After first being announced as Swish, then controversially titled Waves for a brief stint – which led to a twitter beef with Wiz Khalifa – Kanye West seems to have finally settled on a title for his new album: The Life of Pablo. The question now is Pablo who? Infamous drug lord Pablo Escobar? Renowned Chilean author/statesman Pablo Naruda? Pablo Honey? No one is quite sure, and West isn’t telling yet.
One theory with a lot of credence, is the that it is late cubist pioneer Pablo Picasso, given that Kanye West has compared himself to the artist on more than one occasion -the last time during his address to the Oxford Guildhall.
TMZ caught up to the adopted great grandson of Pablo Picasso, Florian Picasso, to ask him what he thought of Kanye’s potential tribute to the late great. In the short interview “I think it’s amazing that he’s paying tribute to [Pablo Picasso’s] work,” and that the family would give him their blessing, and extended an invitation to the rapper to visit the Musée Picasso in Antibes, France like his fellow Hip Hop Alumni Jay Z did back in 2014.
Asked if there were any similarities between Kanye and Picasso, Florian said “They both have vision. They both want to revolutionise the game. Pablo Picasso was into art and Kanye is into music. The way they think outside of the box is very similar.”
Kanye revealed the album title via a picture of the tracklist on Twitter on Thursday, and later that day released the artwork for the album Twitter too. You can check out both tweets below:
Final track list for The Life Of Pablo pic.twitter.com/PMH94MAAeJ
— KANYE WEST (@kanyewest) February 11, 2016
Cover by Peter De Potter pic.twitter.com/wdQOHk6QBA
— KANYE WEST (@kanyewest) February 11, 2016