“As for my other foot dropping? It bums me out that even the most significant mountain-moving type pop artists like Kanye West have to be ‘good at Twitter’ in order to put a dent in the zeitgeist. That his music — very little music anymore, not even the best stuff — can’t do the kind of heavy lifting that movies and video games and television can without this extra-song-and-dance. It bums me out that Kanye West, who is Kanye West, has 1.2 million Twitter followers, while Ashton Kutcher, who is Ashton Kutcher, has 5.9. It bums me out that music is so devalued at this point that Kanye West — one of the greats — is giving away his entire album a track at a time here because albums are basically just ‘promotional materials” for “artist brands.’ It bums me out because I like albums, not artists — so also it bums me out that Kanye West, who knows how good these songs are (he tells us so), week after week raises the expectations of what ‘free new music’ sounds like, glossing over the fact that it took a lot of major label money and quality studios for Kanye to develop this sound. Rome is burning, so…  It bums me out that he’s contributing to the speed with which we are willingly consuming ‘free new music,’ which is to say all new music, which rarely gets more than a second or third listen because there’s always some new Great Kanye West track to get to. It bums me out that Kanye West, in order to be ‘Kanye West,’ is devaluing Kanye West’s Music.”