Earlier this week, several songs from the much-anticipated May 18 Distant Relatives self-titled album hit the Internet. The collaborative album between Damian Marley and Nas was recorded through much of 2009 and early 2010, and boasts appearances from Lil Wayne, K’Naan and Dennis Brown, among others. Yesterday, Marley’s manager Dan Dalton spoke to HipHopDX about the leaks and why fans have all the more reason to support the album when it’s properly made available for sale on May 18th.

“We know that those [songs] got out, we’re not sure from who,” said Dalton, who once managed Jurassic 5, among others. “One song, ‘Friends’ we actually made available on purpose [via live stream] on Tagged.com, but obviously there is little you can do to control where the audio goes once it’s up online. “But we’re still hoping that people understand that this is an album, and this isn’t about any particular song. These two collaborated to make an album for people to sit down, press ‘play’ and listen to the whole way through. Hopefully, people will still support Distant Relatives. We think they will.”

Distant Relatives is to be released May 18th on Universal Republic Records.