Kanye West — ye

You might remember Kanye West from back when he made good music, or more recently, for saying a lot of dumb shit. Today, however, I’m writing about Kanye West the Photographer; per his most recent album ‘ye’, released on June 1, 2018.

No stranger to spur of the moment drops, ‘ye’ was revealed after months of hype, with a last minute exclusive listening party hosted in Jackson Hole, Wyoming; the same location the album itself was recorded. Invitees included a huge list of musical acquaintances (such as Desiigner, 2 Chainz, Lil Yachty, Kid Cudi, Pusha-T), Hollywood fame (Jonah Hill and Chris Rock), as well as music journalists from all around the globe, and this 17 year old kid for some reason.

Code named #ProjectWyoming, this listening party is an essential part of the story behind the album artwork for ‘ye’, as at the time the event was announced, nobody knew what it looked like. Not even Kanye.

Let’s jump back real quick…

In the months leading up to the long-awaited album, Kanye teased few hints as to what we could expect — The most prominent nugget of information coming in the form of a tweet, alluding to both the album artwork, and a potential title.

Kanye West’s mother (Donda West) died November 10, 2007; one day after Jan Adams performed surgery on her, including liposuction, a tummy tuck, and a breast reduction. Her death was a result of complications occurring when Donda returned home after surgery, and while the official coroner’s report found “no evidence of a surgical procedure problem” leading to Donda’s death, Jan Adams told media that his reputation was tarnished irreparably.

The pictured mugshot of Adams was taken when he was arrested in 2006, after pleading no contest to a DUI. While unrelated to the death of Kanye’s mother, the charges came just a year before the death of Donda, and existed amongst a slew of infamy the doctor has accumulated in his career, including two malpractice lawsuits in 2001, and the eventual revocation of his medical license in 2014 due to to his failure in complying with the probation terms in regards to having alcohol-related convictions.

The screenshot of the conversation was with artist and frequent Kanye collaborator ‘Wes Lang’, suggesting the album’s title ‘Love Everyone’, and fan concepts began to spread.

After finding himself on the front page of every music blog on the Internet, Jan Adams penned an open letter to Kanye West, asking for his photo to not be used:

“Dear Kanye: Thank you for thinking of me for the cover of your next album. That is kind of you. I can truly say I have never been on an album cover before. I did do a product cover for Chanel Allure Cologne back in 2005 … but never an album cover,” Adams’ letter to Kanye West reads. “Unfortunately, I have to decline at this time, and I ask that you cease and desist using my photo or any image of me to promote your album or any of your work. I don’t want to seem ungrateful … I just think that if in fact this conversion to love is genuine on your part … then it’s inappropriate to drag the negativity of the past with it.”

Now we fast-forward.

It’s 24 hours before Kanye West’s listening party. An exclusive list of journalists, podcasters, bloggers, artists, photographers, filmmakers, producers, influencers, and creatives who at this point in time have no official album title, no official artwork, and no idea what to expect, all board private jets organised by Kanye and head to Wyoming.

Also on the way, is Kanye, presumably trying to figure out along with the rest of us, what the album is going to look like. With no formal release schedule and no official branding, art direction, or promotional imagery, Kanye’s untitled 2018 release was faceless to everyone until it appeared on streaming platforms later that day.

The only prepared visuals at the launch party came in the form of a range of exclusive merch, available for sale at the listening party, and photographed being sported by many of the attendees on the night, which later became available for purchase on Kanye’s website, selling a cool half-million of product in the first thirty minutes.

The small collection — designed by familiar Kanye West collaborator Wes Lang (mentioned above as the person Kanye had the ‘Love Everyone’ text exchange with) — features longsleeve tees and hoodies with “Wyoming” across the chest, “Jackson Hole” on the right sleeve and “Kanye West Album Listening May 31 2018” on the back.

And I kinda dig it. It’s got character. It has a voice.

You might expect that an artist like Kanye West who has worked with talent such as Wes, would have extended this effort into the visual aspect of his album artwork. You might expect that someone who boasts an appreciation for design, and has made a name for himself, however controversial, in the art world, would not let a product with his name on it face the public until it was fully considered, totally thought-out, and entirely scrutinised.

You are wrong. And now the world has this…

Despite the handwriting on the cover, the album was officially titled ‘ye’, and as a tweet from Kim Kardashian shortly after its release revealed, the artwork was indeed a last-minute conception.

Kanye shot the album cover on his iPhone on the way to the album listening party 😂🔥❤️🔥🙏🏼🔥

— Kim Kardashian West (@KimKardashian) June 1, 2018

And yeah, people hated it.

It’s difficult to pinpoint exactly why the artwork is so unanimously unlikeable. It represents so many different things to so many different people. For photographers it represents the post-Instagram world we live in, where everyone is a photographer, and #shotoniphone has completely devalued the expertise of professionals who have spent years honing their craft. For designers it perpetuates the idea that their time, effort, knowledge, and experience can be easily replaced with an app. For creatives in all industries it furthers the divide between professional and client, because “why are you worth that much?”, because “my son can do this on his iPad”, because “if I can do it myself, then why do I need you?”.

Personally, I hate it for all of those reasons, but mostly I just hate it because it’s ugly as hell.

Between the not-even-good, generic ass Instagram photo of some mountains captioned with a shitty quote about adventure and hashtags like #wanderlust and #lovelife that your friend Joshua took while he was camping, and the barely legible digital monoline scribble in a disgusting shade of ‘fuck how do I make it contrast’ alien-slime green, there’s literally nothing good about this.

It bothers me because the DIY attitude from Kanye in everything he does is labelled by so many as ‘genius’, while he hurts the very industry he’s trying to thrive in.
It bothers me because I firmly believe that album artwork should have purpose and meaning. It should act as a visual representation of the artistic expression of the music it is attached to. It should have value, and it should have enough of a story behind it to warrant at the very least a blog post because it’s been conceptualised, and visualised, and not just because it’s Kanye.

‘ye’ ain’t shit.

Anyway, artist Yung Jake and developer Tim Bauman have made a ye artwork generator called ‘Yenerator’, so you can make your own version of the album cover. Here’s some favs:

Kanye has also already updated tracks on the album, just weeks after it dropped, so who knows, maybe he’ll go back and fix the artwork soon. I’ll meet you back here if he does.

‘ye’ is available to stream on Apple Music, Spotify, etc.

If you’d like to read more about Wes Lang, there’s a really great in-depth interview/article about him here.

All photos shown from the listening party were taken by Ryan Dorgan for The New York Times (and as far as I know they were not shot on an iPhone).