Justin Bieber Fans Punked by April Fool's Prank

Yesterday was April Fool's Day and, unfortunately for them, beliebers did not survive unscathed.

In a clever stunt, electronic music producer, Paz Dylan (referred to simply as 'Paz'), supposedly replaced over 5,000 copies of Justin Beiber's 'Believe' album with own. He claimed to have targeted Best Buys, Targets, and Wal-marts across the L.A. area, carefully swapping out the real CDs with phonies. On the outside the album looks totally credible (it managed to fool even the sales associates), but once opened, bewildered fans were met, not with Beiber's beautous face, but with Paz's highly sophisticated artwork: a collage featuring pizza, cats, and a dog wrapped in a taco.

Yesterday morning, Paz tweeted, "By the time you read this every Justin Beiber CD in Los Angeles has been replaced with mine.

This is #NotAnAprilFool" and posted pics of the fake albums. You can see for yourself, here: https://twitter.com/pazpaz/status/451019616978866176/photo/1

This was not, however, simply a light-hearted prank, according to Paz. In an interview with Associated Press, he claimed the stunt was his way of rebelling against the mainstream music industry:

"The general idea is that retail stores make it almost impossible for independent musicians to get their music in there. I've always believed that retail stores can be the best outlets and ambassadors for independent music.

They just choose not to be and sell the same recycled (expletive). We thought if they're going to lock their doors to independent musicians, we're just going to knock them down and get our music in there."

Social statement or just shameless self-promotion? You be the judge. Either way, we sure got a laugh out of it.

You can read his entire interview with AP here: http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_JUSTIN_BIEBER_PRANK?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2014-04-02-11-19-41