Yeezus

''Yeezus'' is the sixth studio album by American rapper and producer Kanye West. It was released on June 18, 2013, through Def Jam Recordings and Roc-A-Fella Records. West gathered a number of artists and close collaborators for the production, including Mike Dean, Daft Punk, Noah Goldstein, Arca, Hudson Mohawke, and Travis Scott. The album also features guest vocals from Justin Vernon, Chief Keef, Kid Cudi, Assassin, King L, Charlie Wilson, and Frank Ocean.

Fifteen days before its release date, West enlisted the help of producer Rick Rubin to strip down the sound of ''Yeezus'' in favor of a more minimalist approach. The album has been characterized as West's most experimental and sonically abrasive work. It draws from an array of genres, including industrial, acid house, electro, punk, and Chicago drill. West's unconventional use of samples is also contained, as on "Blood on the Leaves", which contains a sample from Nina Simone's 1965 rendition of "Strange Fruit".

The physical CD edition was released in a clear jewel box with only a strip of red tape and sample credits. Initial promotion included worldwide video projections of the music and live television performances. West released two singles from the album; "Black Skinhead" in July 2013 and "Bound 2" the following month. The release of ''Yeezus'' coincided with that of rapper J. Cole's album ''Born Sinner'', which was moved back a week to coincide with ''Yeezus'' release, leading to speculation about which release would sell more copies.

''Yeezus'' received widespread acclaim from critics, many of whom named it among West's best work and commended its brash direction, though public response was divided. The album was nominated for Best Rap Album at the 2014 Grammy Awards. The album debuted at number one on the US ''Billboard'' 200, selling 327,000 copies in the first week of release, while also topping the charts in Australia, Canada, Denmark, New Zealand, Russia and the United Kingdom. It has since been certified double platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), and was named by several publications as one of the best albums of the 2010s, including ''Rolling Stone'', who later included it at 269 on its 2020 list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.

Background

Following the release of his fifth studio album, '' My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy'' (2010), Kanye West collaborated with longtime friend Jay-Z on ''Watch the Throne'' (2011). In July 2012, producer No I.D. revealed that he had been working on West's sixth solo studio album (and seventh overall) and that it would be released after '' Cruel Summer'' (2012), a collaborative compilation album between members of West's record label GOOD Music. For ''Yeezus'', West enlisted several collaborators, including Kid Cudi, Charlie Wilson, S1, The Heatmakerz, Mike Dean, Hudson Mohawke, Skrillex, Young Chop, Chief Keef, Frank Ocean, Odd Future, Travis Scott, The-Dream, Cyhi the Prynce, Malik Yusef, King L, John Legend, James Blake, RZA, Mase, and Pusha T. The album features additional vocals by Justin Vernon, Frank Ocean, Kid Cudi, Chief Keef, King L, Assassin, and Charlie Wilson.

West was influenced primarily by minimalist design and architecture during the production of ''Yeezus'', and visited a furniture exhibit in the Louvre five times. A single Le Corbusier lamp was his "greatest inspiration". West worked closely with the architect Oana Stănescu, and took "field trips" to Le Corbusier homes. Fascinated by Stănescu's comments on the unusual and radical nature of Corbusier design choices, West applied the situation to his own life, feeling that "visionaries can be misunderstood by their unenlightened peers". West also met with architect Joseph Dirand and Belgian interior designer Axel Vervoordt, and had "rare Le Corbusier lamps, Pierre Jeanneret chairs and obscure body-art journals from Switzerland" delivered to the loft. West also wanted a deep hometown influence on the album, and listened to 1980s house music most associated with his home city of Chicago for influence. Alejandro Jodorowsky's '' The Holy Mountain'' was also an inspiration for the album and its ensuing tour. The album was originally titled ''Thank God for Drugs''.

Recording and production

In 2012, West began recording his sixth studio album with collaborators, including No I.D. and DJ Khaled. The first recordings were held in January 2013, in the living room of his personal loft at a Paris hotel, referred to in the album's credits as the "No Name Hotel". West kept compositions simple in order to hear the tracks more clearly; too much bass or complexity would simply overpower the room's poor acoustics. The beats emanating from the loft space, which sometimes lasted through the night, provoked complaints from neighbors. Reports emerged that he and his then-girlfriend Kim Kardashian had moved to the loft in order for West to begin work on the album.

The atmosphere in the studio was described by contributor Evian Christ as "very focused", and West once again brought in several close collaborators. Producer Hudson Mohawke noted the inclusive "group" atmosphere of the sessions, in which multiple contributors would work on similar pieces, with different elements ultimately selected from each. All involved were given a song to work on and return the next day to sit and critique, a process Anthony Kilhoffer compared to an art class. Producer Arca described being initially asked to send West music, noting that she purposefully sent perhaps the strangest stuff she had, with West happening to be excited by it. Describing West's collaborative style, Arca stated:

It was a lot of coming up with design, like solving riddles. If the song called for something aggressive, it was up to three or four people to design what in their head was the best solution for that aggression in that moment. Everyone would approach it in completely different ways, and ultimately, it would all be edited by Kanye himself.

Determined to "undermine the commercial", several tracks were left off the finished product that were deemed too melodic or more in line with West's previous material. West set parameters regarding sound and style, insisting that there be no "bass wobbles" reminiscent of dubstep. The album's recording process was described as "very raw" by Thomas Bangalter of the French electronic duo Daft Punk, who produced four songs for the album, adding that West was "rapping – kind of screaming primally, actually". While previous albums, particularly ''Dark Fantasy'', took considerable time in the studio, ''Yeezus'' was described by Kilhoffer as "the fastest record we ever made". In May 2013, Def Jam executives listened to the "final product", (only later to be changed) describing the album as "dark". American musician Travis Scott opined that the snippets he'd heard of ''Yeezus'' were from the year 3000 and recalled "crazy memories" from being around West during the recording of it.

'' W'' writer Christopher Bagley reports that West's creative process often bordered on perfectionist. In March 2013, West described the album to Bagley as near completion, only to revise this statement one month later to the album being "only 30 percent complete". West made several last-minute alterations to ''Yeezus'', enlisting the co-founder of Def Jam Recordings, Rick Rubin, as an executive producer for additional recording mere days before its release; changes included re-recording whole songs and rewriting entire verses. The rough cut West played Rubin ran nearly three and a half hours long. West's orders to Rubin were to take the music in a "stripped-down minimal direction", often removing elements already recorded. In a September 2013 interview with radio DJ Zane Lowe, West said of Rubin that "he's not a producer, he's a reducer".

For several days in late May and early June 2013, West and a "rotating group of intimates, collaborators and hangers-on" holed up at Rubin's Shangri-La studio in Malibu in service of completing the record. Rubin thought it impossible to meet the deadline and all involved ended up working long hours with no days off in order to complete the record. West had intended the album be 16 tracks until Rubin suggested cutting the album down to fewer tracks, from 16 songs to 10, saying the others could be reserved for a follow-up. Rubin gave as example "Bound", which was "a more middle of the road R&B song, done in an adult contemporary style" before West decided to replace the musical backing with a minimalistic sample, "a single note bassline in the hook which we processed to have a punk edge in the Suicide tradition". Two days before the album had to be delivered to the label, West wrote and sang the lyrics to two songs while also recording the vocals to three others in just two hours.

Music and composition

According to ''Chicago Tribune'' critic Greg Kot, ''Yeezus'' is a "hostile, abrasive and intentionally off-putting" album that combines "the worlds of" 1980s Chicago acid-house, 2013 Chicago drill music, 1990s industrial music, and the " avant-rap" of Saul Williams, Death Grips, and Odd Future. ''The Independent'', Mass Appeal, and ''The Village Voice'' described it as an experimental release, while Meagan Garvey of The Outline described it as West's "industrial album". ''Rolling Stone'' described it as "an extravagantly abrasive album full of grinding electro, pummeling minimalist hip-hop, drone-y wooz and industrial gear-grind", while ''Vulture'' called it a "punk rap opus", and ''Rolling Stone'' called it an " industrial-rap opus". ''Slant Magazine'' critic Ted Scheinman described the album as "built on alien, angular beats, slowly morphing drones and sirens, abrupt periods of silence, and a pulse-quickening style of delivery from Yeezy himself", writing that West reconceives the "notion of what kind of music (or noise) can underpin hip-hop". According to Charles Aaron of ''Spin'', ''Yeezus'' is "a hip hop album, not a rap album", because of how its sounds and subject matter are assembled together, and although listeners can hear "'punk' or 'post-punk' or industrial'" throughout, "hip-hop has always been about noise and dissonance and dance music as agitation". The album also incorporates elements of industrial and trap music. The record "most closely resembles" 1990s industrial rock, during which the genre had a significant pop culture impact, with artists such as Nine Inch Nails, Ministry, and Marilyn Manson gaining success. The industrial scene created a "vast global underground community", and ''Esquire'' notes that one of its epicenters was in Chicago, where West was raised. Evan Rytlewski of '' The A.V. Club'' characterized its opening series of songs as electro and industrial hip hop.

Referencing the sound of ''Yeezus'' in September 2013, West stated: "For me as Kanye West, I got to fuck shit up... I'm going to take music and try to make it three dimensional... I'm not here to make easy listening, easily programmable music". At the same time, he viewed himself as artistically being "here to crack the pavement and break new ground, sonically". West would later go onto describe the sound of the album as "a protest to music". West elaborated, claiming that he "was like 'I'm gonna take my ball and go home'".

''Yeezus'' is primarily electronic in nature, and boasts distorted drum machines and synthesizers that sound like they're malfunctioning, low-resolution samplers that add a pixelated digital aura to the most analog sounds. To this end, the album incorporates glitches reminiscent of CD skips or corrupted MP3's, and Auto-Tuned vocals are modulated to a point in which they are difficult to decipher. ''Esquire'' cites "On Sight" as an early example of the album's connection to electronic music, citing its "droning synthesizer tone", which is "modulated until the signal starts throwing off harshly treble-heavy spikes and begins to clip, as if it were overloading a digital audio processor".

''Yeezus'' continues West's practice of eclectic samples: he employs an obscure Hindi sample on "I Am a God", and a sample of 1970s Hungarian rock group Omega on "New Slaves". "On Sight" interpolates a melody from "Sermon (He'll Give Us What We Really Need)" by the Holy Name of Mary Choral Family, although the track originally sampled an old vocal track from the original recording. As late as a week prior to release, lawyers were forced to track down the choir director and members of the choir on the South Side of Chicago in order to get clearance for such a sample. Def Jam executives were significantly worried enough the deal would not be in place in time for the record's deadline, and producers re-recorded the vocals with a new choir as the sample could not be cleared in enough time. "Bound 2" features heavy soul music samples and has been described as the only song on ''Yeezus'' which recalls the sound of West's early work. "Bound", a 1971 song by American soul group Ponderosa Twins Plus One from their album ''2 + 2 + 1 = Ponderosa Twins Plus One'', serves as the primary sample used in West's track.

The album's second track "Black Skinhead" has alternately been called an industrial hip hop song and "a galloping punk-rap manifesto". "I Am a God" was inspired by a "diss" from a major fashion designer, who informed West of his invitation to a widely anticipated runway show on the condition he agree to not attend other shows. " I'm in It" began with a different sample and melody, but West removed the sample and Rubin edited the track down from a six-minute arrangement. "Blood on the Leaves", which samples Nina Simone's 1965 rendition of "Strange Fruit" and was the first track in the first incarnation of the track list, is an example of West's signature dichotomy in which he melds the sacred and profane. "Strange Fruit", first recorded by Billie Holiday in 1939, brought the lynchings of black Americans to a "startling poignancy", creating "one of the most towering, important songs of the 20th century". West's anthemic re-telling instead details an MDMA-fueled hookup and the perils of fame.

Promotion and release

On May 1, 2013, West used Twitter to post a single message reading "June Eighteen", leading several media outlets to speculate that the post referred to the release date of West's upcoming album. On May 17, he began promotion of the album by unveiling the previously unreleased song "New Slaves" through video projections in 66 assorted locations. The following day, West appeared on the American late-night live television sketch comedy show ''Saturday Night Live'' and performed the songs "New Slaves" and "Black Skinhead". West subsequently revealed the album's cover and title, ''Yeezus'', on his official website. Fellow rapper Kendrick Lamar offered his opinion on the title in an interview that same month, stating: "That's crazy, I want to hear that. That's that creative Kanye genius stuff out the box". He also claimed that the album's "whole marketing scheme is crazy" and "very inspiring". The iTunes Store made ''Yeezus'' available for pre-order on May 20, but the listing was subsequently taken down for unknown reasons. On May 29, A.P.C. founder Jean Touitou unveiled an advertisement for ''Yeezus'' which stated that the album would not be available for pre-order. Speaking about the album's minimal promotion, West stated: "With this album, we ain't drop no single to radio. We ain't got no NBA campaign, nothing like that. Shit, we ain't even got no cover. We just made some real music".

In May 2013, American rapper J. Cole called West "one of the greatest artists of our generation" via Twitter, with him following this by tweeting: "Which is exactly why I'm moving my release date up. ''Born Sinner'' June 18th". He explained releasing his second studio album ''Born Sinner'' on the same day as ''Yeezus'' during an interview that same month, saying: "I'm not going to sit ere.. I worked too hard to come a week later after Kanye West drops an amazing album. It'd be like, 'Oh and J.Cole dropped too, a week later.' Nah. I'm going to go see him on that date. He's the greatest". The next month, J. Cole gave further context, claiming for the coinciding release to be "more about the statement" than the sales. J. Cole elaborated on this, admitting that the music being competed over "is art" and he "can't compete against the Kanye West celebrity and the status that he's earned just from being a genius", though stated: "But I can put my name in the hat and tell you that I think my album is great and you be the judge and you decide". A lyrical reference to releasing on the same date as West is included in the track "Forbidden Fruit" from ''Born Sinner''.

The physical CD edition of ''Yeezus'' was released in a clear jewel box with no album artwork, reflecting the minimalist tone. The packaging consists of little more than a piece of red tape and a sticker affixed to the back, with sample credits and the album's UPC. Other versions of this release have different colors of stickers, with green, yellow and orange being some of the other colors. The front is affixed with a Parental Advisory label. ''The Source'' pointed out a resemblance between the ''Yeezus'' CD packaging and a packaging concept designed for the single "Crystal" by the English band New Order in 2001. In a 2016 BBC interview with Annie Mac, West explained the album cover; "The whole concept for the ''Yeezus'' album is that we're not going to be using CDs in the future and since this is the last time we're going to see it, this is an open casket for the CD."

Def Jam confirmed in late June 2013 that "Black Skinhead" would be serviced to American radio as the album's first single on July 2, 2013, and that a music video for the track was being produced. It was officially released to radio in the United Kingdom on June 19. The song peaked at number 69 on the US ''Billboard'' Hot 100 and 34 on the UK Singles Chart. In August 2013, it was revealed that "Bound 2" would be released as the second single from ''Yeezus''. "Bound 2" features vocals from American soul singer Charlie Wilson and incorporates numerous samples into its production, including prominent elements of the song "Bound" (1971) by soul group Ponderosa Twins Plus One. "Bound 2" received general acclaim from music critics, who referred to the song as one of the highlights of the album and compared its soul sample-based production to West's early work from his debut studio album ''The College Dropout'' (2004). The song has since peaked at number 55 on the UK Singles Chart. In November 2013, producer Hudson Mohawke revealed that "Blood on the Leaves" would serve as the album's third single. West subsequently made the announcement in an interview on New York's 92.3 NOW.

On September 6, 2013, West announced The Yeezus Tour, a North American tour to take place between October 19 through December 7, 2013; two months prior to West's announcement, ''Yeezus'' co-producer Mike Dean had announced a tour for the album. The tour was marketed as his "first solo tour in 5 years", and featured Kendrick Lamar, Pusha T, A Tribe Called Quest

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