"I am the Kanye West Kanye West thinks he is."
The gauntlet has been thrown down. Leonard Cohen's posthumous book, The Flame: Poems Notebooks Lyrics Drawings, was released on Oct. 2, and in it is a poem titled Kanye West is not Picasso, which throws some not-so-subtle shade at the rapper.
The poem is dated March 15, 2015, and Cohen didn't just stop at Kanye — he included Jay Z, too. Singer-songwriter Amanda Shires posted the full poem on Twitter earlier today (which we did recently confirm is in the book):
“Kanye West Is Not Picasso” by Leonard Cohen, from Cohen’s new book ‘The Flame.’ pic.twitter.com/w5lUfkjdYv
— S H I R E S’ $Hit Show (@amandashires) October 11, 2018
March 15, 2015, is the date that Cohen won the Juno for album of the year, for his 2014 album, Popular Problems. March 2015 was also the month Kanye announced his forthcoming album title, So Help Me God (the eventual album that was released would be called The Life of Pablo, a year later). And in January 2015, the single "FourFiveSeconds," featuring Kanye, Rihanna and Paul McCartney, was released.
The Flame is out now.
Related:
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Judy Collins on discovering Leonard Cohen and late-night calls with Joni Mitchell