The past 24 hours have turned out to be an emotional seesaw for Kanye West. Right before heading onto the the Saturday Night Live stage to perform a new single from his latest album The Life of Pablo—released early Sunday morning, after his seventh appearance on the show—Kanye proclaimed to his 18.7 million fans via Twitter that he is $53 million in “personal debt” without naming the cause of his alleged monetary woes.
“I write this to you my brothers while still 53 million dollars in personal debt,” Yeezus tweeted to his fans right before heading out to debut “Ultralight Beam,” his album opener.
“Please pray we overcome,” he added.
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The tweet came after a mini-rant about the namesake behind his new his album The Life of Pablo, which the rapper dropped after his SNL performance, clarifying that the Pablo in question isn’t the one that Netflix fashioned a cocaine-fueled TV drama after (Escobar) or the one that really liked painting cubes and sad guys with guitars (Picasso), but after Paul the Apostle, calling him “the most powerful messenger of the first century.”
While Yee didn’t follow up with a reason for his debt, the culprit might be his ventures in fashion—he previously admitted that his Yeezy clothing line had scored him a $16 million loss, and as Consequence of Sound noted, his women’s clothing line put him $30 million back in 2014.
Either way, we can all look forward to an incoming batch of “all memes are wrong” memes. So meta. [TMZ]
In other Pablo-related news, pharma bro Martin Shkreli is giving everyone an excellent dose of schadenfreude with an online meltdown that can only be described as a #Trumpertantrum 2.0. The reviled Wu-Tang Clan album owner freaked out on the interwebz after claiming to lose out on a bid for The Life of Pablo—and $15 million in the process—by a guy named Daquan (or, as Shkreli called him, “Kanye’s boy”) after attempting to get his hands on the album before everyone else.
The multimillionaire subsequently and succinctly captured the essence of his freak out:
After posting a video wherein the entrepreneur switched out his patented Supreme Court smirk for some exasperated, rubbery-faced looks of despair, Shkreli updated that he would get a full bitcoin refund courtesy of Satoshi Nakamoto—but only after boasting that he could “make his money back faster than anyone.”
He also fumed that he hoped the rest of the Internet denizens would “all enjoy this stupid music SO much,” adding that he has now “quit rap,” leaving all hip-hop albums, unleaked or otherwise, now safe. [Twitter]
- Jimmy Kimmel pretended to leak the name of Chrissy Teigen and John Legend’s baby sans spoiler alert. [EOnline]
- Body activist Ashley Graham has become Sports Illustrated’s first size-16 model. [People]
- Pop star and occasional Ryan Murphy vampire countess Lady Gaga got David Bowie’s face tattooed on her actual body. [TMZ]
- Kim Kardashian wants to make single people cry with a “Lonely Hearts” playlist for Valentine’s Day. [JustJared]
Images via Getty.