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Music

Kanye West's "FACTS" Is Not Bad, Actually

Just facts.

Image via Soundcloud

On New Year's Eve, Kanye West, noted throughout 2015 as a not-releaser of songs, released a song called "FACTS" on his Soundcloud. "FACTS" was not the epic follow up to last year's New Year's Eve track "Only One." Nor was it the crazy party banger that everyone would play hours later as the clock struck midnight. It was, well, it was basically a freestyle about shoes. Which, yeah, go ahead and fill in the blanks with your Kanye punchlines now: A freestyle about selling shoes! Another rich guy rant! The guy has lost all perspective!

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The reaction has not been positive: The song is "trash" and "so bullshit," mostly for the aforementioned reasons and also because, as far as I can tell, Deadspin's Greg Howard misinterpreted the line shitting on Bill Cosby ("do anybody feel bad for Bill Cosby / did he forget the names like Steve Harvey?"). This response has also played into the prevailing idea that Kanye is headed for embarrassment with his next album. And sneaker aficionados were quick to point out that many of the "FACTS" were not, strictly speaking, factual. Anyway, the song is Kanye making a bunch of Kanye jokes. Listen for yourself, and let's meet up below.

OK, so it's not the grand, paradigm-shifting statement we've come to expect from Kanye every time he releases new music. But Kanye winkingly tells us that: It jokily begins with the orchestral swell of some big new project before revealing itself as a familiar hip-hop staple: a freestyle over the beat of a popular song, in this case a version of Drake and Future's "Jumpman." There are basically two ways these songs go: Either they completely tear up the original and prove that the rapper in question is a better rapper than whoever did the song (i.e. the Lil Wayne mixtape model), or they riff on the song in a new way by borrowing its stylistic cues, as a sort of homage (the third model, borrowing the cues and the themes, would be the oft-mentioned struggle rapper approach).

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Here, Kanye riffs, since the song's original approach of yelling "jumpman" helps him make a point about shoes, which is that Nike is bad, other than the fact his friends Drake and Don C work with them. You may be thinking that this is nothing like Kanye because Kanye always innovates! Well, let me rewind the clock back to a time before Kanye made his stultifyingly grand My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy (of which, if we're keeping track, he is not as much of a fan these days), and point out that Kanye has done this before. And it didn't end poorly! In fact, it gave us a mixtape called Can't Tell Me Nothing, which is one of the more lighthearted and fun things Kanye has ever done.

More specifically, it gave us the "Throw Some D's Remix," which is possibly the most lighthearted and fun thing Kanye has ever done: Kanye flipped Rich Boy's hit single into more or less a bar-for-bar remake about boob jobs and made a ridiculous video of himself in a wig hosting a puppet show that involved a rapping bearskin rug and a spiritual interlude for Alicia Keys. It is incredibly stupid. And it's probably Kanye's best video. Sure, sad Kanye has yielded incredible art. But bad joke Kanye gave us hits like "Slow Jamz," "Gold Digger," and "Good Life," which I can assure you are more popular to this day than anything on Yeezus. It gave us the punchline-laden "Last Call," which is the foundational text of the Western canon. You're missing out on a lot of Kanye's appeal if you sell short the guy who once rapped "And I was almost famous / now everybody love Kanye / I'm almost Raymond."

Kanye dicking around can be a good thing, and, if there's anyone up to the task of riffing on Future yelling "Nobu" over and over, it's Kanye yelling the word "couches" over and over. Picture all of Kanye's couches! Y'all are ready to frame Kanye's tweets about him sitting next to a water bottle on a plane but then are disappointed when he makes the same type of comment on a song he obviously threw together in an afternoon in the studio. One of my coworkers suggested that Kanye might have been better served mentioning all of his points in one of his infamous interview soliloquies. But come on—it's more fun to hear him shout out Odell Beckham over a beat. And it means a hell of a lot more to Chicago that he ends the song talking about calling up Twilite Tone and Mano and eulogizing DJ Timbuck2 than if he just mentioned them. We like Kanye for being real: Are we really going to be mad at him for doing it in a down-to-earth way rather than by moaning into a vocoder? Let's worry about SWISH later. "Facts" is meant to be enjoyed for exactly what it is: a song you can laugh over a couple times with your friends.

Kyle Kramer didn't mean to get this serious. Follow him on Twitter.