So how do you promote an album?  How do you get that album to the top of charts and make it an international success, especially after you first three albums were runaway successs yet your fourth fell pretty much flat?

Well, you can give away free songs via twitter every for months to build heat around you.  This is a musician giving back, giving music fans what they want – free music because he loves his fans immensely.

You can spend millions of pounds on promotional tours, advertising and blag interviews and features on all the top chat shows.  Or, you can get the former President of the United States of  America to admit you calling him a racist was the worst moment of his political career.

Seriously – you could not make this up.  Weeks before his fifth studio album, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, George W. Bush stated in a interview (and his memoirs) the worst moment of his 8 years in office was when Kanye West said, “George Bush doesn’t car about black people.”

Forget 9/11, forget Hurricane Katrina, forget accusations of cheating to win both elections, forget the worst financial crisis in living memory, even forget the thousands of troops wounded and killed in Iraq.  You got it, the worst memory from his Presidency was a rapper suggesting he might be a racist!  It makes you wonder what kind of buffoon was really running America.

For Kanye West on the other hand this is a dream come true, and could not have been timed better!  Hip-hop is often accused of being timid these days.  It no longer tackles the issues or challenges the establishment the way it did in the 90s.  However, in midst of all the bling bling, showmanship and girls in thongs pouring champagne over themselves, one rapper, Kanye West, has managed to rattle the most powerful man in the world more than a war, an economic crisis and natural disaster.  Kanye West – the peoples superhero!

It’s almost farcical.  The cynic in me thinks this could only have been the brainchild of some PR guru/genius.  They saw the release date for Bush’s memoirs and Kanye West album on a calendar and thought, cha-ching, I have a plan to get both unprecedented coverage and disguise it all as news.  Indeed, the story has been lapped up by the press in the US… and it’ll probably be made in to a movie now.

So, all you budding musicians listen up – want to blast on to the scene.  Insult a world leader on national TV.  Wait a few years and let the PR roll in… can anyone say, Gold in a week?

Soulside Funk