Yeezus’s disciples came in droves to New York City’s Governor’s Ball to hear the Word from the hip-hop messiah’s sole concert performance before his Book of the Dead is released in eight days.
Music fans of all walks of life are winners with this final iteration of Kanye West, who since 2008’s revolutionary "808s and Heartbreak" has transformed from a cold android into a spiritual figure. The only losers are the other hip-hop artists dropping traditional rap albums this summer. A couple minutes of "Yeezus" has Kanye winning a game no one else knows the rules to. He's the hip hop Tywin Lannister.
It's critical to understand the development of Kanye's sound. His first three LPs took Kanye from a likable guy rapping over his trademarked "chipmunk soul" to an electronic landscape where he showed the public his true assholery. The death of his mother broke his already fragile psyche, releasing hours of exciting music and douchebaggery upon the land.
The transfiguration of the goofy Kanye West who sampled Luther Vandross to the nihilistic Yeezus who clears Marilyn Manson is the story of someone who has conquered Life and aims to vanquish Death. Kanye has the money, accolades, and the girl he told us he deserved during "Last Call." The only plausible next step for him is to become immortal.
Amos Barshad at Grantland attended Yeezus’s gathering and came away with this crucial takeaway:
Note that all traditional album campaign stratagems have been suspended; there has been no officially released single, no videos, no (as always) media access. Because all he wants to do is "put an album out for the summer that ya'll can rock to all motherfucking summer." During the point of the set where he traditionally "start[s] complaining about shit," he let us know: "We didn't drop a single to radio, we ain't have no big NBA campaign, we don't even have a cover. We only made real music. Back then we used to go work on an album for like 5 months, then we'd come back and wait for the label to pick the perfect time to release it." Now, though, "I ain't gotta wait till when the label tells me I'm gon' sell more records. Cause at this point I don't give a fuck about outside opinion." Of course, the anti-campaign is also a campaign.
The only opinions that mattered to Kanye, those of his late mother Donde, are no more.
We grant immortality to musicians by the timelessness of the their music. How else do you explain the shared opinion that Kurt Cobain, Biggie, Tupac, Bob Marley, and Elvis are all chilling in some mansion in Cuba? As Kanye strives to defeat Death, "Yeezus" has the potential to issue him a set of keys to that mansion.