Following a brief hospital stay, it appears that Kanye West is already back in the studio. Pete Rock, a producer who’s worked with West on albums like My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, posted on Instagram earlier this week to show off his latest collaboration with hip-hop’s best known provocateur.
No, you have not stumbled over to WorldStarHip-Hop. There’s indeed a gaming peg here: West’s next album is called Turbo Grafx 16, as the artist himself revealed this past February.
My next album is titled "Turbo Grafx 16" as of now…
— KANYE WEST (@kanyewest) February 27, 2016
just on some super nerd vibes… one of my favorite gaming systems when I was a kid…
— KANYE WEST (@kanyewest) February 27, 2016
Of course, Kanye says a lot of things in a lot of places — especially on Twitter — but it seems like this is a concept he’s sticking with. In one of the videos Rock shared to his private Instagram page, fans spotted what looks to be a track list for the album.
Don’t those names look familiar? If you owned a Nintendo Wii and have a penchant for cult classics, they should. There’s Red Steel 2, Sin and Punishment 2, Sonic Colors, Tatsunoko vs. Capcom and a bunch of other Nintendo exclusives scrawled on that piece of paper.
But back up a second: West’s follow-up to this February’s The Life of Pablo is named after the TurboGrafx-16 console, not Nintendo’s monster hit system. Shouldn’t that list be full of titles like Bonk’s Adventure, Bomberman ’93 and West’s personal favorite, Blazing Lazers?
Nintendo and the TurboGrafx-16 are a bizarre pairing — even if you can play the latter’s games on a Wii — and Kanye fans are hard at work speculating as to what this all means. Something we all can agree on, at least, is that those beats sure sound good thus far.
West is known for a love of video games beyond old-school ’90s titles and underground favorites on Nintendo’s biggest console. He’s working on a video game of his own, a new trailer for which premiered at E3 2016 in June. It’s called Only One and is now in development.