Is nothing sacred? Can a man not get jiggy in his car to his so-called favorite song of 2015 without an air of disingenuousness stinking up the place? Nah. Billboard reports that Kanye West has been secretly working with Scooter Braun, Justin Bieber’s manager/Svengali, for about a month. For the uninitiated, Braun is the man who discovered Bieber on YouTube and made him an IRL star and then saved the kid from going down a dark path last year. He is also Ariana Grande’s ex-manager and the dude whose genius idea it was to release Carly Rae Jepsen’s pop opus in Japan months before the rest of the world. Braun is also the man who likely put Kanye on to “What Do You Mean?†— that song Kanye can’t stop dad-dancing to at Bieber’s concerts.
Wonder why Kanye and the Biebs have been spotted in prayer circle backstage? You can probably thank both Braun and their respective love for hipster pastors for that union. To be fair, Kanye has been a fan of Bieber for a while, even remixing one of Justin’s deep cuts for G.O.O.D. Fridays back in the day. Braun is apparently not quite acting as Kanye’s manager just yet (that is still Izzy Zivkovic), but has been “a friend and confidant and is consulting†with him. Cool, now if Braun can just get Kanye to declare Emotion was his favorite album of 2015 all will be right with the world.