by Drew Howerton, staff reporter

I’ve always been one to buy into hype. It doesn’t matter what it is — movies, TV shows, video games, and yes, even Kanye West albums. If there’s a wait for something, it’s guaranteed that I’ll probably be excited for it. But waiting for Kanye West’s newest album, The Life of Pablo, begs the obvious question: how much waiting is too much waiting?

With any album release, a reasonable amount of waiting is expected. Writing, producing, and marketing music takes dedication, talent, and a lot of time. Nobody will deny that creating art is time consuming. But as the we live each day in the internet age, our desire to consume increases, while at the same time our willingness to wait for said consumption decreases. In order to compensate, artists will do just about anything to hold us over until the day we can check our phones to see that our pre-order of their album has finally downloaded. Debuting singles, orchestrating cryptic ad campaigns, and premiering their songs at sporting events isn’t uncommon in the music industry, and creates hype like never before. But looking back on West’s recent activities, and pausing every few minutes to make check if the album has actually come out (spoiler, it hasn’t) makes me wonder: was buying into the hype worth it?

Throughout the production of Kanye West’s’ The Life of Pablo, we as consumers have been given a unique window into the world of creation. From day one, West gave us screenshots of tracklists, tried out different album names, released singles, updated tracklisting again, tried another album title and finally got in a Twitter argument over aforementioned album title. After a quiet week with plenty of more interesting to keep us occupied and to hold our attention, West returned to the Twittosphere once again to remind us that not only was he more important than everything else, but that his album was still coming out, this time rechristened The Life Of Pablo, sporting both a Microsoft Paint designed album cover and  all-star cast of featured artists including Rihanna, The Weeknd, and the resurrected Frank Ocean. At this point, the hype had peaked for some fans; we had our first real morsel, instead of measely table scraps that left us unwillingly wanting more. On February 11th, West sampled his upcoming release to the crowd at Madison Square Garden during his unveiling of his third season of his clothing line, YEEZY, in a weird performing art / fashion show setting that invited nearly every celebrity that you could possibly imagine. The next morning, Kanye announced via Twitter that the album was mixed and done, ready to be released that very day (not without a new, improved, and hopefully finalized tracklist, of course) a long with a new single, 30 Hours. How could the excitement build anymore?

The obvious answer is that it couldn’t, because it had become more tedious and overdrawn than exciting. I had gone from waiting eagerly for Pablo in order to do a review to bitterly wondering why I cared so much at all. So here I am, still waiting for an album I no longer care for from an artist I had become disavowed with years before. Kanye West has become a parody of himself, a man that constantly bashes the system that he loves and lives in every day of his life. In a way, West’s greatest accomplishment was not being a successful artist, but exposing the risk that artists take in hyping up their art. Too little hype, and a consumer isn’t sure if consuming is worth their time. Too much hype, and the consumer becomes bored with waiting and speculating. Kanye West was the ultimate puppet master in exciting us to the point of exhaustion, putting us on a rollercoaster that is only an uphill slope with no drop or surprise at the end. When (or should I say if?) The Life of Pablo is released, there will no longer be an sustenance to quench my thirst for the latest and greatest, because it’s out there somewhere, and it sure isn’t going to be Kanye West.