Last night, Kanye West was in amazing spirits as he hosted a listening party for his new album, Yeezus on the loading dock of Milk Studios in New York City. Despite the last minute invites that were sent out hours beforehand, the event was packed out with media folks who were itching for a real taste of the new album, and celeb guests that included Jay-Z, Beyonce, Busta Rhymes, Timbaland, Tyson Chandler, DJ Khaled and Theophilus London.
Here’s the skinny: The atmosphere was interesting. We were all crammed inside of an open loading dock where studio rentals are transported in and out of the studio. It was pretty neat to see visuals from his “Black Skinhead” and “New Slaves” being projected off of the building across the street. Since it was somewhat outside, you could literally hear the album blasting at astronomical levels throughout the whole meatpacking district.
Kanye cleared up that Yeezus title for anyone who thinks it’s blasphemy. He said, ‘I wanna explain something about the title Yeezus, simply put, West was my slave name and Yeezus is my god name.” On the track “I Am A God,” he also raps “Even though I’m a man of God. My whole life in the hands of God. See y’all better quit playing with God” and “I know he the most high, but I’m a close high.”
While chatting about the new project, Yeezy seemed very passionate about letting his music speak for itself as well as not being pressured into the confined box of what’s hot in music today. He said, “I gotta new strategy it’s called no strategy and I gotta way to sell more music, its called make better music.” He also added, “We didn’t give a f-ck about what nobody said from the outside looking in. We just wanted to make the best product possible and this is just the beginning of an entire new mentality about how to make music.”
Catch a few pics and more scoop below:
Kanye had Jay-z and a few folks from his Donda team standing next to him when he made this profound comment, “If you ever see somebody standing next to me, know that they’re better than me at something.”
I love Bey! I was two seconds from being on my “Hey Girl!!!” when she walked by before realizing how embarrassing it would have been if she snapped back, “Who The F-ck are you??” or even worse, getting karate chopped by Julius. [Photo from Twitter]
Theophilus London was there!
Kanye seemed really happy the entire night. We love happy Kanye.
Overall, my thoughts on the album have changed a little. With some of the leaks that have made their way online, I initially felt as though the music was way too dark for my taste [the kind of dark that will make you want to jump off of a cliff], but now I feel as though some of the tracks were meant to provoke a conversation and discussion around the system and industry politics while others are a product of Kanye being eager and willing to experiment with new sounds. He revealed that he worked with electronic duo Daft Punk on three to four records, which could seem somewhat left field from some of his earlier albums (Although I almost forgot he sampled them on ‘Stronger’), but his core fanbase extends far beyond just Hip Hop.
The most memorable track out of the 10 records was a song that samples C Murder’s “Down For My N-ggas,” which Kanye ran back twice.
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