So the wife and I are out at the bar ordering drinks with some friends, enjoying a rare night out on the town without the kids, when I get a text from our esteemed founder Scott Lapatine (happy birthday, Scott!) inquiring whether I’m able to post the new Kanye West song that just dropped. “Lift Yourself,” it’s called. Oh man, I think. It begins. Finally, some music!

See, Kanye has been, shall we say, extremely active on social media in the past week, mostly carrying on a mutual admiration society with our facile president, and the whole ordeal is getting pretty tiresome. The dawn at the end of this particular dark night was supposed to be the buttload of new music he’s promising in May and June — his own new solo LP, another one in collaboration with Kid Cudi, plus albums by Pusha T, Nas, and Teyana Taylor, all produced by ‘Ye himself. Exciting stuff! Hopefully worthy of this egregious attention-grabbing. And here was our first chance to find out.

So I get home from the bar and load up the song, and what do I hear? “Poopy-di scoop/ Scoop-diddy-whoop/ Whoop-di-scoop-di-poop.” Etcetera, etcetera. He done punk’d us.

To be fair, there’s a bit more to the song. It starts with one of those classic Kanye soul samples — from a 1973 Amnesty track about striving for more liberty and lifting yourself up on your feet, themes in keeping with Yeezy’s recent Twitter action. There’s also some fairly propulsive head-bob drum programming. It goes on like that for quite a while without Kanye’s voice on the track. Then, at last, he shows up, touting the glory of the verse to come. Aaaand… “Poopy-di scoop.” Yeah. Punk’d.

You can hear “Lift Yourself” at KanyeWest.com. Enjoy?

I'm going to drop a song with a verse that will bring Ebro the closure he's been seeking

The bars 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥

It's called Lift Yourself

— KANYE WEST (@kanyewest) April 27, 2018