Ye Is Better Than This

Driving around the morning after attending Ye’s sold-out show at Los Angeles’ SoFi Stadium, I found myself, understandably, in the mood for a Kanye set. Much of the setlist at SoFi was built to function like a one-man Verzuz, a reminder that Ye has hits for days, timeless songs that both take you back to the moment in time when they were released but also sound potent and barely dated, even years and decades later. As I flew up the 405 on a solo mission, sun beaming down on the mountains on the horizon, I put my library of Kanye songs on shuffle and within a few tracks, landed on one of his best features: 2010’s “Live Fast, Die Young,” born out of the Hawaii sessions that would yield My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy but ultimately placed on Rick Ross’ equally excellent project from that year, Teflon Don. It’s a titanic song, two artists in their imperial phases talking cash shit, but one all-time Kanye bar in particular stuck out more than usual on this listen: “I’m back by unpopular demand/At least he still poppin’ in Japan… Screams from the fans: ‘Yeezy, always knew you’d be on top again!’”