By Vincent Khan
The so-called “Yeezy Season” is upon us, and as of right now, it seems as if Kanye West is crazier than “George Bush doesn’t care about Black people” Kanye West.
Within just the last year Kanye has:
- Divorced his wife
- Planned to do a three-part documentary about the beginning of his career on Netflix
- Fulfilled his record deal-making him an independent artist
- Plans to drop a sequel to his most recent album this Tuesday
Coming with divorcing his wife, Ye re-activated his Instagram and acted as some would call “erratic.” Which also seems to be the only social media platform he uses. His posts have been very aggressive, and he seems to have no problem expressing his feelings on the app by the way he voices his concise displeasure at people by directly making posts about whoever. (Who have mainly been Kim Kardashian and Pete Davidson) As some would say, his comments on Instagram have been “no filter.” His most recent album Donda is also nominated for album of the year at the Grammys this coming April. And the sequel to that album (Donda 2) is set to release this Tuesday, Feb. 22. Considering that Kanye is a habitual album delayer, some fans have raised eyebrows to that date.
His Netflix documentary (Jeen-Yuhs) is a three-part trilogy documenting his life when he first started rapping. As of episode one of the trilogy, we get to see a young, very hungry Kanye get turned down over and over again from this point of view of his cameraman. One of the highlight moments of episode one is when he played his 2004 breakout hits “All Falls Down” and “Jesus Walks” for the same record label A&R’s that would eventually sign him. Still, when they first heard the songs, they would blatantly ignore Kanye, ultimately showing that they didn’t believe in him as a rapper but just as a producer. In episode one, critics have called Kanye’s personality “ambitious” or “motivational.” Constantly asking people their opinion of his music. We get to see a clip of him showing rapper Scarface the song “Jesus Walks.”
Kanye asked Scarface to do a verse on the song, but Scarface said the song was “whack” and then went to use the bathroom and never came back, entirely ditching Kanye. We also get to see shots of Kanye at events/parties before the fame, saying hello to the same people he would be working with years down the line. People such as Jay Z or Pharell appeared in episode one but wouldn’t even say hello to Kanye. They were utterly treating him as a nobody. Even though they had used his beats and released them as their songs, they treated him as a nobody because, at the time, nobody believed in him.
Episode 2 of Jeen-Yuhs releases this upcoming Wednesday, Feb. 23, and Episode 3 is coming the Wednesday after that. But, the day before episode 2 drops this week, we get his newest album on the 22. With Ye now being an independent artist, he posted on his Instagram saying that his latest album would NOT be available on Apple Music, Spotify, Amazon music, etc., and will only be available on his STEM Player website. Mr. West has said that he does not want to get paid .003 cents per stream as he would on a traditional streaming platform but would just distribute the album on his own platform and jump through all the hoops himself that the label would usually do. Hoops such as promoting the album, setting up a tour, or advertising the music. But with Kanye being a billionaire, I’m pretty sure he has all those tools at his disposal with no problem. These next few months will be jammed packed with Kanye content and many of his fans, including myself, and here for it.
