One user on Reddit claimed to be friends with somebody working in the Magic Circle, who stated that the album would drop on all platforms at 9pm UK time. It’s 9:17pm as I write this, and The Life of Pablo has yet to emerge. Every hour there’s a new reason to believe the album will be dropping imminently, and every hour fans are subsequently driving themselves madder and madder.
The anxiety is palpable. People have gotten hysterical. The villain in me kind of hopes this album never ever sees the light of day. I want to know how long these people are willing to keep hitting refresh until they completely combust. I realize now, I am one of those people. I don’t know how long I’m willing to keep hitting refresh. I’ve been doing it for hours now. My productivity has reached an all time low. This article has taken way too long to write, and I know that deep down, I decided to write this in the hopes that it would kill some time and that when I’m done, the album will be waiting for me. I’m not sure if this is all intentional, I’m not sure if Kanye is keeping us waiting on purpose, but I am sure that I have never experienced anything like this before.
What’s most remarkable about this entire ordeal is that this is really the first time we’ve seen an album materialize right in front of us. For nearly two years now, we have watched and listened as songs were leaked, mastered, remixed, scrapped, revitalized and rerecorded. We’ve seen 3 title changes. We’ve seen 2 album covers. We’ve seen songs like Real Friends uploaded, then removed, re-mastered, and re-uploaded. We’ve seen Sia and Vic Mensa perform Wolves in 2015, only to be replaced by Frank Ocean almost exactly one year later. We’ve seen various different release rumours come and go, and have seen the album develop in ways that we have never before had access to. We have truly gotten a rare look into the creative process of one of the most polarizing creative figures of this or any generation. Through Periscope, Instagram and Twitter we have been invited into the studio, to watch this album come together in real time. We’ve seen its evolution right up to the very day it will presumably be released. This is the complete opposite of 2013’s Beyoncé. When Kanye said in 2015, “Release dates is played out. The surprise is going to be a surprise”, nobody could have predicted that this would be the result. This is the album release of the social media age. That is, if it does get released.