Kanye West has been in the news a lot lately, with the more innocuous items centering on his recently-released and much-renamed The Life Of Pablo, which began life as So Help Me God, then morphed into Swish by virtue of his wife’s good looks, then crashed onto the scene as Waves earlier this year. But working on one of the greatest albums of all time appears to have taken its toll on the rapper, who has lately taken to revealing his troubled life, including his cool-pants envy. In addition to making cryptic remarks about Bill Cosby, West has also shared that he has accumulated substantial debt and suggested that he battles depression or anxiety, all of which has led armchair internet psychiatrists to diagnose West as being mid-breakdown.
Now with audio of his backstage encounter on Saturday Night Live making the rounds, West has decided to address the controversy head-on, in song. He released “Closest Thing To Einstein” Tuesday night at an album release party for Memphis rapper Yo Gotti. West once again cops to his debt, though he notes that it’s born of his generosity: “Got friends that ask me for money knowing I’m in debt/ And like my wife said, I still didn’t say no.” Then he dismisses concerns for his mental health, rapping “People try to say I’m going crazy on Twitter/ My friends’ best advice was to stay low / The media said he’s way out of control/ I just feel like I’m the only one not pretending I’m not out of control.” You can listen to the song and watch West’s own reactions to it in the video below.
UPDATE: Perhaps in an effort to provide material for the new album he now says he’s planning to release this summer, Kanye West has gone on another Twitter rant, his ire having been provoked Wednesday by music producer Bob Ezrin. In a blog post, Ezrin complained of West’s ubiquity despite the fact that he (Ezrin) doubts that West’s lyrics will be quoted in twenty years in the same way that he apparently believes everyone walks around citing MC Hammer these days. West took exception with that notion and Ezrin’s suggestion that Macklemore has provided more consciousness-raising discourse, so he lit into Ezrin. West then vented about the appropriation and exploitation of rock ’n’ roll and rap, then referenced Taylor Swift’s Album Of The Year wins, because these two are just inextricably linked now.