When Kanye West shows up for breakfast in the central cabin at the ranch he recently bought near Cody, Wyoming, I ask how he’s doing. “Not good,” he says, turning to look at me. Not good? How come? “Because,” he says, “Kobe was one of my best friends.”
Of course. It’s the morning of January 29—72 hours after Bryant’s shocking death. Somehow, in my head, being out here under the limitless unfamiliar sky and rocky alien tundra has made the already unimaginable Kobe tragedy seem even less real. Still, it was a thoughtless question. I have known West since 2003 and have stayed in intermittent contact with him over the years, but it feels like an inauspicious start to what will become an intense series of experiences and conversations across five weeks and three countries.
The property—formerly Monster Lake Ranch, now rechristened West Lake Ranch—actually has two lakes across its nearly 4,000-acre expanse. The primary fishing lake has brown trout, brook trout, cutthroat trout, tiger trout, and rainbow trout. There are caves at the back of the property that have pictographs scrawled on the walls by indigenous tribespeople. This time of year, hundreds of antelope, mule deer, and a few elk appear on the property. The ranch is also home to colts and geldings, 160 cows, and approximately 700 sheep.
In its current state, the ranch appears pretty much the same as it did in October, when West bought it. There are some humble sleeping cabins clustered along the main driveway, two big barns, the eating cabin (with an upstairs lounge where West has installed a bare-bones studio as well as a whiteboard with “Yeezy Business Development” scrawled across the top), and out across the acreage, a couple of little un-winterized camp outposts. In fact, other than the name change, the only thing that seems to visibly mark Kanye’s new ownership are the vehicles: an army of Ford F-150 Raptor pickups, painted an intimidating aftermarket matte black, along with a fleet of 10 imposing SHERP ATVs (also matte-blacked-out), a handful of UTVs (matte black), and of course Kanye’s matte black tank.
So it isn’t until I get a Raptor tour from a ranch hand that the radical nature of what’s in store for West Lake Ranch begins to crystallize. We check out the sheep. We drive down by Monster Lake. Then finally we come upon what I’ll just call the Big Dig.
At the foot of West Lake Ranch’s grandest feature—a dramatic cliffscape that looks like it was created when one massive plate of earth crashed spectacularly up against another in some unknowable prehistoric era—is a tremendous excavation of terrain about the size of a sports arena. It is the ultimate spot for Kanye West to mark a big X and start digging. The next morning, while shooting pictures, we will climb up the back side of the cliff. “When we went up on the moon rocks and looked down,” Kanye says later, “you saw something the size of a spaceship.” Clearly this is not Wyoming ranch business as usual. This is the first sign that the strange future of this otherwise unassuming tract of land is already under way.
If you follow any of the Kanye West fan accounts on Instagram, there are a few laymen you might start to notice in the background of the photos—guys trailing West out of his Calabasas office or sitting behind him on private airplanes. These are the Yeezy architects. Over the course of following West for this story, I met up with him in Cody for two days, flew on a jet to Los Angeles, attended Sunday Service—one of the weekly performances by the new gospel choir he founded—in Hollywood the morning of the Oscars, rejoined him three days later at an oceanside house in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, and two weeks later, flew out to interview him in Paris the morning after his Yeezy Season 8 fashion show. The architects were within earshot of West every step of the way.
The exact nature of the project they are toiling over is ever evolving. In fact, since West has become publicly active again after the prolonged quiet period that followed his 2016 hospitalization at UCLA Medical Center for what was deemed a “psychiatric emergency” (a moment of adversity that, like an infamous car crash early in his career, West conceptualizes as pivotal), the correlation between all of his wide-ranging endeavors has been mysterious. Which is exactly what makes him so fascinating right now. “I definitely think there’s an alter ego,” West tells me. “And definitely Christ altered my ego.” The choir, the rebirth, the multi-thousand-acre land grabs, the move to Wyoming, the new Jesus-centric rap album, the return to Fashion Week in Paris… Where is it all coming from? And what does it all add up to? By a combination of instinct and design, West’s projects are always moving targets, but what became clear as we spent time together is that, in many ways, they are all linked to what is going on here in Cody. So: Is it a ranch where he will raise the sheep that will produce the wool for Yeezy clothing, as has been reported? Yes, sure, that’s a tiny part of it. But more than that, Kanye West is developing his boldest endeavors yet—and this is his test site.
By the time you read this, whatever state the plans were in when I was on the ranch in January has surely morphed. But his idea of the place remains. Over the course of our conversations, Kanye refers to West Lake Ranch as a “Yeezy campus” and “a paradigm shift for humanity.” He is focused on developing a new architectural language with input from the legendary American light-and-space artist James Turrell, the Belgian interior design wizard Axel Vervoordt, and the Italian architect Claudio Silvestrin. The three frequently share ideas, notes, and drawings with the Yeezy team, which are then worked over under the direction of West himself. “Whenever he’s in Cody, he’s in the office several times a day, always checking in,” says a staff architect named Zach Walters. “When he’s not here, it’s constant text messages, sending sketches, a lot of phone calls back and forth.”
As best I can tell, this global starchitect-level creative exchange evolved out of Kanye’s total overhaul with Silvestrin of his New York City apartment (completed in 2007), as well as his five-year collaboration with Vervoordt on the recently completed Kardashian-West family home in Hidden Hills. In 2016, before that project finished, West encountered the work of Turrell and had an epiphany: “We need to build a home,” he remembers saying, “where every room is a Turrell.” Which eventually took him to the artist’s epic land-art masterpiece in the cone of an extinct volcano near Flagstaff, Arizona, called Roden Crater. From there, West began to conceptualize a new kind of totally sustainable dome-shaped dwelling, complete with massive podlike rooms within the larger dome, the notable absence of corners and stairs, and an oculus open to the sky. Once West is satisfied with the new architectural language he is establishing, the design can be modulated and built anywhere—but the first completed dome will almost surely be built in Cody or Calabasas.
The majority of the drawings that I see during my time with West largely focus on massive single-family dome dwellings, although he is also developing a multifamily version—a retreat center, if you will, which will bring guests to West Lake Ranch to experience life inside the domes as well as performances by the Sunday Service Choir. “We see 100,000 students singing these compositions,” West tells me. “A circular 100,000-person amphitheater.” The Yeezy Season 8 clothes that he recently showed in Paris, meanwhile, are “servicewear” garments intended to be worn by the eventual Yeezy campus staff—cooks, nannies, housekeepers, etc.
“There’s a big sustainability aspect,” Walters says of the entire project. He and Malek Alqadi, another Yeezy architect, have just arrived at the ranch from the office in downtown Cody, where West has bought just under 12 acres of commercial property and is developing a Yeezy factory for his sneaker partnership with Adidas, which reportedly did around $1.5 billion in revenue in 2019 alone. Walters and Alqadi are carrying the morning’s drawings on printouts and tracing paper. “Kanye talks a lot about how our spaces are so cluttered,” Walters continues. “What does all this stuff mean for our mental health? How different would we be if we were in spaces where we could actually think and focus and be clear?” The next day, while sitting in his personal cabin, West will tell me, “I’m trying out a different cure than medication. Fresh air. Fun. Inspiration. Space.”
The idea is that once these things are developed and built, the thinking that shaped them will spread, just as his album 808s & Heartbreak reshaped the sound and emotional tenor of popular music, and his taste for a mix of streetwear, Ralph Lauren, and Louis Vuitton changed how you and I dress—and eventually reorganized the whole fashion industry. This is what West means when he says he’s creating a new paradigm for human living—the idea is to lead by example. “You get into a position and you become influential, and that becomes more of your goal rather than following your spirit and your anointing,” West says. “So look, I’m not telling anybody who they should vote on, what they should wear, where they should live. I’m doing me. If you just so happen to catch a photograph of me doing me, that’s what I was doing! I’m not doing nobody else in the photograph.”
At one point, West refers to the domes he and his team are developing in Cody as “V.2.” The first tests—the V.1 domes—were erected out of temporary plywood last year on a 300-acre parcel in Calabasas. “We had dinner in there every day for one or two months,” Walters says. “We changed [the plans] every single day. We built a waterfall shower, put moss on the floor, just tried everything to refine that language.”
Last September, West made CNN headlines when the Calabasas prototypes were torn down. “A big misconception is that the city made me tear down the domes,” West tells me. When I tell him that was exactly my conception—that the city had given him an order to remove the domes by a specific date, he says, “We were only making them to experience the proportion and fully planned to tear them down.” So what was the interaction with the city? “Like all of California, they got in front of the story. To say, ‘Oh, we took Kanye and tore down his domes.’ And you know, metaphorically, that’s what people have been trying to do since I was little. But as we can see now, they have not succeeded.”
The V.2 plans call for new domes at a very Wyoming scale. The idea is to build them, experience them, refine them. “And then,” says Alqadi, “to discuss how we can prefabricate and produce them in a sensible way, just like Kanye does with the shoes.” One idea West is exploring is using set designers instead of contractors to help build his dwellings. “Set designers could potentially be the Zara of homes,” he says.
The next afternoon, while I watch Kanye collaborate with his architects on a flight from Cody to Los Angeles, he offers up his phone to show me a rendering they’ve been working on of a massive portal entrance to an underground dome at the site of the Big Dig. “It’s perfect for skating,” West says with pride. “It’s super soothing to walk into.” As he trails off, beaming with his signature childlike wonder, I suddenly realize what he’s just said. When you say skating, do you mean skateboarding? I ask. “Yeah,” West says. “That was the original brief for this house: It has to be completely skateable.” The architects all nod along. So is it still skateable? “Oh,” Kanye says matter-of-factly. “It’s more skateable than ever.”
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January 30, 2020
The first of four interview sessions with West takes place in the upstairs of his personal cabin at West Lake Ranch during the lunch break of our cover shoot. There are two bedrooms, a kitchenette/dining area, and a small living room/lounge, with a simple recording-studio setup and couches.
GQ: I’m going to start recording, cool?
Kanye West: I think words are one of our lowest forms of communication. Music, sound, food, dancing are nonverbal forms of communication. We get so wrapped up into words. We got to make things that are speechless. We have to make things that leave people speechless. We have to make things to the level where no one can say anything.
Before we get to the architecture and homes, I want to understand what you’re up to now in terms of clothing development. What’s the latest?
We’ve been developing new products for two years now. I love having the opportunity to iterate on a piece of apparel. It’s therapeutic and it brings me great joy. There’s times when people used to tell me, “You shouldn’t work on clothes.” And I wouldn’t allow people to tear down my happiness. There’s times where, now that we’re doing couture again—
At Yeezy, you mean?
Yes. At Yeezy. At Kanye West. Whatever you want to call it. At my office. We’re doing couture. And I get to talk about a color palette for one hour. A lot of people would have suggestions: “Go take a jog. Go get some fresh air.” Colors are my fresh air. And every piece that I make, it’s not only something that I would wear—I would never make anything that you wouldn’t catch me in—they’re also art pieces. Everything I’ve ever done has been an art piece, because I’m an artist.
Whether it’s music or…
Any action. Any word. Anything. Even this conversation right now.
Sometimes it seems like you’re never done iterating. How do you know when a project is done? You even kept changing The Life of Pablo after you released it.
Nothing is ever done. That could be the new N.E.R.D. album: Nothing’s Ever Really Done.
How does that apply here in Cody? Because you’re developing these hugely ambitious multiyear projects.
The word ambitious is not allowed to be used around me. Kanye West is nothing if not ambitious. Because ambition, when I hear it, it says that it seems like it’s almost impossible.
As though it has far-fetched tucked into it?
Far-fetched! Yeah, it’s got far-fetched tucked into it. You would be amongst 100 or 200 people on the planet who are like the least racist white person possible. But it’s something about the word ambitious that makes me feel like I’m young Venus Williams doing the TV interview when her dad had to come and defend her. If you say, “Yo, it’s ambitious,” I need Venus and Serena Williams’s dad to run up and say, “How you going to say it’s ambitious? He said he was going to do it!” Have I ever not done anything I said I was going to do? I made it back from addiction, I beat the predictions, brought real to the fictions—that’s off the new album.
Does the fact that nothing is ever really done slow down the momentum of everything you’re creating?
Time and space are man-made constructs. That’s my answer to that question right there. Art never fully explains itself, and art is never fully done. Me being normal—that’s not even a true statement. You know what normal is to me? An act. I can act normal, and that’s me as Clark Kent. But artists are people who have embraced themselves as a superhero.
Sometimes, when I see you refusing to be Clark Kent in certain situations, I’m like, “Please just be Clark Kent for a minute! It will save you so much trouble!”
Yeah, I feel like there’s a job to be unwilling to make compromise. I like when people don’t have to compromise themselves to collaborate. Even as an artist, or as a composer, I compose the strongest talents and push them to be the maximum version of their superhero. People spend one day with me and they’re thinking about their own ideas outside of the box. If people spend years, they should be able to make it to the Super Bowl. To have blind faith is the ultimate confidence. Sometimes it could have felt like it was arrogant. And I think that the arrogance could have come from the fact that I wasn’t working for God, but I was working for my ego, which is like working for the devil.
I feel like this conversation that we’re having, I’m not having to use ego, because everything is defined. We’re on a piece of the 12,000 acres that I own in Wyoming. It’s different than me being inside a photography studio where previous to that there was somebody posing in their underwear, after that there’s somebody showing a backpack. There’s already a comfortability here, and then we’ve known each other for a long time, and then a lot of what sounded crazy or ambitious at a certain point has already been proven.
You seem really focused on architecture right now—developing and building these domes.
When I visited the Tadao Ando Art Island [in 2018], there were three James Turrells next to each other and I said, “We need to live in a Turrell.” The funny thing is, the first time I ever talked to Turrell on the phone was the night I ended the Saint Pablo Tour. And the last thing I ever said on that tour was, “The show’s over.” Which felt like my mom talking through me.
How so? Like she was telling you through your own voice to stop?
Yeah, and telling everyone else. Like, “My son is not just here to fill up these sports arenas. My son’s got something else to do.”
And now the ground out here is broken and the next phase has begun.
Yes. The ground between the two lakes is broken. Before, I was working with Axel Vervoordt on revitalizing [the West family home in Hidden Hills] that started as a McMansion and is now an iconic home that informs a lot of other people’s homes—just from my wife’s Instagram Stories. That was a language that Axel guided that would cap, for me, the end of the vicennium. I would just word it like that and let people Google.
I mean, I’m going to have to Google vicennium.
A vicennium is 20 years. So it capped the end of the vicennium. We begged Axel to redo the space. This is before I went to the hospital. I felt like I might go crazy, and we felt like having this wabi-sabi space might help deter that.
When you say “we,” do you mean you and Kim?
No, it was me and [longtime collaborator] Vanessa Beecroft. Vanessa literally said to Axel, “You must do this to save Kanye’s life.”
No pressure! And he said?
Yes! And now we’re really good friends. We were at James Turrell’s crater on my birthday—June 8, 2019—and Turrell designed an entire home and gave it to me on my birthday.
What did he physically hand to you?
A sketch. Axel was saying that James Turrell’s spaces are too pure for us human beings to live in, and I told Axel, “You’re not going to bully me on my birthday.”
Was being Kanye West a help or a hindrance in establishing a relationship with James Turrell and Axel Vervoordt?
A lot of people are celebrities because they’re vibrating at such a high energy. They’re just stars. I felt that me and James always had that connection. That first time I talked to him, I was literally screaming at the top of my lungs about how important it was for us to work together.
That didn’t send him running the other way?
Well, you know, not everybody’s a pussycat! That would be the Christian way to say it. Some people actually like energy.
January 30, 2020
As our first interview session winds down, West informs me that he actually has to leave the ranch—and our cover shoot—earlier than expected because he has to get back to Los Angeles for Kid Cudi’s birthday party. When I ask about the rest of our interview, he suggests we continue it on the two-hour plane ride.
So a few hours later, West drives the two of us in his Raptor straight from our last photo location toward the local private airport without so much as stopping to grab a bag. We pass the huge “WELCOME WEST” billboard along Highway 120, which was put up to mark the arrival of Yeezy to town—a literal sign of goodwill for the many local jobs and economic opportunities that the unforeseen arrival of this billion-dollar business promises. When we pull onto the airport tarmac and begin to approach a G5, he asks for my phone and shoots a video out the window while doing wide, fast doughnuts around the jet.
West spends the first leg of the commute going over drawings with the architects. A gentleman I have not yet met presents thought-starters for culinary gardens and orchards that will grow on top of and around the domes, feeding those who shelter down below. The conversation that follows begins 45 minutes into the flight and ends as we disembark the jet and get straight into West’s waiting matte black Lamborghini Urus.
West: One thing I thought was really amazing is that we were able to find a groove with the photographs today even as out of it as I was with the loss of Kobe. We were able to just go to the court and play ball. There’s one street that I drive to go from either my office or my home to the property where the domes were built. [Editor’s note: The street is Las Virgenes Road, the site of the helicopter crash that killed Kobe Bryant and eight other people just four days prior.] So now there’s no way for me not to be as determined as Kobe every time I drive down that street. It’s game time. There’s no move that we can’t make, or that we’ll wait to make. Everyone in our life is now a member of the Lakers on one of Kobe’s championship teams. The way that Kobe would say that we all have to come together and win this championship is the way I look at life now. To an infinite, other level.
This is a game changer for me. He was the basketball version of me, and I was the rap version of him, and that’s facts! We got the commercials that prove it. No one else can say this. We came up at the same time, together. And now it’s like, yeah, I might have had a reputation for screaming about things—but I’m not taking any mess for an answer now. We’re about to build a paradigm shift for humanity. We ain’t playing with ’em. We bringing home the trophies.
I want to understand the timeline of your rebirth as a Christian. Did it evolve out of Sunday Service—and can you tell me the story of the moment where you accepted Jesus?
I surrounded myself with the healing—the highest-level healing possible: singing about Jesus with my friends and family surrounding me [at Sunday Service] every single week. This was a place, contrary to popular belief about Christianity, of no judgment. I feel that the church that most people grew up on as kids had a negative environment. The greatest thing for me, as someone who’s given their life to Christ, is knowing that other people have that as an anchor and a form of healing, because you’re talking to a person that went to the hospital and back. Now you see the measured nature—being able to let the child take the driver’s seat but still be measured.
Do you attribute that to the anchor of faith?
Yes, because when you’re not in service to God, you can end up being in service to everything else. To live inside of sin, it’s going to cost you more than you can pay. You don’t want to continue to sin with no repentance. I understand that people feel that I’ve made some cultural sins. But the only real sins are the sins against God, and you don’t want to continue to sin against God.
Do you conceptualize yourself as having been born again?
I’m definitely born again.
You specifically highlighted that Sunday Service is a place without judgment. But what happens when you take it on tour and you’re headlining Christian festivals—
I feel that we all have sin, and when certain sins are worn more on our sleeves, it’s easier for Christians who are not Christ, but are human beings, to be able to channel judgment at what they see in front of them. The other thing is, if anyone claims to be Christian, they’re accepting accountability to other Christians. But people don’t realize that Christians are loud. That we have a right to righteous anger. That Jesus flipped tables. They think that all of a sudden you believe in Christ, so we’re not even supposed to speak up. And if we speak up, people will say, “Oh, you’re being judgmental.” And it’s like, Oh, now, because I’m Christian, I don’t even have an opinion any more? I’m Christian and I still have an opinion. But my opinion is based on the Word.
Let me phrase the question differently: The Kanye West that I have known over the years hates institutions and hates systems of control and will do anything to break out from being controlled. I’m wondering if that Ye will persist as you encounter more churches and religious institutions, which I, at least, conceptualize as systems of control.
You know, I see opportunity for creativity inside our faith. But let me—because I know you’re looking for a real answer to How does the guy who made Yeezus, which is a very punk album, make a Jesus Is King?
Well, not how do you make Jesus Is King, but how do you headline a Christian festival or interact with various churches? You having your own personal relationship with Jesus is clean and clear. But what happens when these other organizations come into play that are institutions of control?
I think yes, there are groups, as man does, that take the Word and use it to control other people. But as you said, I’m expressing my personal relationship with Christ. When I was not owning up to the maximum of who I could be as a dad and the maximum of who I could be as a husband, that kind of behavior, that kind of mentality, landed me in a place where I needed to be medicated.
Now all of that energy and that creativity that I have channeled and put on track comes from me surrendering to God and saying that everything is in God’s will. People can say in the same way, “Hey, why would you go to Paris if they didn’t want you in the fashion houses?” And that’s not going to stop my love for clothing, my love of creativity, my love of going to see the shows. And people could say, “What about these things that men have done with the word of Christ that were bad and, let’s say, over-institutionalized?” And I’m saying: That’s not going to stop my love for Christ. I’m going to keep on expressing what God has done for my life.
So this is an election year, and I’m curious how your faith plays into your thoughts on politics. To go back to when you put on the MAGA hat, how do you see that moment from where we are now, sitting on this plane, in January of 2020?
Both my parents were freedom fighters, and they used to drink from fountains they were told they couldn’t drink from, and they used to sit in restaurants where they were told they couldn’t eat from. They didn’t fight for me to be told by white people which white person I can vote on. [laughs]
What do you make of how that moment reverberated? Did it have the effect that you intended?
I didn’t intend for anything except to speak my mind and express how I felt. I have no intention other than to be free, and I don’t intend to be free—I just simply am.
What is the responsibility of celebrities who are able to move culture? There is this idea that you have to be accountable to people other than just yourself.
Yeah, usually you’re accountable to people that are in control of your check. And you’re accountable for whatever they deem you to be the face of—for the people that they are controlling through you. So that’s what celebrity in America truly means. Celebrities are scared! Celebrities don’t have the real voice. But I don’t want to diss the organization of celebrities. I don’t want to be sending shots at celebrities, because I am one. I know a lot of celebrities.
I don’t think that was a shot at people who are celebrities. I think that was an analysis of the way the system works.
What do you want me to say? This is America. One in three African Americans are enslaved, and we go more crazy if, you know, someone scores a touchdown. Modern-day mass incarceration is right in front of us, and if I even use the word slavery, I’m treated like I’m a white person talking about slavery. I remember when I became a billionaire I was told not to say out loud that I was a billionaire. What?
How did that go?
What? What is the point of being a billionaire if you can’t even say it out loud? We’re not completely free yet.
The one thing that seemed at odds with—
Oh, I got one for you.
Yeah?
“George Bush doesn’t care about black people” is a victim statement. This white person didn’t do something for us. That is stemmed in victim mentality. Every day I have to look in the mirror like I’m Robert De Niro and tell myself, “You are not a slave.” As outspoken as I am, and the position that I am in, I need to tell myself.
A lot of the reaction to you wearing the hat was “How could the guy who gave us the gift of ‘George Bush doesn’t care about black people’ now do this?”
Black people are controlled by emotions through the media. The media puts musicians, artists, celebrities, actors in a position to be the face of the race, that really don’t have any power and really are just working for white people. When it’s said like that, it’s kind of obvious, right? We emotionally connect to someone of our color on TV and feel that this person is speaking for us. So let me say this: I am the founder of a $4 billion organization, one of the most Google-searched brands on the planet, and I will not be told who I’m gonna vote on because of my color.
Now, if that speaks to you, cool. But I’m speaking for myself.
What was at odds to me about you wearing the hat is that “Make America Great Again” is about looking back. Whereas, to me, you are a perpetual forward thinker.
I buy real estate. It’s better now than when Obama was in office. They don’t teach you in school about buying property. They teach you how to become somebody’s property.
For the election ahead, do you plan to speak more about it, or are your interests elsewhere?
No, I’m definitely voting this time. And we know who I’m voting on. And I’m not going to be told by the people around me and the people that have their agenda that my career is going to be over. Because guess what: I’m still here! Jesus Is King was No. 1! I was told my career would end if I wasn’t with her. What kind of campaign is that, anyway? That’s like if Obama’s campaign was “I’m with black.” What’s the point of being a celebrity if you can’t have an opinion? Everybody make their own opinion! You know?
But there is an expectation that when you have a voice as powerful as yours, you can’t just express yourself for yourself. You have to think of other people.
Well, it’s good that we found out about all of those awards shows that partially led me to alcoholism. Whistle been blown, you know? Imagine My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy and Watch the Throne [being eligible] the same year and neither of them being nominated for Album of the Year. Imagine doing The Life of Pablo and driving down the road and never hearing none of those songs on the radio and your wife and your daughter are in the car.
Well, especially when it comes to Dark Fantasy, the record has been corrected. It’s one of the most lauded albums ever. Nobody remembers whether you did or did not win a Grammy.
But when Rolling Stones [sic] wrote it, they said you’ve probably already forgot about Jesus Is King. Meanwhile, “Selah” is my daughter’s favorite song. So Chicago ain’t forgot about it, Rolling Stones. This is the only album that has this level of production that can be played throughout the house like music was when we grew up. Yeah, we had spirituals about Christ that kept us alive on the slave fields. Then we got opportunity to make money by making R&B, rock ’n’ roll, which removed the name Jesus from the songs. It made it about falling in and out of love. Then the next frontier was to really make the song about how I’m going to kill somebody. Or how I’m going to be with somebody else’s wife. I almost fell into that trap.
So in a way, the sound of the music you’re making has evolved and modernized, but you’re putting the content back to where it began in American music: back into the church, back into faith.
Yeah, the church, where it’s spiritual.
January 30, 2020
It’s disorienting, to say the least, to suddenly be in L.A. In Wyoming it was winter. Yet somehow I find myself riding through Beverly Hills with West at the wheel on a balmy January evening. My clothes are still covered in ranch dust. My suitcase is back in a Cody hotel room. I do not have a fresh pair of socks or a toothbrush.
Our first stop is Kid Cudi’s birthday party. West parks the car across the front of Cudi’s driveway. When Cudi sees West walk in, he is overjoyed. There are a couple of bartenders setting up and a catering crew preparing food. Guests arrive, including Timothée Chalamet, Shia LaBeouf, and Travis Scott. Kanye shows LaBeouf an image on his phone of an Ugg-like women’s boot that he’s developing for Yeezy; Shia reacts so enthusiastically that he goes running out onto the patio by the pool. Meanwhile, Chalamet shows West a reference image of the Prada fit he’ll soon be wearing to the Academy Awards and says that West inspired him. We eat delicious miniature salmon fillets on disposable cocktail plates and shoot the shit until Kanye says, “You ready?” We Irish goodbye using a back hallway. When we emerge from the house, the Lamborghini has somehow been turned around and is now facing the way out, back down the hill.
Our next stop is Kanye’s office in Calabasas. He pulls the Lamborghini up to the curb in front of the door. It’s a Thursday night at around 8:30 or 9:00, and inside, 10 or 15 employees are still working at computers. West shows me a small plate holding what look like real rocks until he picks one of them up and squeezes it. It’s a prototype for the lotion bottles that will go in the bathrooms of the domes.
We then head up to the second floor and do a two-hour fitting with West’s head designers, who retrieve a staff member from downstairs to serve as a fit model and begin dressing her in various sample garments made of undyed muslin: an anorak that looks somehow both Inuit and stormtrooper, leggings with channels of padding that look almost topographical.
At West’s direction, every piece gets reworked, bunched up into odd new shapes and pinned in place while the designers take notes for the sample makers. A massage therapist arrives wearing a pair of Yeezy Wave Runners and a Rolex Daytona; West gets the treatment sitting up so he can continue to conduct the fitting. Clearly in his element, West offers utterances like “I like the language here,” “I like what this is saying,” and “I like the feeling of this” even as he constantly makes adjustments. Eventually he explains to me that the collection that he’s developing is “couture servicewear.” “I’m not designing for the heads of household,” West continues. “This is for the people really putting in work.” He pauses. “Let us not be mistaken for luxury.” As we’re walking out of the office at around 11 p.m., West says, “Welp, you might as well come check out the crib.”
When we exit the office building, I stop in my tracks. I could swear that the Lamborghini is once again facing the opposite direction. Am I tripping, I say, or was the car facing the other direction? “They turned it around,” West says, and climbs in the driver’s seat. Only then do I realize that we have not been alone since we landed at the airport five hours ago: Two additional Lamborghini Uruses are following us. They are painted matte black.
What follows are selections from the conversation we had over the course of the evening while driving around L.A., culminating with West giving me a midnight tour of the Hidden Hills home that he shares with Kim Kardashian West and their four children. Inside the living room, I compliment a white Anish Kapoor fiberglass sculpture, essentially an inverted dome, that is mounted to a wall. “Yeah, it’s an amazing piece,” West says. “And now we’re gonna live in one.” The night ends with the two of us standing in silence at the couple’s kitchen island. I drink a bottle of Voss water. Kanye has a bowl of Raisin Bran. By then we are both too exhausted to talk, but earlier in the night, there was plenty to discuss.
Let’s talk about the music you’re making.
I was thinking of not rapping again, because I rapped for the devil so long that I didn’t even know how to rap for God. Then one of my pastors told me, “My son just said that he would want a rap album about Jesus from Kanye West.” He didn’t say, “Kanye West, you should do this,” or “you need to do this.” He just told me something that a child said. And that one thing made the difference.
One day I was in my office working on the couture collection, and there was some Grey Goose in the fridge and I was just going to get a daytime drink, and I looked and thought, “Devil, you’re not going to beat me today.” That one statement is like a tattoo. I haven’t had a drink since I realized I needed to take it day by day, but I never owned up, or was even told, “Hey, you’re a functioning alcoholic.” People have called me a crazy person, people have called me everything—but not a functioning alcoholic. And I would be drinking orange juice and Grey Goose in the morning.
There was never a public perception of you as an alcoholic. Of course everybody knows the Hennessy-on-the-red-carpet moment, but there wasn’t a perception of “Kanye West has a drinking problem.”
Right? I really grabbed the drink to be able to even go to the awards show due to the information that everyone knows now. To say, “Okay, I can handle this.”
To be Clark Kent.
Yeah.
At the ranch today, we talked a lot about clothing you’re developing. Is Yeezy coming back in a big way? And is it in tandem with the development of the domes and everything happening at the ranch?
Yes. It’s in tandem. My vision—well, I prefer not to say the whole vision. It’d be like if I told you all the lyrics verbatim from the new album. I want people to come and visit Willy Wonka’s factory when it’s ready.
But Yeezy fashion apparel hasn’t gone away?
We’re there every day. Like Willy Wonka.
What about the new Yeezy basketball sneaker? What was the inspiration behind it?
I’m not going to give the exact codes of how we got there. I got kids! There’s pain that comes with those codes. And there’s more innovation to push and to drive.
Okay here’s another one: Can Nike retro the original Air Yeezy 1 and Air Yeezy 2 sneakers? And if they made a move toward rereleasing them, what would you do?
Man, I’m with everything.
What do you mean? You could be okay with that?
Man, anything that the kids want and the people want. People should be able to have what they want.
I’ve also noticed that you have studio setups in pretty much all of your workspaces. With everything you’re doing, when do you decide it’s time to record?
I just rap into my iPhone. Best microphone on the planet. Thirty, forty percent of The College Dropout was recorded on a [Roland] VS-1680. Twenty percent of Jesus Is King was recorded on an iPhone.
Your actual vocals on the album are just voice memos?
Yes. I first started doing that on Yeezus. Like *Closed on Sunday, you’re my Chick-fil-A—*that part is off the phone.
We talked about how Jesus Is King went to No. 1, but in my opinion people’s ears are still catching up to what you’re doing. Since Yeezus, I feel like you’ve been making music according to a different value system than the one that people are using to judge it.
What value system do people judge music by?
It has to do with their own expectations and the way a song by Kanye West is supposed to work for them.
I mean, “Follow God” was No. 1 [on both the Christian and gospel charts] out the gate and stayed there—and what’s the format on that?
So you’re saying the audience gets it and you’re not focused on the criticisms?
Nah. I’m just focusing on myself. [laughs] You know, music to drive by. Music for me. I actually think Sunday Service is like the Wu-Tang Clan of choirs.
Why?
Because when you first heard Wu-Tang, it sounded completely different. It sounded more aggressive. It even sounded—I think artists are so concerned with perfectionism. All these people say Dark Fantasy was this album that was so good, and then people didn’t like 808s, they didn’t like Yeezus. Dark Fantasy, I just made it to that level because people were saying my career was going to be over. I always felt like “Power” was my weakest first single that I ever had, because I felt like it was bowing to the expectations.
How so?
Just like, “Here’s the ultimate Kanye West song!” Versus “Love Lockdown”? “Can’t Tell Me Nothing”? “Diamonds”? “Follow God”? I always do the songs that people never heard before. But you had actually heard “Power” before. You heard “Crack Music.” You heard “Amazing.” You heard that song before! It’s just a mix of things. But when I showed you a photo of the anorak that we’re developing today, it’s like, Oh, okay—
“This is the start of a whole new conversation.”
Yeah. The anorak feels different. The Yeezy Slide feels different. The Foam Runner—you hadn’t seen that shoe before, either. And I like how all of these things now start to be spoken about as art pieces. A song, a Foam Runner, an interview.
March 3, 2020
Before I get to my final interview with West, which takes place the morning after his Yeezy Season 8 fashion show in Paris, I should back up and say that West is deep into recording the follow-up to Jesus Is King. Two weeks prior to rejoining him in Paris, I spent two days with West at a home owned by the designer James Perse, in Mexico, which Kanye had commandeered for a multiday working vacation. There I heard a number of new songs at various stages of completion.
To get to the Perse home, which feels like it is at the very edge of the earth, you drive to the shore down a long, sandy private road that leads over a series of dunes. The whole house is basically a minimalist open concrete patio under a massive thatched-roof palapa, an open-air infinity dwelling that gives way to an infinity patio that leads to an infinity pool that overlooks an infinity ocean. Pods of whales breach and blow streams of seawater directly in front of the house the entire time we are there. And Kanye has turned it into a multidisciplinary workshop.
Here’s what I mean: A music engineer sits in the open air at a small round table with a laptop and a pair of studio monitors just feet from the infinity pool and yards from the ocean. Meanwhile the architects hunch over laptops and tracing paper at a nearby picnic table. West’s music managers are loitering around, making calls and sending texts, having beats sent to the engineer while also planning West’s upcoming Sunday Service performance during NBA All-Star weekend in Chicago. One of Kanye’s pastors, an intensely chipper white guy named Adam Tyson, sits with a laptop in the sunken concrete rotunda beneath the palapa. All the while, Kanye is moving seamlessly among these various teams and advisers, operating the patio like it comes equipped with Siri: Engineer, play this song. Architects, pull up that rendering. It continues this way until late into the night.
Throughout my two days there, the music engineer, under Kanye’s direction, cues up various versions of new songs from a playlist of 54 tracks. At one point, the engineer plays a beat that has just come in. Kanye hears a horn part he likes at the very end of the track. “Give me a two-minute loop where the horns open up at the end,” West says, “and label it ‘Superman.’ ” Other songs are mellow and sweet, with singing and soulful samples. Then there’s a song called “Washed in the Blood,” with hard drums and Yeezus-like industrial horror noises that consistently shotgun-fires a rapping, dancing, moshing West across the concrete patio like it’s an arena stage:
Wash us in the blood
Wash us in the blood
Whole life selling drugs
Washed us in the blood
Holy Spirit come down
Holy Spirit we need you now
As with Jesus Is King, all of the songs, regardless of their sonic quality, are worship songs—Christian rap, if you will—of an altogether unprecedented sort.
At the end of two days on the infinity patio, I get back to the hotel and find that I’m badly sunburned. I fly back to New York; Kanye will soon release his latest Yeezy sneaker, the BSKTBL, and appear at the NBA All-Star Game in Chicago. Two weeks later, I text West about doing one last interview over the phone. The text that comes back reads: “Come to Paris bro. We got Yeezy Season 8 this Monday.”
The setting for the fashion show—the Oscar Niemeyer-designed headquarters of the French Communist Party—is chosen because it is the city’s closest approximation to the kind of domes that West is developing in Wyoming. The show culminates when West’s six-year-old daughter, North, performs a new song she made with her father.
The next morning at the Ritz hotel, over smoked salmon and eggs with coffee and grapefruit juice—and continuing in a chauffeured Maybach to Rick Owens’s showroom at the Palais de Tokyo, where we meet up with Kim Kardashian West and Owens’s wife, Michèle Lamy—West is a reflective combination of mellow and elated.
How are you feeling after your fashion show last night? Afterward, everyone was talking about North’s performance. Or about the coronavirus.
I’m just proud of my daughter. It felt—one conversation is about the end of the world. The next conversation is about the beginning. Really, that’s how it is out here! Two days ago, I sat there in the atelier [in Calabasas] as we all talked about the virus, and just thought: If we were to not be here anymore, all I can think is, What a wonderful life it is. You think about those movies where the world is ending and I just simply thank God for life. Thank God for all these experiences.
In Cody we talked a lot about getting out of cities. Into nature. A sustainable environment. Surrounded by family. You said to me, “How far are we from Paris Fashion Week right now?” Now that we’re here in Paris, and fear of the coronavirus is spreading, it makes even more sense—you would certainly be sealed off from the virus if you were living in a sustainable dome in Cody.
Perhaps.
So why come back to the center of the cultural vortex, to Paris?
Well, it’s interesting to see Michèle Lamy and Rick Owens be present. Like, Rick Owens, existing with us. I’m 42 years old. When Rick started doing the spaces and the furniture, he was probably my age. It’s a few people—the space program wasn’t made by itself. It moves me to be able to see Rick Owens in a setting of the past, which is our now. It makes me think: Life is a song that’s already been written, that takes your entire life to hear.
I believe that.
Something I’ve really been on in the past few weeks is the way we use memories to express ourselves. We’re taught that the color white is white when we’re super young. So now if I point at this tablecloth and say “white,” you agree with me. You’re agreeing with something that we both have been programmed to understand in the past so we can communicate in the future.
How does that inform how you create? Are you looking to break some of the programmed ideas that we are all supposed to agree upon?
The greatest freedom is to challenge the vernacular. Or add something to the vernacular. I saw [Alyx designer and former DONDA member] Matt Williams in the hotel lobby at the Mercer a couple weeks ago. Right when I saw him, I started communicating in, like, beep sounds.
Can you give me an example?
You know the beginning of the Bobby Digital song? Like that.
Did he beep back?
Good question. [laughs] We hugged and started using memories to attempt to communicate the future.
Matt posted a photo of the two of you with Virgil [Abloh] in New York. What did y’all talk about?
I don’t remember barely any of what we were talking about. But I remember the way it felt.
For most fashion brands, the goal is to show a new fashion collection, then produce it and sell it. To make revenue and grow a business. But last night, when talking to the press, you said showing the clothes, producing the clothes—it’s all just a creative exercise for you.
Yeah, because who programs us to have certain goals? I like to wake up and exist in a place of ideation every morning. But the way our human nature works, we can increase our productivity when there are checkpoints. I love the video game OutRun 2. Arcade version. I love hitting all the curves and getting all the straightaways. But I also love hitting the goals. Having a fashion show is a step into the goal of the inevitable, which is Armani meets Aman: food, clothing, shelter, space. Showing at an Oscar Niemeyer building gives the apparel some context. But I don’t exist in context. I exist in KAN-text. [laughs] The thing about the spaces that you’ve seen—once those are in place, certain ideas will feel more appropriate as it all joins together.
Do you think that one of the things you do is make really far-out ideas accessible?
I get to exist inside of my own mind and then have these moments where I can pull a piece of what’s in my mind out: Here’s an image from the living spaces we’re doing. Here’s a shot of what me and Axel did with the home over the past five years. Last night was like, This is what the housekeeper looks like in Kanye West’s mind.
Isn’t this what people have always come to you for—these little downloads that suggest where we’re headed?
Yes. Today everyone that’s looking has to sit through the questions that it presents: What just happened? Why did I just look at that? We know from the past ten years that, you know, when I wore the Pastelle jacket at the “Heartless” performance at the AMAs, it was awesome. But neither me nor anyone else around thought it was better than or even equal to what Hedi [Slimane] was doing at Dior. Or to what Nigo was doing then. But now that jacket would definitely be equal or better.
Because the context has shifted?
You know what it is? Farming. Farming ideas. Planting seeds. Fashion Week and the internet is the soil. This is the seed. If I don’t show, then I never plant the seed. But the thing is, people say, “This is Kanye West, and we love the huge trees that you have given us. We want to come to your garden to see your trees.” And when they come, they just see dirt.
You’re like, “Trust me, there’s seeds in there.”
I get so excited about the dirt.
Will Welch is the editor in chief of GQ.
A version of this story originally appeared in the May 2020 issue with the title “The Space Program.”
PRODUCTION CREDITS:
Photographs by Tyler Mitchell
Styling by Mobolaji Dawodu and Lily Markey
Grooming by Barry White using Dior Beauty
Tailoring by Tatyana Sargsyan and Nataliia Bober
Set design by Nicholas Des Jardins at Streeters
Produced by Connect the Dots
