The saga of Kanye West's new album, The Life of Pablo, is likely to end up in hip-hop folklore.It was so eagerly anticipated, a situation compounded by 11th-hour title and track list changes, that crystal meth addicts waiting for a new strain of their preferred poison probably thought it was a bit much.At the beginning of last year West announced that his album, then titled So Help Me God, would drop some time at the end of 2015. The excitement was palpable. His groundbreaking last album Yeezus had gilded his reputation as an artist who cannot be categorised and the singles he put out in 2015 portended something stupendous.Throughout the year he released All Day, Wolves and a number of other songs that made big promises about what was to come.Then things got a little weird. First the album's title changed to Swish and its release date was pushed to February 12 2016. Then in January the title changed again, this time to Waves. That name change was promptly followed by a brief Twitter war with fellow rapper Wiz Khalifa, which saw some of West's bedroom preferences exposed to the public. Finally, on the eve of its release, the album title morphed into its final form -The Life of Pablo, apparently a reference to both Pablo Escobar and Pablo Picasso. Along with the name changes came oft-reworked track listings and last minute delays to its release.The drama, which was by no means over, was worth it. When it finally dropped, on Valentines day, The Life of Pablo proved, as West had often repeated, that he was a genius. The album is a gloriously spiritual and often maudlin stroll through the life and mind of one of the most influential musicians of our generation. Tracks like Real Friends track the mournful reality of Yeezy's inability to maintain an honest relationship with his friends and family and even touches on how one of his cousins blackmailed him. The opening song, Ultra Light Beams, feels like the joy of salvation and FML tackles self-destructive tendencies with a cringingly beautiful honesty.With the album released one would have thought that the saga had reached its crescendo but Kanye West never gives you what you expect. Hours after it was available to the Tidal, West went on Twitter to inform the world of his $53-million debt problems and begged Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg for $1-billion "to help fund his ideas".His laments of how people will give money to children in Africa but not to him generally made Twitter entertaining again. All of this while his album propelled Tidal to the No1 most downloaded app on the iStore.Given his behaviour it would be easy to say that all of this is just clever PR, but that has never been Kanye's way. His ego and proclivity to speak his thoughts out loud have often hurt his brand.But the beauty of West is that his musical output has always backed him up. His recent tweets may suggest that he has access to a potent stash of Colombian marching powder but, love him or loathe him, The Life of Pablois exactly what we have always come to expect from Kanye West - brilliance.The Life of Pablo is exclusively available on Tidal..