So it actually has been eight years since Kanye West initially released The Life of Pablo, before making some fixes to the mixes some of the songs, adding a few new ones too, and then released it again a few months after. That was a hectic time to be a Kanye West fan. When is it not, really? This new record that eventually became TLOP was constantly being renovated and shaped up even in the lead up to its unveiling. It could have been released in 2014 as So Help Me God, which fans will still say is West’s best unused album title. It was going to be called SWISH for the longest time, up until a week before the release West announced on Twitter that it would indeed be named The Life of Pablo. Think there was meant to be a prize for any Twitter use who guessed what the “new” title would be after West announced that “TLOP” were the initials of the album’s official name. Wonder if that person ever got their prize.

Yeah, I was there when it was all happening. Was a hectic time. I was in my year out of university doing work at Songlines magazine, August 2015 – July 2016. A month before that February ’16 release of Pablo, even though I can’t remember this specific part myself but it’s what Wikipedia says, Kim Kardashian announced that the GOOD Fridays weekly music release that West had previously utilised in the run up to Dark Twisted Fantasy was back. The song that marked its return was today’s subject, ‘Real Friends’. Now, I have a vivid memory of loading up the exclusive page dedicated to the song on Kanye’s official website and playing it at least three times on repeat. Thought it was the best thing he’d done since anything on Dark Fantasy. Yeezus has never done much for me. And the standalone singles from 2014/15 were okay. This really felt like the Kanye return I had been waiting for for years.

This is a sad, sad song. The sample loop that continues throughout set the icy tone from the very beginning, but the sense of desolation is only reinforced by Kanye’s lyrics concerning his own failures in being a less than awesome friend and family relative, something that fans were quick to jump on when thinking about great being in the family sounded when exploring that theme on ‘Family Business’, and his inability to trust anyone he may come across knowing that at any moment they could take advantage of him. Singer Ty Dolla Sign comes in in various places, lending his heartfelt vocals to the proceedings, particularly to the choruses in which West jokingly states that he deserves all the hate and bad treatment he gets because of… well, everything he’s done that gets people talking. This and ‘FML’, a track that I would have written about too had the stars aligned, are the one-two punch of sincerity in what was the tail-end of the original album before the “bonus” tracks were added on (“Wolves” was meant to be the true album closer, but things changed), and both hit me right in the gut every time I hear them both. Kanye would get sad on records that followed, but there’s something about them that can truly make a heart sink on one of those days.