The project isn’t so much a recreation as it is an uncanny, absurd outlier among the scores of fanservice-y ’Ye mash-ups populating the internet. Thanks to WhoSampled and Genius, the producer was able to assemble a complete listing of every last obscure sample and punchline featured on the record, providing Toyomu with the material for his own ' Album of the Life:' 印象III : なんとなく、パブロ, or (Imagining 'The Life of Pablo'). Ironically, the same digital forces that kept him from hearing the album proved key to his reinterpretation. 'I thought it might be a good idea to make the whole album without listening to it,' he told Pigeons and Planes. The solution couldn’t be more obvious for Toyomu, a Kyoto-based producer and ’Ye diehard: if he couldn’t listen to The Life of Pablo, he’d have to make his own version.

In other words, while we’ve been blasting three different incarnations of Kanye West’s latest album The Life of Pablo for two months, over 127 million people have been sitting in the dark until the album’s broader global re-release earlier this month, 2016’s most-hyped album was little more than a Dark Tidal Fantasy.

Moreover, the major streaming services (and their exclusive releases) have yet to become available in the country. Unlike most of the world, Japan didn’t experience the Napster revolution in fact, the supposedly obsolete CD continues to account for about 85 percent of sales. And yet, across the sea in Japan, folks continue to play by the rules-and what’s more, they’re on track to surpass the United States as the world’s most lucrative music market.

For years now, sheriffs at Apple Music and Tidal have struggled to convince customers in the Americas, Europe, Australia, and elsewhere to pay for their damn music already. Between the piracy, the leaks, the surprise releases, and the streaming service arms race, today’s recording industry is closer to the Wild West than a longstanding global market.

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