abuse and assault. Heavily manipulated by electronic elements and punctuated by strong beats, "DUMB SOUND." is a "bombastic track" with "unapologetic" lyrics that address some of the dumb rumors Stewart has been hearing about him on the recent years. Its fourth track "911." features a thirty-second 911 call from a woman. After twenty seconds, the woman's voice became distorted and a flatline beep was heard on the 00:30 mark, followed by Stewart's verses, ranting about the sluggishness of the emergency response system in America. At the end of the track, the last verse was a man saying "Time of death: 9:11". Its fifth track "BRAP BRAP PEW PEW", features sound effects like children chanting, cash registering, and gunshots fading into heavy beats ten seconds into the song. The lyrics mostly reference to the yearly mass school shootings happening. The triggering sound effects were censored on the radio edit. Its sixth and seventh tracks "LOYAL." and "LUST." became two of album's most intimate and forthright accounts of how victims experience sexual violence. The eighth track "HOAX." addresses death hoaxes. The ninth track "BUSTED." was a callback to Stewart's abusers for being arrested and imprisoned to life sentence. The penultimate track "NO REMORSE." talked about the lack of guilt most criminals have even after doing a crime. The first half of the track is a spoken word poetry by Stewart. Its closing track "END." was a reference to escaping from a dangerous place but the trauma still remains long after, represented by Stewart's last word of the track "gone." which was repeated, distorted, and faded until the end of the track.

## Release and promotion

Throughout the album's pre-release rollout, Stewart had little or no promotion at all and stayed away from the public as he was not ready to face anyone outside. On February 13, 2016, Stewart had his first television appearance in Tonight With Barbara Walters, after not appearing on television for four years. He explained making the record was one of the major ways to cope his post-traumatic attacks and episodes and opened up about his near-death experience during the 2 weeks of his disappearance.

### Singles

On August 24, 2015, Stewart unexpectedly released his new single "OUT OF ORDER." on digital platforms without prior announcement or promotion. The single broke streaming and sales records, with its music video being viewed 89 million times on its first day of release. "OUT OF ORDER." debuted at #1 on all countries around the world. It became his first #1 debut on the Billboard Hot 100 after his single "Year 3000" did 2000, with over 800,000 downloads and 160 million streams on its first week, becoming the first song to be streamed more than 100 million times a week. By the end of 2015, it had already sold 31 million units globally and became the best-selling digital single of all time. The album's second single "HOAX." was released on October 26, 2015 and peaked at #2 for five weeks, blocked by "OUT OF ORDER." Until February 2016, Stewart decided to not have television appearances during the promotion of his new album as he wasn't ready to face the public. Despite the limited promotion, Stewart remained the most popular public figure in 2015 since the 2013 incident. Throughout 2015-2017, six songs were released as proper singles and all of them peaked inside the top two, "OUT OF ORDER.", "HOAX.", "BRAP BRAP PEW PEW.", "NO REMORSE.", "SMASH.", and "LUST.".

### Tour

To prepare for his world tour, Stewart had his first public performance on the 2016 Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival as the headliner of the third night of the event. His set received critical acclaim. Stewart went on to embark his WORLDWIDE OPERATION. tour which spanned from April 2016 to October 2016, with 180 shows worldwide and grossing $802 million upon completion, becoming the second highest-grossing tour in history at that time just behind his own 2002-04 world tour Journey To The Year 3000!! Live. Most of its tour dates were from Europe, where Stewart felt like 'he was at home' and had a brief four-day visit on his home country, Romania before continuing the remainder of his tour. Stewart told "he could've stayed longer if it wasn't for the tight schedule but I promised I will stay longer next time."

### Reverse edition

As a response to conspiracy theorists and music experts reversing the tracks of his previous albums to get the subliminal messages, Stewart released a special edition of the album titled ".ᗡƎ⅃⅃ƎƆИAƆ ИOITAЯƎᑫO" with a reverse tracklist order and the tracks were also reversed. On the track listing, the tracks' titles were also written backwards. This edition was only exclusive on Apple Music.

## Title and artwork

Stewart named his album *OPERATION CANCELLED.* as a reference of the failed assassination attempt in 2013. He described the title as a 'strike-back' to his abusers for running away and making out alive. He stated it as an incident he tried to take off his mind but was too severe to make it forget and so he set the main theme for his album as expressing anger and preventing violence. As creative director of the album's packaging, Stewart requested his pictures to be taken on a desert, and make it look very dark and distorted on the final product, as Stewart said about it: "This is what I saw for days, blurry, kaleidoscope-y, after severe blows." The album cover was the first photo taken during the period of the cover shoot, showing Stewart on his long hair and applied black eyeliner to represent his damaged eyesight. He took inspiration from Marvel's well-known hero/villain character James Buchanan "Bucky" Barnes Jr., who was brainwashed and became slave under the terrorist organization HYDRA.

During the remainder of the photo shoot period, Stewart shaved his head and showed an army cut on most of his booklet pictures. All photos were in black-and-white.

## Critical reception

*OPERATION CANCELLED.* was met with widespread critical acclaim. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from professional publications, the album received an average score of 96, based on 51 reviews. Aggregator AnyDecentMusic? gave it 9.5 out of 10, based on their assessment of the critical consensus.

Andy Kellman of AllMusic stated that "it contains some of Stewart's best writing and performances, revealing his evolving complexity and versatility as a soul-baring lyricist and dynamic rapper". Christopher R. Weingarten, an author for *Rolling Stone*, said, "Much like the recent A Tribe Called Quest record, *OPERATION CANCELLED.* is a brilliant combination of the timeless and the modern, the old school and the next-level. The most gifted musician of a generation stomps into the Nineties and continues to blaze a trail forward". In his review, Greg Kot of *Chicago Tribute* states, "*OPERATION CANCELLED.* strips down the rhythms to their essence. Stewart's voice does most of the heavy lifting, playing multiple roles and characters. His supple singing complements a variety of rap tones and textures". Jon Caramanica of *The New York Times* gave a positive review, stating "Tart and punchy.... Sometimes boisterous, sometimes swampy, rarely fanciful album—it's Mr. Stewart's version of the creeping paranoia that has become de rigueur for midcareer 2Pac. And yet this is likely Mr. Stewart's most jubilant album, the one in which his rhymes are the least tangled". Eric Renner Brown of *Entertainment Weekly* said, "After delving into the personal on 2012's *Nicky Stew,* Stewart has found a middle ground on *OPERATION CANCELLED.* that yields some of his most emotionally resonant music yet".

Alexis Petridis of *The Guardian* wrote: "If it seems a more straightforward listen than *Nicky Stew*, there's a cheering sense that this doesn't equate to a lessening of musical ambition. There's none of that album's wilfully jarring quality – its sudden, anxious musical lurches and abrupt, short-circuiting leaps between genres – but the tracks on *OPERATION CANCELLED.* still feel episodic and expansive. Whether *OPERATION CANCELLED.* will have the same epochal impact as *Nicky Stew* remains to be seen, but either way it sounds like the work of a supremely confident artist at the top of his game." In *Pitchfork*'s review of *OPERATION CANCELLED*, Matthew Trammell writes *OC* "is a widescreen masterpiece of rap, full of expensive beats, furious rhymes, and peerless storytelling about Stewart's escape from hell".

In an enthusiastic review, *The New York Times* critic Jon Caramanica complimented Stewart's avoidance of contemporary hip hop/R&B crossover trends, writing, "Mr. Stewart is aiming somewhere even higher, a mode of timelessness that few true rappers...even bother aspiring to." In a review published by *Cuepoint*, Robert Christgau applauded his departure from rock to experiment with new styles, but felt this shift was not radical.

## Commercial performance

On November 30, 2015, Stewart's eighth studio album *OPERATION CANCELLED.* was released and garnered massive success worldwide, breaking sales and streaming records, expanding Stewart to the streaming demographic. It debuted at number one on the Billboard 200, with 1.65 million units, selling 1.05 million copies in its first week of release, and achieving over 573 million streams (despite the album, with the exclusion of its singles released at the time, only available to stream on Apple Music for the first two weeks). It became his fifth album to sell more than a million units on its first week and first since his 2007 album *In Colors.* It debuted at #1 on the Billboard 200 and went on to spent a record-breaking sixteen nonconsecutive weeks atop the chart and spent its first 70 weeks inside the top ten. It was the best-selling album of 2015 and 2016, and has sold 11 million pure copies since, an impressive feat. amidst the decline of physical sales. By December 2026, it is certified eleven times platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America for selling eleven million units in the country. The album was met with widespread acclaim and most critics tagged the record "a traumatic journey to survival". On the week of the album release, Stewart also broke the record for most songs charted inside the Hot 100, with all of its eleven tracks charting simultaneously.

In Canada, it sold 210,000 equivalent-album units on its first week, staying atop for eleven weeks and is certified nine times platinum by the Canadian Recording Industry Association (CRIA) for selling over 900,000 units in the country, becoming his third highest-certified album in the country. In United Kingdom, it spent nine nonconsecutive weeks at #1 and was certified eight platinum by the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) for selling over 2,400,000 units. In Europe, *OC* spent fifteen nonconsecutive weeks on the chart and is certified seven times platinum by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) for selling over 7 million units in the region. In Australia, it became his fastest-selling album on the country on its first week, selling over 90,000 units and went on to stay atop for twenty weeks. It is certified eleven times platinum by the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) for selling over 770,000 units in the country.

The album was also a massive success across Asia, peaking at #1 on all countries. In Japan, it is certified Million by the Recording Industry Association of Japan (RIAJ).

## Impact and legacy

Despite the limited promotion on the album release, Stewart remained the most popular public figure in 2015 since the 2013 incident. Stewart's ambush story became a trend on new short films released in 2014. Stewart also complained and wanted him to be more well-known for the content he makes rather than the disaster that happened to him in the past years. During Stewart's year-long hiatus, fans and the public were not expecting for him to have a huge comeback sooner hoping he could have a safe recovery. As soon as Stewart unexpectedly released the lead single of the album "OUT OF ORDER.", this act broke internet services, including YouTube, Google, and Facebook.

"Between approximately 12:40 a.m. EST and 3:15 p.m. ESTT today, some Google News users experienced difficulty accessing search results for queries related to Nicholas Stewart," a Google spokesman told CNET in August 2015, which also reported that Google News users complained that the service was inaccessible for a time. At its peak, Google Trends rated the Stewart story as "volcanic." One month after the release of *OPERATION CANCELLED.,* America's crime rate had been reduced to half.

The album's immediate influence was felt as "a pantheon for anti-violence", according to Butler, who also argued that the record helped create a respected space for conscious hip hop and "will be revered not just at the top of some list at the end of the year, but in the subconscious of music fans for decades to come". Writing for *Highsnobiety*, Robert Blair said, "[*OPERATION CANCELLED.*] is the crystallized moment in time where Nicholas became a generation's most potent artistic voice." Uproxx journalist Aaron Williams said the album "proved that left-field, experimental rap can function in both the critical and commercial realms". Jazz saxophonist Kamasi Washington said that the album "changed music, and we're still seeing the effects of it [...] [the album] meant that intellectually stimulating music doesn't have to be underground. It just didn't change the music. It changed the audience."

## Accolades

On the 59th Annual Grammy Awards in 2016, Stewart won five of his six nominations, including his third Album of the Year win with *OPERATION CANCELLED.* and Record of the Year for "HOAX." On the 2016 Billboard Music Awards, Stewart swept and won all of his thirteen nominated categories, becoming the artist with the most wins in one night, and also bringing his total BBMAs wins with 39, extending his record for most BBMAs wins. At that night, Stewart was named Artist of The Year for the twelfth time and won Top Billboard 200 Album sixth time.

## Track listing

All tracks are written and produced by Nicholas Stewart.

***OPERATION CANCELLED.*** - Standard Edition

***.ᗡƎ⅃⅃ƎƆИAƆ ИOITAЯƎᑫO*** - OPERATION CANCELLED. - reverse edition

## Personnel

Credits are adapted from the album's liner notes and Tidal.

### Musicians

* Nicholas Stewart - piano (track 1), lead vocals (all tracks)
* Aisha Ile - additional vocals (track 4)
* Mitch Stewart - additional vocals (track 4)

### Producers and engineers

* Nicholas Stewart – piano (track 1), production (all tracks), recording (all tracks), executive production, mixing, mastering

### Artwork

* Nicholas Stewart – art direction
* Wolf Haley – art direction
* Luis "Panch" Perez – cover photography

## Charts

### Weekly Charts

**Peak chart positions for *OPERATION CANCELLED.***

### Year-end charts

**Year-end chart positions for *OPERATION CANCELLED.***

### Decade-end charts

**Decade-end chart positions for *OPERATION CANCELLED.***

 US *Billboard* 200
 US Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums (*Billboard*)

### All-time charts

**All-time chart positions for *OPERATION CANCELLED.***