KANYE4

Miss info: There’s been a trickle of leaked vines and noisy club previews, but nothing really gave me a real sense of Kanye’s new album like tonight’s last minute Yeezus listening session in the loading dock of Milk Studios in NYC’s meatpacking district. In fact, I’m scrubbing all the rest out of my memory. Hearing “New Slaves” in pitch darkness amplified the beat’s catchiness and equalized all the celebs in the house with the journos, the giraffe-like models, the label honchos, the fashionistas, the DONDA crew, and all the fellow artists (Jay-Z, Beyonce, Q-Tip, Timbo, Joell Ortiz, Busta, and more).

Without over-analyzing the songs, the music was right at home in tonight’s post-internet Warhol Gif Factory atmosphere. Frenetic electro beats, mash-up culture references, and digitized choruses. Also, it just seemed like Kanye was in a happy place (Ye told me that he actually designed that ingenious jacket-backpack he had on at Governor’s Ball) and maybe he truly feels as free from traditional industry pressure as he says in his recent #kanyerants.

Check out exclusive HQ photos and video after the jump…

“If you ever see somebody standing next to me, know that they’re better than me at something.

“We didn’t give a fuck 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.

Creative directors: Matt Williams, Virgil Abloh, and the whole team, Don C, Ibn, all the Been Trill Family and RSVP family.

From Daft Punk working on like 3-4 joints on the album. The first joint, “Onsite,” “I Am a God,” “Black Skinhead.” Mike Dean, Travis Scott, working on the album. Hudson Mohawke, Arca. Last, but not least that came and helped bring this whole shit together, that executive produced the album with me and the family, is Rick Rubin coming in and like finishing up the whole shit for us, which is legendary because everything we did on this project, everything I did, like when we released ‘Numbers on the Board,” from the video, to the no artwork, to the style of the song and everything, I was like ‘what would Rick Rubin do.’ What was his Def Jam shit that they would do because I remember Rick even saying, he said ‘when we did Def Jam we really wasn’t feeling like we was in competition with nobody body because our shit was so direct… ‘where we at right now?’ We in the middle of the city right now, open to the muthafuckin’ streets and nobody is shuttin’ down shit while we make real music.

So I had to go to the god Rick Rubin and play him my shit, ask him questions and allow him to take this project to an entirely new level. And he made a lot of great decisions at the end and pulled it to a new level.

I wanna explain something about the title Yeezus, simply put West was my slave name and Yeezus is my god name.”

Vulture also has a great recap of the event with album details

ALL PHOTOS BY MIKEY FRESH

Previously:
Kanye West Celebrates 36th Birthday with Nas, Jay-Z & Beyoncé (Photos)
Listen to a High Quality Snippet of Kanye West’s “New Slaves”
Kim Kardashian and Kanye West Are Expecting A Baby Girl