Kanye's platinum 'Life'
It's been a rough few months for Kanye West, ever since he cut his blockbuster "Saint Pablo" tour short and controversially buddied up with President Donald Trump (he's since broken up with the prez). But now some good news for the tortured rap star: His 2016 "The Life of Pablo" has been certified as the first streaming-only album to go platinum.
How do you go platinum without releasing any physical CDs? The Recording Industry Association of America says "1,500 on-demand audio and/or video streams" equal one physical "unit." So an album needs to stream 1.5 billion times, and West did just that.
Yeezy tends to stick his foot in his mouth more often than not. But he wasn't kidding when he tweeted last year, "I was thinking about not making CDs ever again ... only streaming."
And now he has a platinum album for what originally sounded like a crazy-Kanye idea.
Tom Horgen
