It looks like Kanye West spent the morning reading our feature about how CDs are on their way out: In a brief series of tweets earlier today, West announced that he’s done releasing his music in the CD format, specifically noting that the album packaging for his previous album, Yeezus, was “an open casket” for the physical medium. (Yeezus, you may recall, had album packaging that more or less looked like someone forgot to send in the order for the cover art.)
Uuuuum… hi everybody!
— KANYE WEST (@kanyewest) March 7, 2016
I was thinking about not making CDs ever again… Only streaming
— KANYE WEST (@kanyewest) March 7, 2016
the Yeezus album packaging was an open casket to CDs r.i.p
— KANYE WEST (@kanyewest) March 7, 2016
uuuuuuum, so there it is… No more CDs from me
— KANYE WEST (@kanyewest) March 7, 2016
Uuuuuuuum, so there it is: West continues his tradition of making decisions via social media. His new album, The Life Of Pablo, now looks like it was not just a test case for an incredibly frustrating method of releasing a new album, but rather a hint of the weird, digital-only things to come from the artist. While West didn’t take the opportunity to say anything about whether he would also be encouraging others to talk him out of the kind of spontaneous, free-associative decision-making that constitutes his identity going forward, he quickly corrected that oversight approximately seven minutes later.
please avoid trying to talk me out of being me in the future
— KANYE WEST (@kanyewest) March 7, 2016
So, that’s all cleared up, then.