I have said it before and I will say it again: Kanye West is the gift that keeps on giving. Not only has he created one of the greatest hip-hop albums I have ever heard (“My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy”), but his public meltdowns are always good for a laugh. His ego knows no bounds, and he often projects himself to be one of the greatest artists of all time — which is debatable; I find him talented, but others do not. But that is neither here nor there.
Yet, sometimes it is hard to tell if his public freak outs are sincere, or are part of some Andy Kaufman-esque joke on the general public. One thing is clear: Whenever things start going in the wrong direction for him, he loses his mind and takes to Twitter to unleash all his crazy thoughts before the public. And I love it. I just roll with his tweets, and have a good laugh at them.
https://twitter.com/kanyewest/status/699374901564538880
And this week, things have gone all sorts of strange for old Kanye. He dropped his latest album, “The Life Of Pablo,” last weekend, and upset many when it wasn’t available for download. Things got stranger when it was announced the version of that album people heard streaming in a barren wasteland of the Internet on Tidal was not the final version — he was still tweaking the thing.
Which isn’t surprising, since he has been notoriously tinkering with the album name and track list for many weeks leading up to this release. He has also called it one of the greatest albums ever made. Not the greatest, he had to stress at one point, because at some point he must have discovered the concept of humbleness and decided to give it a very brief spin.
Then things got even stranger. He decided to make “Life Of Pablo” a Tidal exclusive — you know Tidal, the music streaming company that according to West is in no way, shape or form connected to the almighty and powerful Illuminati (but we know it is). And those of us who refuse to pay $20 a month for streaming music are screwed if we want to hear “Pablo,” because it is the only way he is releasing it, apparently.
https://twitter.com/kanyewest/status/699376240709402624
As he was denying the public a chance to actually give him money for the art he has created, it turns out he is about $50 million in the hole financially. And instead of, again allowing people to pay for his art, he took to Twitter to ask Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg to invest a cool $1 billion for “Kanye West ideas.” Not clear how those ideas would return any money because, again, he says he is $50 million in the hole presumably because his ideas are probably not money makers.
https://twitter.com/kanyewest/status/698699904303132672?ref_src=twsrctfw
https://twitter.com/kanyewest/status/698926987281371136
It is not like there hasn’t been demand for the album. And in the digital age, one simply cannot contain their art in one spot — especially if it is already on the Internet. And it has been reported that “Pablo” has been illegally downloaded more than 500,000 times.
So, he needs money, refuses to sell his latest album and wants Zuckerberg and others to invest in his ideas rather than build a silly school in Africa.
https://twitter.com/kanyewest/status/699108378891710464
https://twitter.com/kanyewest/status/699108449561526272
It turns out all of this was preceded by a freak out he had just prior to his uninspired “Saturday Night Live” performance last weekend. He was caught on audio complaining about “SNL” staff moving his stage, and says he is 50 percent more influential than Stanley Kubrick and Paul the Apostle. And Taylor Swift is a “fake ass” apparently.
So what can one make of all this? Is it simply a man having a very public meltdown due to the pressures of living up to the hype of his art (that he himself created the hype for), or is Kanye simply trolling us with his weirdness because it is something he just really enjoys doing? Whatever the answer is, all I know is I have been finding this all very amusing.
Keep it crazy, Kanye. Don’t you ever change on us.
The JOE-DOWN 