Kanye West claims to be $53m in debt, and asks Mark Zuckerberg for help

It was a busy weekend for Kanye West, what with finishing off his album The Life of Pablo – which emerged in a different form from the one premiered at Madison Square Garden in New York on Thursday night – appearing on Saturday Night Live, and spending time on Twitter comparing himself to St Paul (the saint, not the Minnesota city).

He also made the claim, again on Twitter, that he is $53m in debt, and called on Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg to “invest $1bn into Kanye West ideas … after realizing he is the greatest living artist and greatest artist of all time”.

He continued with a bizarre series of Tweets through Sunday night and Monday morning: “Mark Zuckerberg I know it’s your bday but can you please call me by 2mrw … You love hip hop, you love my art… I am your favorite artist but you watch me barely breathe and still play my album in your house … World, please tweet, FaceTime, Facebook, instagram, whatever you gotta do to get Mark to support me … I’m this generation’s Disney … I want to bring dope shit to the world … I don’t have enough resources to create what I really can.”

He insisted that “one of the coolest things” Zuckerberg could do would be “to help me in my hour of need”.

He then widened his appeal to other tech billionaires.

He said: “All you dudes in San Fran play rap music in your homes but never help the real artists.” He added that they were more interested in opening schools in Africa. “like you really helped the country”, than – by implication – giving money to the one of the world’s most high-profile celebrities. “All you guys had meetings with me and no one lifted a finger to help,” he concluded.

West certainly has the kind of extravagant tastes that require significant sums of money. When he made his proposal of marriage to Kim Kardashian in October 2013, he did so not by taking her to a local bistro but by hiring a 41,000-capacity baseball stadium in San Francisco, with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra on hand to supply the music.

In further news from the always attractive intersection of Kanye West, Twitter, and money, the businessman Martin Shkreli – known for price gouging on Aids drugs and paying $2m for the one copy of Wu-Tang Clan’s Once Upon a Time in Shaolin album – has claimed he was swindled out of $15m when he attempted to buy the exclusive rights to The Life of Pablo. Shkreli tweeted that “someone named Daquan”, claiming to be “Kanye’s boy”, contacted him to follow through on the deal, which he did. “I hope you all enjoy this stupid music SO much, and the fact it has brought me so much pain and suffering. I quit rap,” Shkreli tweeted.

Assuming he really had given $15m to someone named Daquan claiming to be Kanye’s boy, Shrkeli was able to secure a happy ending. He later tweeted that the Bitcoin founder Satoshi Nakamoto was going to help him get his money back. “I always win,” he concluded.