The Complete Thirteenth Season
For some artists, a blown deadline is a problem. For Kanye West, it’s a marketing alternative.
After West missed a self-imposed deadline a month ago to launch his latest album, the gospel-influenced „Jesus Is King,“ his fans went on high alert, tracking his every move and speculating about when, or whether, the album would ever come out. West additional stoked the music and superstar press by previewing the album at a series of public occasions, at which he portrayed the venture as a major turning level.
Feeling rejuvenated. @kanyewest new album the mood rest of 2019
— Miss Optimus Prime (@lauraleeTRB) October 25, 2019
„This album has been made to be an expression of the gospel and to share the gospel and the truth of what Jesus has performed to me,“ West instructed a Manhattan crowd late final month, after his first promised launch date got here and went. (To forestall leaks, fans’ phones had been secured in locked pouches.) „When I consider the goodness of Jesus and all that he does for me, my soul cries out.“
Thursday, Apple’s Beats 1 online radio station broadcast a rambling two-hour interview in which West declared himself „unquestionably, undoubtedly, the greatest human artist of all time,“ spoke concerning the roots of what he stated was a „full-on pornography addiction“ and referred to as his dispute with Drake „painful,“ but barely talked about „Jesus Is King.“ West then tweeted that the album was coming at midnight … solely to overlook that deadline, too. (He was nonetheless working on a few songs, he said at 1:18 a.m.)
Around noon on Friday, „Jesus Is King,“ his ninth LP, lastly appeared on streaming providers.
But the album’s chaotic rollout, and West’s evolving persona, may be as vital as the music itself. It’s the newest in a series of strange and fascinating spectacles that began three years in the past with „The Life of Pablo“ — an album he first teased at a style occasion at Madison Square Garden, then tweaked and revised even after it had been launched to the public.