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MUSIC
Kanye West

Kanye drops new song, teases new album, bashes Taylor Swift

Maeve McDermott
USATODAY
Kanye's latest feud? Saying 'peace out' to producer Bob Ezrin on Twitter.

If you're playing Kanye West bingo, Tuesday night's events may have just filled up your card.

In between premiering a new song comparing himself to Einstein, Kanye took the stage to respond to Taylor Swift's Grammys acceptance speech, and responded to a scathing essay from veteran music producer Bob Ezrin in a Twitter rant. And did we mention his new song is about his Twitter?

At a private party at an LA club, Kanye previewed a new song, Closest Thing to Einstein, that references everything from his personal debt to his love of Twitter beefing to his purported genius: "I know I'm the most influential / That TIME cover was just confirmation / This generation's closest thing to Einstein / But don't worry about me, I'm fine."

(Warning: explicit language)


Then, in one of the lengthy speeches he's become famous for, West addressed Taylor's Grammys speech, which many people thought was a response to a sexually explicit lyric on West's song Famous.

He claimed that she approved of the line in a phone conversation first. “Then she won her award and said something completely different!” he said. “She's not cool no more. She had two seconds to be cool and she (expletive) it up.”

Meanwhile, Kanye was bashing Bob Ezrin on Twitter, who criticized Kanye's work in a piece for music critic Bob Lefsetz' Lefsetz Letter email newsletter.

"Has anybody ever heard of Bob Ezrin???" he tweeted Tuesday night. "What the (expletive) does he know about rap."

Ezrin, who's worked with big-name rock acts like Pink Floyd, Kiss and Lou Reed, criticized Kanye's songwriting and production skills as "sophomoric at best."

"But in spite of what the aspirationally-cool media keeps saying about him, unlike other creators in his genre like Jay-Z, Tupac, Biggie or even M.C. Hammer for that matter, it’s unlikely that we’ll be quoting too many of Kanye’s songs 20 years from now,” he continued.

“He didn’t open up new avenues of public discourse like N.W.A., or introduce the world to a new art form like Grandmaster Flash, or even meaningfully and memorably address social issues through his music like Marshall, Macklemore and Kendrick.”

Kanye hit back at Ezrin in a series of tweets, bashing the music industry "old guard."

And dragging Ezrin's family into the mix:

If Kanye's newest tweets on Wednesday are any indication, he's taking all this new inspiration into the studio.

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