The rapper who was once one of the most meticulous public figures of his generation finds himself, just five months after Donda’s chaotic release, embroiled once again in a messy rollout. But as has been a recent trend with him, it’s the execution that puzzles. It even makes sense that Ye tees up the launch of the Stem Player with exciting new music of his own. He is not the first artist to gripe about the diminished streaming revenue, and he is not even the first to build a platform for his own music (shoutout GhostTunes).
It’s time to take control and build our own.”įair enough.
#YE SO GAY MEME FREE#
It’s time to free music from this oppressive system. The follow-up apparently will not grace the regular streaming networks, because, Ye says, “Today, artists get just 12% of the money the industry makes. But now the player will be the sole home for his latest release. The device was actually launched in August 2021 and shipped preloaded with Ye’s last album, Donda. Early last week, he announced that his 11th album, Donda 2, would be available only on something called a “Stem Player,” ostensibly a proprietary smart speaker that lets users play with different elements of the song while listening, for a cool $200. He asks, “Tweet that?” He laughs and adds, “I need a translator real bad sometimes.” In seven words, Ye sums up his whole career.Īs of this writing, Ye's recent behavior once again needs translating. There is an old trust there, a familiar intimacy. He has a history with the man who’s behind the camera for much of the documentary, Clarence Simmons, better known as Coodie, who made Jeen-Yuhs with his directing partner, Chike Ozah. Ye clearly has other things to worry about.īut if Ye is aloof, he is not quite indifferent. You get the sense that the presence of the camera is neither hostile nor welcome. The camera captures all of this, but West, who legally changed his name to Ye in August, is distant. He then takes a break for a quick chat on speakerphone, making decisions about his ill-fated presidential run and sorting out paperwork for the very documentary you’re watching. We are treated to fly-on-the-wall footage of West laying down a verse in the Dominican Republic in 2020. There’s something awkward about the way Jeen-Yuhs: A Kanye Trilogy, the three-part Netflix documentary about Kanye West, begins.