West’s life and music have combined into an ongoing piece of performance art – one that appears unsustainable at this pitch In an era when the likes of Beyoncé can release perfectly formed records without warning, the saga of Kanye West’s seventh album has been comically messy. He first announced it a year ago, under the name So Help Me God, but postponed its release by several months while renaming it Swish, Waves and, finally, The Life of Pablo.In the weeks prior to its grandiloquent live-streamed launch at Madison Square Garden on Thursday – an album playback featuring celebrity guests and an army of black models debuting West’s latest Yeezy fashion line – he posted a series of perplexingly self-destructive tweets on topics including his ex-girlfriend Amber Rose and Bill Cosby.