Entertainment

Kanye Just Announced The Release Date For 'Swish'

by Amy Mackelden

Friday was an exciting day for a plethora of Kanye West-related reasons — he released not one, but one and a half songs to his SoundCloud and official website, and West's wife Kim Kardashian announced West would be releasing new music every Friday — and just when I thought it couldn't get any better, West took to Twitter to announce the release date of Swish, his forthcoming album. Considering West has been talking about his Swish for months now — and the fact that it's been nearly three years since his last album, Yeezus, was released — the fact that we now know a release date is huge news.

West first began releasing new music on New Year's Eve, dropping the track "Facts" on his Soundcloud. He followed that up Friday with one full track, "Real Friends," and a snippet from another track, "No More Parties In LA." Not only was this news completely overwhelming, it also had everyone speculating how and when West would be releasing the full album.

Instead of keeping us all guessing when we'd get the new West album, the rapper gave us the release date on Twitter, tweeting simply, "Swish February 11 16" late Friday night. This is amazing news, especially as even I'd assumed that we'd only get to hear one new track a week for the coming weeks. To know that in just over a month, West will be dropping Swish in its entirety, has inspired me to listen to ALL of his back catalog in preparation. So what can we expect from Swish when it gets released very very soon?

If "Facts," "Real Friends," and "No More Parties In LA" are anything to go by, Swish is going to be an epic Kanye West album. Some pretty major themes are explored in all three of the songs we've been treated to so far, and it looks likely that Swish will give us the sort of insight into West's life we could only dream of. "Facts" in particular directly references important moments in the rapper's life, and the lives of his family members. For instance, lyrics like "Plus Kimoji just shut down the app store," and "ten thousand dollar fur for Nori," give us direct access to his family life with the Kardashians, and is a huge contrast to many of his previous lyrics.

"Real Friends" includes lyrics like, "I'm a deadbeat cousin, and I hate family reunions, f*ck the church up by drinking at the communion." Discussing the dark side of fame, and the way it can alter friendships and family dynamics is a great theme worth exploring, and West seems to nail it.

Similarly, in the snippet we've heard of "No More Parties In LA" so far, West appears to lament the busy nature of celebrity life and the fakery rampant in Hollywood, discussing how " my sheets still orange from your spray tan."

If these tracks are on the track list for West's new album Swish when it's released on Feb 11, 2016 — and are any indication of the rest of the music — then it's going to be amaze. It's basically the best pre-Valentine's Day gift I can think of.