Kanye West Gets His Confucius On in New Book

Kanye West has offered fans on his website a sneak peak at Thank You and You're Welcome, the book he co-authored with J. Sakiya Sandifer that's filled with "Kanye-isms," or "creative, humorous and insightful philosophies and anecdotes used in creating my path to success." In his sample pages, West proves that he's more than capable of writing fortune cookies for the iPod era, recommending that readers "Get Use to Getting Used" and the always-important "Be Leery of the Free Gift Bag," as West insists "Don't let people think you owe them something. That puts you in a position of weakness. If they choose to give, it's their choice. You don't owe them anything." Lastly, 'Ye expounds on "The Missing Banister Theory": "When walking down the street, you can walk in one line perfectly without ever falling over. Now take the same city block, make it a foot wider and then put it a hundred stories high. You're going to be so focused on the fact that you don't have a banister that you're more likely to fall because of it." Well said, Kanye. The first 500 copies of Thank You and You're Welcome will be signed by West himself, so pre-order now.

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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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