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Music

What Can We Learn From Kanye West’s ‘Yeezus’ Trailer?

Nothing, really. But it gives a lot of meaning to his one-word tweets sent out in January.
Ryan Bassil
London, GB

As part of his promotional, yet non-promotional, campaign for Yeezus, Kanye West has decided to morph his website into a living and breathing artifact of a Geocities page circa 1999.

In case you haven’t already watched the video, here’s a link. If you’re super lazy, here’s an embedded one, too.

Now, wasn’t that great? If anything is going to accentuate excitement for a record that has yet to receive any CD quality listens, it’s going to be a thirty second teaser video that threatens to break the computer of anyone who isn’t running the newest version of Mac OSX.

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But, what does it all mean? To find out, we need to understand the Kanye psyche. And if the eyes are the window to the soul, then the Twitter feed of the megalomaniac rapper is the clap-activated sunroof to his intentions. So let's start there.

A Vevo teaser may paint a thousand words, but a low quality HTML embed video speaks one: minimalism. Which is a word that they teach in art school for people that need a grandiose namesake to describe contrived bullshit.

Here, Kanye is saying he could be anywhere in the world. He could be in Jakarta, inspired after the range of hyper-organic spices placed upon the local delicacy of Rawon Klewung. Or, could he be in Nauru, the worlds smallest island, reigning in inspiration from himself? No, I think he’s in Malibu. The birthplace of the worst drink ever created.

Before Kanye West uploaded a video to his website, the only thing on there was an image of his album cover. Which was simply an empty CD jewel case. Because, why decorate your CD case with a magnificent image of a cartoon angel making love, when you can leave it blank, and still shift at least a few more copies than any other rapper putting out a record this year.

Sure, people like to believe that the non-committal cover art of Yeezus offers up some sort of world-changing hypothesis, but in reality it’s all spelling out functionality. Kanye’s feeling the bite. He’s got a kid on the way. So, instead of paying someone to redesign his whole website, he’s simply slapped the video on top of what previously lay.

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In a similar way to how the music of Marvin Gaye has helped propagate offspring from the throes of failed marriages, Kanye West has acted as a catalyst to random words screamed at the end of rap bars. It all started back in the early days when Kanye would add a subtle little “huh” to the end of his bars. If you listen really closely, this one sounds like a fart.

Which is probably the reason why he’s gone overboard recently, making sure that his “huhs” are more “HUUUNH”. It’s the most soulful part of this video.

Near the end of the video, Kanye finishes his bar with the line “I Am A God”, which, I can safely assume, is taken from his song “I Am A God”.

Although the rest of the world cats on Yeezy for comparing himself to the likes of Steve Jobs, Aristotle and the two MJs, Kanye West is speaking the truth. If all it takes is for one interview with the New York Times to get the rest of the world listening to J’Kwon’s “Tipsy” again, then, yes, Kanye West is a God. Truth.

Look at Rick Rubin! He’s lounging on that chair like a Greek God, procrastinating between eating grapes and posing nude for a self-sculpture. Which, considering he’s around a rapper that many have a panic-attack over each time he tweets, is pretty awesome.

The conclusion of the video sees the troupe of mega-rich lads guffawing about a one-liner. “Stacking millions is more relatable [to the people]” says Rick Rubin. Which almost made me laugh until I realised that I don’t have enough money to buy lunch today.

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IN CONCLUSION

1. This video gives reason to Kanye’s slew of tweets in January.

2. Someone needs to make a nude sculpture of Rick Rubin.

3. Despite ragging on Kanye, I can’t wait till Yeezus is released.

Follow Ryan on Twitter @RyanBassil

Read more insightful articles on Kanye:

The Revolutionary Politics of Kanye West

On Listening To New Slaves With White People

Kim Kardashian Has Ruined Kanye's Career