What a Time to Be Alive: Kanye Unleashes Jimmy Fallon & The Roots-referencing "FACTS" ahead of New Year's Eve 2015-16 (G.O.O.D. Music)
"The "Wolves" song came from a conversation that me and Drake had, where we was going to do an album together and the album was called Wolves... me and Jay [started] talking about Watch The Throne, then Drake went and did all the records with [Lil'] Wayne and did the tour," Kanye unexpectedly revealed to The Breakfast Club radio host and one-time Catfish co-detective Charlamagne The God last February on the heels of his spirited SNL 40 medley. Lest we forget that Kanye once produced Drake's 808's & Heartbreak-reminiscent "Find Your Love;" making Kanye's recent "Yeezy, Yeezy, Yeezy, just jumped over Jumpman" What a Time to Be Alive interpolation and apparent Drake diss all the more perplexing. Not entirely unlike Paul McCartney-assisted "Only One" released over New Year's Eve 2014-15, "FACTS" was quietly uploaded to Soundcloud mere hours ahead of this year's annual New Year's festivities. Metro Boomin & Southside-produced "FACTS" likely stems from the same sessions that previously yielded "All Day," "FourFiveSeconds," "Only One," and the aforementioned Sia & Vic Mensa-assisted "Wolves," which will apparently all re-appear within Kanye's long-rumored Yeezus (2013) follow-up SWISH; having been described as "cookout music that feels good," even likened to the Nebraska to his Born In The USA, and "about embracing the music and embracing joy and [the] joy of being of the service to the people."
"I stuck to my roots, I'm like Jimmy Fallon / I ain't dropped the album, but the shoes went platinum," Kanye ferociously rhymes on "FACTS" making a clever allusion to Jimmy Fallon's Philly-bred Late Night & Tonight Show house band, The Legendary Hard-workin' Roots Crew. Throughout the nearly four-minute duration of "FACTS," Mr. West effortlessly manages to make similar-minded witty allusions to Bill Cosby's recent arrest and countless assault charges, Steve Harvey's December 20th Miss Universe-crowning announcement debacle, his wife Kim Kardashian-West's newly-launched custom Kimojis, and his previous Yeezy negotiations with with Nike: "Nike, Nike treat employees just like slaves." Metro Boomin & Southside chose a particularly menacing, lurching into and outro sample lifted from Funk-Soul group Father's Children's 2011 Numero Group album WHO'S GONNA SAVE THE WORLD? that goes a little something like, "Dirt and grime and filth inside. The story of my lifetime... of cheating, stealing, never feeling. Pain of a brother, your dirty mother. Ha, ha, ha... look how far we are. (Perfect!)" "I haven't worked on it at all, but everything I've heard is phenomenal and it has nothing to do with any of the other records that were released before," newly-elected G.O.O.D. Music President Pusha T recently gushed to Rolling Stone concerning Kanye's tentatively-titled SWISH, which is rumored to be nearly 80% completed. "That's all I can really say about it. He's super meticulous about the messaging about his album but you guys are in for a treat."