I thought Kanye was too good for Twitter?

Is it just me, or did the single from the new Kanye West album fail to set the world on fire?

I heard it on Sirius once or twice, back when it first came out and people were psyched to listen to it because it was the new song by Kanye West, not so much because they genuinely cared for it, but that's about it. It could very well be the case that I haven't heard it in a couple of weeks.

Granted, I only listen to the radio when I'm on my way to cop a burrito, or to bust a shift at the BGM, and half the time I'm listening to Howard Stern or (forgive me) white people music, but it seems like I still should have heard it a lot more than I have. Sirius is usually pretty good about taking artists that are high priority on major labels and smearing them up your nose as if they were feces - though I'm not sure if that's because they're paid to, like terrestrial radio, or because that shit is genuinely popular. To their credit, it could be the latter.

It's funny, because I thought the whole point of releasing "Power" as the lead single was that it sounds like several other Kanye songs that were commercially successful, and hence it was likely to be successful as well, because they couldn't afford to run the risk of releasing one of the more experimental selections from the album, if there are any. You know, the songs he supposedly did with dudes like the RZA, Pete Rock and DJ Premier. I suspected, back when I heard about the artists he was collaborating with for Good Ass Job, or whatever it's called, that those golden age producers were essentially being paid to lend their street cred, coming off Kanye's last album, of Baltimora-style teh ghey Euro disco music, and that their actual contributions to the album could be fairly minimal. Why would a producer need to bring in other producers to work on his album? You don't see me bringing in other fat dudes to draw connections between hip-hop and my beloved pr0nography?

Could it be that Kanye's career as a rapper has run its course? I don't mean to suggest that his career is over, like Chamillionaire, and that he should consider reining in his expenses, lest he run out of money and end up shooting himself out in the woods, like this guy Lorenzen Wright (#toosoon), but I wouldn't be surprised if this is the beginning of the end of his life as the megastar that he was in the mid to late aughts. Like, maybe people just don't give a shit anymore. When Kanye won his big sales battle with Fiddy back in '07 (damn, that seems like a long time ago), it probably had more to do with the two of them being at different stages in their careers than anything else. The 50 Cent album sucked balls, but 50 Cent albums always suck balls. Kanye's career was still on the rise, while Fiddy's career had already entered into a state of decline.

I suspect that Kanye's career has now taken a similar turn, and that's why he seems so desperate lately: performing songs from the new album acapulco (without music) at the Facebook headquarters, for no apparent reason; signing up for Twitter, even though he once went off on Twitter in one of his infamous all caps rants (like the time he ruined Bonaroo), on his blog, where you could tell if he'd actually written a post, because it was in all capital letters, and the grammar was all fucked the fuck up; sending messages to Miss Info, trying to get her to post his bullshit videos, as if she wasn't gonna post his bullshit videos anyway - that's her role in life. The past few days have just been hard to watch, even for a brother such as myself, who's famously had his share of issues with Kanye over the years. His barely concealed contempt for his fans was one of his few redeeming qualities, as far as I'm concerned, along with his taste in women.

I read in the New York Times today that the video for "Power" features naked women, along with plenty of weird violent symbolism. It sounds like another desperate plea for attention, but it's the kind of desperate plea for attention I can get with. Maybe we can even get him to post naked Twitpics of that ugly British chick with the huge cans. I see his Twitter followers are up to 265k, but wasn't that fake account from a couple of years ago up in the millions? I think I see a way out of this.