Kanye West has never been one to keep quiet about, well, anything. From his comments (who are we kidding: rants) about George W. Bush and Taylor Swift to his recent Nike diss track, Yeezy might be better known by the general public for his loudmouth leanings than his artistic pursuits.

Of course, fans of the Chicago rapper have long accepted his occasionally abrasive personality as part of the total Kanye West package; a package that has produced some of the most critically acclaimed rap records of the 2000s. While his outspoken celebrity often leaks into his verses (“Richer than white people with black kids/ Scarier than black people with ideas”), in recent years his music has played sideshow to the center ring of public spectacle he regularly entertains.

But just one month in, 2016 seems ready to return the public’s attention to Kanye’s music — in exactly one week, the rapper/producer/designer/Kardashian husband will release his seventh studio album, the long-awaited Waves.

If the name sounds unfamiliar to you, it’s because it is. In fact, Kanye only announced the album name on Jan. 26, a mere two weeks before its release.

Well, the album’s new name, that is: Waves was previously titled Swish and before that, in early 2015, So Help Me God.

In the almost one year since the announcement of So Help Me God, nearly everything about the album has changed — from the title to the songs to the featured guests, everything is different. Which isn’t uncommon for artists to do — Nirvana’s Nevermind was originally called Sheep. But what makes these changes unique is the public way they’ve taken place: Thanks to Twitter, a handwritten, constantly changing track list (signed by everyone in the studio) and Kanye’s willingness to put it all out there, his fans have gotten a glimpse into the creative process of the hip-hop genius they admire.

Kanye’s 2013 album Yeezus shared some of the same “thrown-together” tendencies of Waves‘ turbulent album cycle, but without much of the Internet observation. Superstar producer Rick Rubin, who worked on Yeezus, described Kanye’s process in a Genius annotation of the rapper’s 2014 song “Only One.”

“Kanye is a combination of careful and spontaneous,” he wrote. “He’ll find a theme he likes quickly, and then live with that for a while, not necessarily filling in all the words until later. At the end, he’ll fill in all the gaps.”

It’s a work ethic that has become extremely apparent in the buildup to Waves‘ release: an album that’s been planned for years but has seemingly come together in the past several weeks.

“Real Friends,” the album’s first true single (following the anti-Nike freestyle “Facts”), was a reflective musing on fame and family, a return to form for the rapper after a shoddy 2015. Its shimmering boom-bap instrumental was a timeless backdrop for introspective verses that could have been pulled straight from Late Registration.

But the song most indicative of Kanye’s creative process is the Kendrick Lamar featuring “No More Parties in LA.” Featured briefly in footage from the Stones Throw Records documentary Our Vinyl Weighs a Ton, the Madlib-produced track has existed in some form since 2010. But Kanye’s three-minute monster of a verse is hardly that old — according to Kim Kardashian, he wrote the entire thing on a flight to Italy. It’s this blend of preparation and spur-of-the-moment inspiration that informs Kanye’s best work.

As consumers, music fans are generally given a final product and told to enjoy it. With Waves, you’re getting a whole lot more than that — through social media and his music, Kanye is inviting the world into his process of creating, rather than just the final creation. And with an artist like Kanye, who’s certainly not afraid of tweeting his mind, the only thing more exciting than hitting play on a new album is watching it come together in front of your own eyes.