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Kanye West’s New Album, ‘The Life of Pablo,’ Released On SNL

By Ven Lanyon
Published on: 02:48 PST, Feb 14, 2016

Kanye West rapping about Kanye — rapping about Kanye: add that the performance was “hilarious,” and according to Hollywood Life, that pretty much sums up West’s February 13 “triumphant return” to Saturday Night Live. In a “far from boring” episode of the iconic SNL, the rapper had a ton of fun freestyling against SNL cast member Kyle Mooney, and thrilled fans by dropping a new song about “what else — himself, of course!”

The freestyle battle of wits was the perfect place for Kanye to loosen up and play around with some humor directed at his own life. West didn’t have any problem keeping up to Mooney and shot back quickly when Kyle dissed Kanye with some “feeble attempts” to turn up the heat on the Keeping Up With the Kardashians star. Mooney tried a diss about Kanye’s breath that just didn’t work at all. “Kanye West, you need a mint for your Kanye breath,” he rapped, but Kanye was more than ready to hit back. Except, instead of firing back at Kyle, he totally owned the stage by poking “fun at his own ego.”

“I hate the new Kanye, the always rude Kanye, The bad mood Kanye, spaz in the news Kanye.”

West was well-prepared with his Kanye-dissing lyrics, because they were all from his new song, “I Miss the Old Kanye,” on the new album, The Life of Pablo. The new song takes a tongue-in-cheek look at West’s bad press lately, and concludes that the old Kanye, the one from the other life before West became super-famous, was “straight from the gold,” and a “sweet” person who the new famous Kanye would like to meet.

He didn’t make a direct reference to his feud with Taylor Swift in the lyrics, but it’s clear enough to Swifties that West was at least acknowledging that he might have made a mistake. Us Weekly commented that the “Famous” lyrics “sparked controversy” for the rapper, and there’s no question that the episode definitely made him “spaz in the news Kanye.” Taylor Swift’s brother took to Instagram to tell the world how he felt about West.

The SNL performance from the new album was a “compelling” finish to a week that included West’s NYFW Season 3 reveal at Madison Square Gardens, a night that Verve describes as “unpredictable, messy, and thrilling,” just like the rapper himself. West performed more than half of his new album, The Life of Pablo, at the Yeezy show, but didn’t give fans everything they wanted. There was a huge expectation that Kanye would release The Life of Pablo at the show, but he decided to make fans wait just a bit longer.

He made them wait all through SNL, keeping them tantalized with two new tracks, “Highlights,” and “Ultra Light Beams.” West went all-out for the pre-album-release songs, and invited stars Young Thug, The Dream, Kelly Price, and El DeBarge to join him.

Finally, at the end of the SNL episode, the rapper announced that his new album would be released on Tidal, and on his own website, kanyewest.com. By the time he released The Life of Pablo, there were so many eager fans itching to own it that the response brought his website down for awhile.

Kanye had lots of support for his new album throughout the SNL episode. The Daily Mail reports that Kanye’s wife, Kim Kardashian, was there for him and so was Kim’s little sister, Kylie Jenner. While Kim and Kylie were probably there just because Kanye’s SNL new album release was a big deal for the rapper, they might have been adding some extra care because of West’s Twitter announcement that he is over $50 million in debt after all the money he poured into Season 3 Yeezy launch.

[Photo by Associated Press /Jim Cooper]

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