Kanye West’s ‘Yandhi’ Wound Up on iTunes as a Bunch of Ringtones, Somehow
Credit to Author: Drew Schwartz| Date: Tue, 01 Oct 2019 18:38:19 +0000
A little over a year ago, Kanye West announced he'd be dropping a new album called Yandhi on September 29, 2018. The date came and went, but he never actually released the thing, and we still haven't heard even a snippet of it—until now. On Tuesday morning, the record finally hit iTunes—but only, uh, as a series of extremely brief ringtones.
According to Vulture, the nine, 26-second long snatches of Kanye's unreleased songs were probably uploaded by some fan who managed to get their hands on a leak. The ringtones will likely get pulled down as soon as Ye realizes they've somehow made it out into the world, but until then, we've got a chance to hear a record that might never see the light of day.
And it's pretty good! Unlike whatever the hell that poopidy-scoop, scoop-diddy-whoop monstrosity was, Kanye actually seems to be trying here. He puts a unique twist on trap on "Alien"; he channels TLOP on "Law of Attraction"; he gets sad and meditative in the beautiful, soulful "We'll Find a Way." We don't get to hear many features in these snippets—Kanye reportedly enlisted Chance the Rapper, Ty Dolla $ign, and XXXTentacion for guest spots on Yandhi—but what we do hear is pretty great: Teyana Taylor crushes it on "We Got Love."
Who knows if Yandhi will ever come out in earnest; given the fact that Kanye is apparently done with making "secular" music, and chants "new ass, new tits, new bitch, who dis" on "New Body," it feels pretty unlikely. Add in the fact that he can't even seem to release Jesus Is King and, sadly, it looks like these ringtones might be all we ever hear of Yandhi. Listen while you still can.
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This article originally appeared on VICE US.