The Kan-spiracy

Much has been made about the many name changes, track-listing alterations and post-release re-workings that have plagued the lifespan of The Life of Pablo, Kanye West's recent album release.  The changes have been conspicuous, to say the least.  But have they also been suspicious?  This thought crossed my mind upon the album's release a few months ago.  Because all of Kanye's changes have certainly been unnecessary.  But is that just Kanye being Kanye?  Or is there something bigger going on here?  As someone who firmly falls into the camp of "Kanye is a genius who knows exactly what he's doing and even when he does something that appears stupid he is actually doing it to troll us all."  Is Kanye trying to tell us something?
On some level, I wish that I hadn't been the one to ask this question.  My pursuit of its answer has consumed my attention for months.  My grades, my personal relationships, and my health have all suffered.  I stopped going to class weeks ago to focus on my research.  I haven't had a conversation with another human being in months.  I've started eating dry bricks of ramen to save time and money.  I have spiraled into a state of crippling paranoia due to prodigious drug consumption. But it was all to bring you, the loyal readers of Sad Moth Music, the truth.

This whole thing started with a hunch, which quickly became a suspicion, which eventually developed into a full-blown conspiracy.  And it all starts (and ends) with the T.L.O.P. track listing.

But what is so suspicious about the track listing?  I think the right question to ask is what isn't?  The thing has convulsed and morphed and changed shape over and over, with no seeming logic or reason.  My suspicions began while just looking at the thing.  I began to notice its strange patterns and oddities.  Why did he spell "Silver Surfer Intermission" with so many extra letters?  Why does "Low Lights" have a space, and "Highlights" does not?  Who the fuck is Charlie Heat?  I spent days sitting in my room in the dark, drinking adderall by the bottle to maintain focus, just staring at this damned thing.  I knew eventually it would surrender its secrets.  And one day it hit me.  The why are there so many 'f's?  Why?  Nine of the nineteen tracks start with 'f'.  There are four more 'f's in "Silver Surfer Intermission".  "Real Friends" also has a word that starts with 'f'.  This is no coincidence.  That's fourteen 'f's in total!  Additionally, why are there three tracks that all have the word "light" in them?  Coincidence?  There are none.

I had stumbled upon a breakthrough.  I worked feverishly through the night and developed a complex schematic that reflected my suspicions (shown at right).  Of the nineteen tracks on T.L.O.P, only four of them do not have an 'f' (red), or contain the word "light" (yellow).  And what is the first letter of the word "four"? "f".  I was on to something.  But where to go from here?  I had clues, but no map.

Days passed, and I had nothing.  It was about that time that I turned to hard drugs in a desperate attempt at inspiration.  I would lay in my room for hours, slipping in and out of consciousness in a smack-fueled malaise, listening to Twin Infinitives on repeat.  Just one word and one letter existed in my consciousness.  They danced through my mind, mocking me for my inability to comprehend their cryptic truth.  Then one day, I went too far.  On top of the daily dose of heroin, I snorted a couple rails, chewed a half-gram of Mescaline, popped a couple downers to take the edge off and downed a 40 oz Code Red to put the edge back on.  After hours of ferocious, fearsome mania, I found myself on the floor of my room, consuming bricks of dry ramen like they were slices of bread.  The walls were covered with my manic scribblings. "f" some said. "light" others said.  But then I saw, in the far left corner near the window, I had accidentally merged the two clues.  And, as if by magic, they became one.  "flight" the word read.  I flung open my computer in a frenzy, and immediately knew that the first result for "kanye flight" was the right one.  It was the lyrics page for "Flight School" a cut Kanye recorded for GLC's Love, Life & Loyalty album in 2010.  Kanye's verse:

I got my superman power, my superman cape

These the last hours but superman late

Clock is ticking, damn, can you wait

Man will he come back and save the day

Fly across the earth put things in reverse

I wish this life was a movie I could just rehearse

Certain things I can't doctor and you say I'm the worst

I ain't have enough patience but I needed a nurse

That'll come by my bed late, see if my head ache

Then get my head straight then give me head great

Every time I popped up like the VCR

I took your breath away then we performed CPR

With all the cars the clothes, the lights, the boats

I guess I was just trying to sow my raw oats

In the penthouse position with penthouse b*tches

See I pimped my crib so I must exhibit

Sh!t these last years been a haze like Isaac

So I close my eyes tighter than asian eyes

Get realize I got the same wings angels fly with

Louis Vuitton feathers now that's some fly sh*t 

Maybe it was a moment of inspiration, or maybe it was just the combination of mescaline and Code Red, but I immediately saw the message concealed within.  Kanye never says the word "flight", but he does say "fly" three times.  I looked at the words after the "fly"s, but they made no sense.  But then I looked at the words before the "fly"s.

I got my superman power, my superman cape

These the last hours but superman late

Clock is ticking, damn, can you wait

Man will he come back and save the day

Fly across the earth put things in reverse

I wish this life was a movie I could just rehearse

Certain things I can't doctor and you say I'm the worst

I ain't have enough patience but I needed a nurse

That'll come by my bed late, see if my head ache

Then get my head straight then give me head great

Every time I popped up like the VCR

I took your breath away then we performed CPR

With all the cars the clothes, the lights, the boats

I guess I was just trying to sow my raw oats

In the penthouse position with penthouse b*tches

See I pimped my crib so I must exhibit

Sh!t these last years been a haze like Isaac

So I close my eyes tighter than asian eyes

Get realize I got the same wings angels fly with

Louis Vuitton feathers now that's some fly sh*t

Read the red bold-and-italic words bottom to top, and you end up with "Some angels come back and save the day".  Tell me, how could this not be intentional.  I didn't grasp the meaning at the time, but it certainly sounded prophetic.  After finding this, and waiting a day or two for the drugs to work out of my system, I knew I was on the verge of something big.  I had the next clue.  But how to proceed?  Where would "Some angels come back and save the day" lead?

The next step turned out to be easy.  After trying hundreds of possible urls that included "Some angels come back and save the day", I hit paydirt with someangelscomebackandsavetheday.wordpress.com.

The page, as pictured at right, is a generic wordpress template with a cryptic set of numbers as its only post.  (A weird picture of Kim K appears to have been added to the post accidentally).  I had found another clue.  And I was close.  I could smell it.

But these numbers, what did they mean?  They were all integers, the highest was 23, the lowest was -10.  Most were single digits.  

I washed down some quaaludes with a fifth of Wild Turkey and ruminated on the issue.  Could they be a combination for a lock?  A code that lead to a message if unscrambled?  Coordinates to a location?  The real problem, is I didn't know where to start.  What did I have?  I knew that if Yeezy was going to create a code, it shouldn't be impossible.  This should be something that can be found.  It should relate to something I've uncovered already.  But what did I have?  A website, "someangelscomebackandsavetheday", "f" and "light", and the track list.  I attacked the website from every angle, but it turned up nothing.  It really was just a wordpress with one post created by an anonymous account.  So what did I have left?  The track listing.  It was my only hope.  Just as I was reaching for my 8th ramen brick of the afternoon, inspiration struck.  I opened excel and feverishly typed the track listing into the spreadsheet, with one cell for every letter, effectively creating a coordinate grid.  What if the text of the track listing contained a message, and the numbers were the key?  I took a couple of guesses at what the numbers could signify, but they all failed miserably.  The numbers weren't coordinates, their absolute values didn't correspond to any single letter, and they didn't correspond to the track numbers at all. I had no idea what to do.  What was Kanye trying to tell us?  I dropped some acid and put on Late Registration hoping to find the answer in the less-traveled edges of my consciousness.  When the acid wore off, I was lying on the floor of my room, and a stack of my textbooks was strewn on the floor in front of me.  I picked up a white binder titled "Calculus of Multiple Variables" and paged through it aimlessly.  I turned to a page and just stared.  Holy shit. I was so obvious.  Vectors.  Vectors! The numbers were vectors!  Each set of two numbers was a movement from the last location on the grid!  I printed out my spreadsheet and worked frantically, the sweat from my face dripping on the page as I went.  And there it was on the page in front of me.  The ultimate truth.  It all makes sense. "f","light", "some angels come back and save the day", all of it....

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

HE HAS RISEN!