The Life of Pablo

The Life of Pablo is the seventh studio album by American rapper Kanye West. It debuted on 12 February 2016 during Kanye's Adidas Yeezy 'Season 3' fashion show event and was subsequently released exclusively on the streaming service Tidal. Kanye West later tweeted: "My album will never never never be on Apple. And it will never be for sale… You can only get it on Tidal."

"Famous" was sent to the radio as lead single from the album on 28 March 2016 and the full album was added at Spotify on 1 April 2016 for streaming. Featuring 20 tracks, the album features a wide array of guest vocalists; including Rihanna, Frank Ocean, The Weeknd, Kendrick Lamar, Kid Cudi, Chris Brown, André 3000 and more.

Due to "The Life of Pablo" being available on Tidal only, estimations suggest that the album was pirated over 500,000 times only a few days after being made available for streaming. Some reports claimed that Kanye West had lost $10 million in album sales as a result.

On 31 March 2016 an article was published by The New York Times in which bore the following information: “Songs from 'The Life of Pablo' were streamed 400 million times, globally, through Monday, according to data provided to The New York Times by the company. Of those streams, Tidal said 250 million came in the first 10 days. The industry standard counts 1,500 streams as equivalent to one album sold; 400 million streams for “Pablo” would equal about 267,000 albums, making it the best-selling hip-hop release of the year so far.”.