Kanye Teams With Rhymefest, Comedy Central On Puppet Show

Kanye West, Comedy Central and the producers of Crank Yankers are joining forces on a new puppet-centric television series tentatively called Alligator Boots. Whereas Yankers features puppets making crank calls, Boots will feature felt characters rapping. The series will feature music produced and performed by West and his protégé Rhymefest. Somehow West found time within his busy 808s & Heartbreak schedule to serve as host on the already-filmed pilot episode. If the show were to be picked up — they're aiming for 2009 — there would be a different celebrity host every episode, much like the original Muppet Show. West and Rhymefest will both serve as executive producers along with Jon Kimmel, brother of comedian and Yankers co-creator Jimmy Kimmel.

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Song Stories

“Piano Man”

Billy Joel | 1973

Billy Joel’s first hit, “Piano Man,” was – ironically – an autobiographical lament about how his first album wasn’t a hit. When Cold Spring Harbor didn’t take off, Joel briefly became a lounge pianist in Los Angeles, and this song, about that experience, expressed his frustrations and fears at the time: “And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar/And say, ‘Man, what are you doing here?’” “It was all right,” Joel said later, about the gig. “I got free drinks and union scale, which was the first steady money I’d made in a long time.”

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