Why Kanye went way out West
MORAN, Wyo. — At around 10 p.m. Thursday at the Diamond Cross Ranch here, Chris Rock stepped up on a small platform, looked out over a few hundred people huddled around a wildly flickering bonfire, and leaned in to his convocation.
“I touched a moose!” he exclaimed, “and the moose said to me, ‘Hey, there’s a lot of …’” — well, let’s just say people who don’t ordinarily gather on a ranch in Wyoming. He nodded toward the fire. “Tomorrow night that will be a cross,” he deadpanned.
Hip-hop, he said, is “the first art form created by free black men” (though jazz would probably quibble with that characterization). He continued, “No black man has taken more advantage of his freedom than Kanye West.”
On and off for the past several months, West has been working on new music in Wyoming — much like the Hawaii sessions that gave birth to “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy” — flying in collaborators and basking in nature’s splendor. West has promised several albums from this work: Pusha-T’s “Daytona,” which was released last week; new projects from Nas and Teyana Taylor; and two
albums from West, one with Kid Cudi and one solo.
His own album, titled “Ye,” West’s eighth, was unveiled here Thursday, almost immediately after its completion. The setup was sparse and dramatic: a wide-open field, huge stacks of speakers arranged in a circle around the bonfire and cameras filming every moment for a livestream. Off in the distance, several horses displayed no apparent interest in the proceedings.
A vast majority of the audience was flown in for the occasion: West’s wife, Kim Kardashian West; representatives of West’s label, Def Jam; radio DJs and programmers; journalists; a handful of other artists (Pusha-T, Lil Yachty, Fabolous); and a smattering of celebrities
(Rock, Jonah Hill, Luka Sabbat, Scott Disick). British hip-hop radio stalwart Tim Westwood was running around interviewing people. 2 Chainz walked his French bulldog, Trappy, around on a leash. Conservative pundit Candace Owens, a West favorite, made the rounds.
Owens’ presence was notable as a reminder of the unusual context in which “Ye” arrives. Since April, West has been on a quixotic path — letting go of his managers (though one of them, Scooter Braun, was in Wyoming), flaunting his Make America Great Again cap, praising President Donald Trump; going on “TMZ” and revealing he had liposuction and contending slavery was a choice; and more.