Kanye West and Kim Kardashian dating - or perhaps seeking publicity for record sales and reputation repair

Its a match made in financial heaven. Reality star Kim Kardashian has made a fortune exposing her romantic life for riches and ratings and now shes partnered up with Kanye West to help push record sales and repair her reputation.

The two publicity hounds have come out as a couple just as West released his new song, Theraflu, in which he confesses falling for the amply bottomed brunette.

The timing was so carefully orchestrated that when we called Wests label rep, Gabe Tesoriero, about the lyrics last week, he claimed to know nothing about a new song.

Getty Images

Kim Kardashian and Kanye West

In British Cosmopolitans May issue, Kardashian said she was single. Im not even close to dating again! she told the magazine. Im just going to work on me for a bit.

On Wednesday, the song debuted on New York radio station Hot 97, with lyrics that describe how West fell in love with her when she was dating Kris Humphries: And I admit I fell in love with Kim / Around the same time she fell in love with him / Well thats cool baby girl, do your thing / Lucky I aint had Jay [Net part-owner Jay-Z] drop him from the team.

The Kanyedashian courtship/publicity campaign hit full steam Wednesday night, when they went to The Hunger Games and Sleep No More and then canoodled at Serendipity 3.

Yesterday, making sure to be photographed leaving Wests apartment in the same clothes from the night before, Kardashian snuggled with him over lunch at sceney Serafina, on East 61st Street, with her buddy Simon Huck.

Kanye was fixing Kims shoe at the start of the lunch, her leg on top of his. They were leaning in and talking to each other very close during lunch, a spy said.

Kardashian is co-hosting Today Friday a rat! ings cou p for NBC and a convenient way to repair her reputation after her disastrous 72-day marriage to Humphries. West, meanwhile, is casting Kardashian look-alikes for a video hes filming in Qatar next week.