And Finally Artist News Releases

Kanye West fends off Martin Shkreli to release new album

By Andy Malt | Published on Monday 15 February 2016

Yeah right, so, quite a lot has happened in the world of Kanye West since Friday. I guess the important thing you need to know is that his new album, ‘The Life Of Pablo’, has been be released. And unreleased. Sort of.

The album went live yesterday, following its premiere at West’s fashion show at Madison Square Garden in New York on Thursday. Tidal was given the exclusive stream, while downloads were available at West’s own website. This was to be the situation for a week, before the album went on wider release. But being Kanye, things then changed. The album is now entirely a Tidal exclusive.

Perhaps remembering that he is a shareholder in the service, West suddenly tweeted yesterday: “Please for all music lovers. Please subscribe to Tidal!!! I decided not to sell my album for another week. Please subscribe to Tidal”.

Whether they did or not, the Tidal app briefly rose up the Apple App Store charts, so that’s something.

“Tidal is also funding a lot of my scripted content ideas”, West added. “It’s a new day people. More ‘Ultra Light Dreams’ to be realized”.

So that’s something.

Other things Kanye West tweeted yesterday include:

“Mark Zuckerberg, invest $1 billion into Kanye West ideas after realizing he is the greatest living artist and greatest artist of all time”.

“I’m practicing my Grammy speech. I’m not going to the Grammys unless they promise me the Album Of The Year!!!”

“I will have over 100 Grammys before I die”.

“I’m this generation’s Disney”

But it wasn’t just Kanye tweeting outlandish things about himself this weekend. American dream personified Martin Shkreli offered West $10 million last Thursday for the exclusive rights to ‘The Life Of Pablo’, ie so that the record would never be properly released to the public. He then claimed that the legal obligation to consider a formal offer such as this would delay the album’s release by a few days at least. And, hey, we were expecting it on Thursday and it didn’t come out until Sunday, so there’s your conspiracy theory.

Shkreli said other things too, like claiming to have been in negotiations with Kanye via Twitter direct messages before a limit on the number of message he could send and receive was triggered and their discussion halted. He then upped his bid to $15 million, before claiming that he had sealed the deal and would start working to buy up all major hip hop releases for the next two years.

The album was released though, wasn’t it? Yes. At which point Shkreli claimed to have been defrauded of $15 million: “Someone named Daquan said he was Kanye’s boy and I signed the deal to buy ‘Palbo’ and sent the bitcoin. Call the police, this is bullshit”.

“Also, idiots”, he added. “I’ve gotten in touch with [Satoshi Nakamoto] (Bitcoin’s creator) and he’s agreed to help me get my money back. I always win”.

Which was where he pushed the joke a little bit too far. But it was fun nonetheless.