Kanye West is in full-on “[I’m] the greatest artist of all time” mode, and not even his label bosses at Def Jam can control him.
“Kanye drives Def Jam more off the wall than any other artist drives anyone at any other label off the wall. He tortures them!” says an industry insider.
Case in point: “On his last album, ‘Yeezus,’ he yelled at them and told them they’re incompetent and should be fired. He’s the most difficult artist to deal with in the business.” But the source adds, “He can be as big of an a–hole as he wants, because even on his worst day, he still makes better hip-hop records than most.”
West unexpectedly changed the name of his album from “Swish” to “Waves” on Tuesday, which caused a wildly entertaining Twitter beef between him and fellow rapper Wiz Khalifa.
“Please don’t take the wave,” Khalifa tweeted in reference to rapper Max B.
West shot back with over 17 tweets blasting Wiz, dragging their shared ex Amber Rose into the fray by saying, “You let a stripper trap you,” and, “I know you mad every time you look at your child that this girl got you for 18 years.”
Plus, an instant classic Kanye-ism, “You have distracted from my creative process.”
But our source, who has heard tracks from “Waves,” tells us West shouldn’t be so cocky: “It’s not the greatest album ever made. The people he’s getting feedback from are not the same as when he’d go to Jay Z to get feedback. Now, it’s from Kris Jenner. The stuff he’s done lately is dumbed down because of the Kardashians, but he’s still brilliant.”
A more friendly West insider insists: “ ‘Waves’ is that classic Kanye sound. The idea that his music has been dumbed down because of bouncing it off the Kardashians is nonsense. The core group that have been around him since the beginning has remained the same. The album is the return of the old Kanye.”