Update: On Monday, June 13, Kanye released "Champions" from Cruel Winter, as the song is officially titled, on iTunes, TIDAL, and Spotify, so if you missed the radio premiere of the G.O.O.D. Music collaboration, then you've got no reason not to listen to it now.
Earlier: Our main man Yeezus just dropped another single, so you know what we have to do, right? Start digging around trying to find out when the new Cruel Winter single will be on Spotify. And, yeah, Kanye, I know I sound like a broken record every time you put out new music, wondering aloud when it will make its way to the streaming platform, but you sure don't make this easy for us. What with Tidal and his cryptic, ever-changing tweets, it's such a guessing game with him.
With The Life of Pablo, for example, the one thing I thought we were absolutely clear on is that it would never — no, never — be sold or streamed anywhere but Tidal. I believe his exact words were, "My album will never never never be on Apple. And it will never be for sale... You can only get it on Tidal." Seems pretty unequivocal, except that TLOP did find its way to Apple Music, and it is on Spotify now. Funny how that works.
It was just over a month after its release that The Life of Pablo cropped up on the streaming platform, so what does this tell us about when and if we should expect the new Cruel Winter single? Well, first Kanye will have to pick a title for it, so that should take a second — he currently seems to be between "Champions" and "Round and Round" — so I'm predicting we'll see the as-yet-unnamed-track hit Spotify in about a month. Either that, or whenever the eff he wants.
It's just slightly faster than the timeline that "Famous" and "I Love Kanye" followed in their journey to Spotify. Kanye released the two songs two days apart, a few days in advance of making the entire album available on the streaming service, so that seems to be a pattern he finds comfortable. Releasing a single track in advance of a full album is a way of dipping his toe into the proverbial water, and now that he's done it a couple times with TLOP, I bet Kanye won't wait quite as long to pull the same move with the Cruel Winter tracks.
At least, I'm hoping that's the case. Because as excited as I always am when Kanye releases new material, waiting for it to trickle down to non-Tidal users like me wreaks havoc on my nerves.
Image: Giphy
