Photo: Mike Windle (Getty Images).
It was a G.O.O.D. Music week for Kanye. There were no talk show rants, paparazzi punch outs or Kim K nude shots breaking the internet, although we get the feeling Mr. West likes that kinda thing. Why? Because the only thing Kanye loves more than Kanye is publicity. Last, Friday he released the video for his first single, “Famous,” off the finally finished (for now) “The Life of Pablo” album. The now infamous video, which was initially released exclusively on Tidal, depicts post-coital nude celebrities such as Taylor Swift (oh, he just had to go there), Rihanna (who sings the hook in the song) Chris Brown, Donald J. Trump and Bill Cosby, asleep in bed with the world’s most notorious rapper and his social media star wife. The 10-minute plus short film/music video was inspired by contemporary artist Vincent Desiderio’s painting “Sleep.”
West, who told Vanity Fair that “Famous” is simply a “comment on fame,” held a screening of the snooze fest last week at the Forum for 8,000 plus paying customers (suckers), who came to see what he had up his post-apocalyptic Yeezy sleeves. The video is shocking and more profound than anything on his messy, uneven seventh studio album that, to be fair, was his seventh consecutive number one album in addition to being the first album to reach that impressive plateau primarily through streaming. Check out the video for yourself.
Kanye doubled down on stealing the headlines from last weekend’s BET Experience when his label, G.O.O.D Music, dropped the debut mixtape from Desiigner on Tidal last Saturday unannounced. The 19-year-old Brooklyn trap rapper, who topped the charts with his “Panda” single (220 million-plus views on YouTube), doesn’t necessarily prove that he’s more than a one hit wonder on the appropriately titled, “New English,” you can barely decipher the gibberish coming out of the dude’s mouth (hopefully it’s not puke). The slickly produced, Panda-sounding songs are made for ‘da club or the radio mix playlist. Regardless, you can expect to hear more about him in the future (pun intended).
