Yeezy Season 2015
By: Connor Lenahan
Well this winter just got a whole lot more bearable. Late last night the push notification for Kanye West’s twitter came through onto my phone. It simply read:
Forget winter, ladies and gentlemen, because it’s officially Yeezy Season.
Three years ago was the last time Kanye released a new album. Yeezus leaked online the day I graduated from high school and still remains as something like 6 of the 25 most played songs on my iPod to this day. In the past year or so we have gotten small glimpses of Kanye. A feature here, a beat there, but mainly just a couple of loose singles with seemingly no ties – at least as of yet.
“Only One” was released on 1/1/15, “FourFiveSeconds” came out that spring, as did “All Day,” and other tracks like “Wolves” bopped around the Kanyeverse until “Facts” released onto SoundCloud on New Year’s Eve a week ago. Most everyone regarded it as trash, which it largely was, but I took it less as a serious Kanye song and more a warning shot that he was back to take over the airwaves of America.
For the lack of a better brag: Swish.
“Facts” wasn’t that good, but yesterday another song and a half released onto SoundCloud. “Real Friends & No More Parties in LA” are each an extremely welcome return to form for Kanye. The former is a full track and is arguably the best thing he’s put out since Yeezus, although recency bias likely helps, but it’s good nonetheless. The latter half is a snippet of a song, featuring a hook and a few lines by Kanye and Kendrick Lamar. That combo would basically cause the world to melt down.
Then Kim Kardashian-West went out of her way to tell us all that GOOD Fridays were back on. In 2010 Kanye released a song every Friday, most of the times tossing out great stuff, in anticipation for his then-upcoming My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy.
Well, “Facts” and “Real Friends” each released on the last two Fridays. Now we have a release date for SWISH as well. It looks like Friday has been cemented as the best day of the week for at least the next month until finally, at last, we get another Kanye album.
If it continues to be as strong as “Real Friends” then this might be a terrific year to come. Welcome to the glory of Yeezy Season.