American rapper Kanye West¡¯s seventh album, ¡°The Life Of Pablo,¡± felt inescapable when it emerged this past February. But that wasn¡¯t the case in Japan. Streaming music service Tidal ¡ª which initially had exclusive rights to ¡°Pablo¡± ¡ª isn¡¯t available here.
This gave Toyomu Hayashi an idea. Unable to hear West¡¯s latest, he decided to splice together his own version instead. The result was ¡°Imagining ¡®The Life Of Pablo,¡¯ ¡± which the Kyoto trackmaker created based off a list of the samples used in West¡¯s ¡°Pablo,¡± by typing the rapper¡¯s lyrics into his computer¡¯s text-to-speech function, and by going on a gut feeling as to how West would¡¯ve put it all together. He then uploaded his Frankenstein album onto his Bandcamp website, where it sat pretty much unnoticed for a month.
¡°Then one day I woke up and discovered I was featured on Complex, The Fader and Fact,¡± Hayashi, 26, says in his first in-person English interview. ¡°I was going viral.¡±
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