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The Yeezus Tour

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The Yeezus Tour was a concert tour by Kanye West in support of his sixth solo studio album, Yeezus ( 2013 ). The venture served as West's first solo concert tour in five years. Kendrick Lamar , A Tribe Called Quest, Travis Scott , and Pusha T served as opening acts on select dates. [1]

The tour started at Seattle in October 19, 2013, and concluded in Brisbane on September 15, 2014.

• 1.1 Fighting
• 1.3 Falling
• 1.4 Searching
• 1.5 Finding
• 2.1 Opening acts
• 4 References

Set List [ ]

The tour told a story of redemption through its five categories: Fighting, Rising, Falling, Searching, and Finding. During the shows, Ye performed every track from Yeezus , as well as some of his greatest hits. [1]

Fighting [ ]

• I Don't Like
• Black Skinhead
• Can't Tell Me Nothing (Remix)
• Coldest Winter

Falling [ ]

• Hold My Liquor
• Blood on the Leaves

Searching [ ]

• Lost in the World
• Street Lights

Finding [ ]

• Through the Wire
• Jesus Walks
• Diamonds From Sierra Leone
• Flashing Lights
• All of the Lights

The tour also featured the unreleased track " I Am Not Home ," which was used as an opener for the sets, as was a shortened version of Mozart's "Lacrimosa."

Below is an abbreviated list of stops the tour had, adapted from Wikipedia [1] :

• Seattle (October 19, 2013)
• San Jose (October 22, 2013)
• Oakland (October 23, 2013)
• Las Vegas (October 25, 2013)
• Los Angeles (October 26 & 28, 2013)
• Philadelphia (November 16, 2013)
• Boston (November 17, 2013)
• Brooklyn (November 19 & 20, 2013)
• Washington, D.C. (November 21, 2013)
• New York City (November 23 & 24, 2013)
• Nashville (November 27, 2013)
• Miami (November 29, 2013)
• Tampa (November 30, 2013)
• Atlanta (December 1, 2013)
• St. Louis (December 2, 2013)
• Kansas City (December 3, 2013)
• New Orleans (December 5, 2013)
• Dallas (December 6, 2013)
• Houston (December 7, 2013)
• San Antonio (December 8, 2013)
• Phoenix (December 10, 2013)
• Anaheim (December 13, 2013)
• Chicago (December 17 & 18, 2013)
• Auburn Hills (December 19, 2013)
• Toronto (December 22 & 23, 2013)
• University Park (February 13, 2014)
• Baltimore (February 14, 2014)
• Newark (February 15, 2014)
• Montreal (February 17, 2014)
• Hamilton (February 18, 2014)
• Albany (February 19, 2014)
• Uncasville (February 21, 2014)
• Atlantic City (February 22, 2014)
• Uniondale (February 23, 2014)
• Perth (September 5, 2014)
• Adelaide (September 7, 2014)
• Melbourne (September 9 & 10, 2014)
• Sydney (September 12 & 13, 2014)
• Brisbane (September 15, 2014)

Opening acts [ ]

Adapted from Wikipedia [1] :

• Kendrick Lamar (stops 1-3, 5-24)
• E-40 (stop 2)
• Pusha T (stops 4, 35-39)
• Travis Scott (stop 4)
• A Tribe Called Quest (stops 8, 10)
• Busta Rhymes (stop 8)
• No opening act (stops 25-28, 30-32, 34)

Members [ ]

The following individuals were members of The Yeezus Tour [1] :

• Noah Goldstein
• Renelou Padora
• Elon Rutberg
• Virgil Abloh
• Vanessa Beecroft
• Izvor Zivkovic
• Matthew Williams
• Alex Rosenberg
• Jerry Lorenzo
• Tracey Mills
• Dan Gleckel
• Mano (tour DJ)
• Ricky Anderson
• Sakiya Sandifer
• Justin Saunders
• Pascal Duvier

References [ ]

• ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Yeezus_Tour
• 1 List of unreleased albums
• 3 Yeezus II

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A Timeline of Kanye West's Tour Merch

From 'The College Dropout' to ‘Yeezus’ and ’Jesus Is King,' here is a complete timeline of Kanye West’s tour merchandise.

Image via Complex Original

Kanye West is arguably hip-hop’s merch king. Travis Scott has been the closest artist to taking the throne, but Ye is the original that likely inspired La Flame’s countless drops. The merch trend really gained momentum in 2013 with West’s Yeezus tour offering up some of the most in-demand pieces released that entire year. Other fans might prefer the endless amount of “I Feel Like Pablo” merch a few years later that made a lot of people some money on the resell market, and some might even be reading this cozied up in their brand new Jesus Is King  crewneck (wishing the album was on in the background). 

The point is, Kanye’s merch archive is incredibly strong. With T-shirts and hoodies still being the only tangible evidence that ‘Jesus Is King’ could be nearing an official release, we decided to take look back at West’s extensive catalog of merch. From College Dropout  to "Sunday Service"-era threads, here is a timeline of Mr. West’s tour merch.

"School Spirit" Tour

Year:  2004

Before West was a global superstar, he was just an act on a nationwide college tour trying to transition from behind the scenes producer to respected rapper. The School Spirit tour merch from 2004 is probably the most traditional offering from West’s extensive merch assortment. An image of the artist in a striped rugby sweater is emblazoned across the chest, and the back features the tour dates. Parking lot T-shirt quality at its finest. Despite its simplicity, it has become a collector’s item due to its rarity.  —Mike DeStefano

Kanye West Fan Club

These T-shirts are probably some of the Kanye’s rarest merch way back in the College Dropout era, Kanye gifted these exclusive T-shirts  to anyone who signed up for the official Kanye West fan club. The T-shirt features a sketch of the College Dropout bear that Kanye drew himself and even features West’s signature on the bottom right hand corner. These are nearly impossible to find on sale, but one XXL shirt sold on Grailed for $300.   —Lei Takanashi

"Truth" Tour

The bear mascot symbolizes the first half of Kanye West’s rap career. So, it only makes sense that it was a part of the the merch program for Truth Tour , which he went on with Usher in 2004.  The signature bear head is sandwiched by collegiate-styled text that marks the album title. The back boasts the tour name, and the Chicago skyline graphic day one fans might remember from the KanyeUniverseCity blog header. Another T-shirt from the tour featured a large Chicago skyline graphic on the front in place of the signature bear head.  —Mike DeStefano

"Touch the Sky" Tour

By 2005, West had two critically-acclaimed albums under his belt with College Dropout and Late Registration . For his first headlining tour, Touch the Sky ,  merch included a  design that riffed on“Gold Digger.” It featured a retro movie poster-styled graphic positioning West amongst money, a convertible, and women in bikinis. A more rare piece was a super limited one-off that was only sold at a show in Hong Kong. It’s especially coveted because it was an official collaboration with Clot and Fragment . More straightforward T-shirts featuring the album artwork were also for sale.  —Mike DeStefano

"Glow in the Dark" Tour

Obviously for the Glow in the Dark  tour, which promoted Kanye West’s third album Graduation , he had to hit up Takashi Murakami to make concert merch. Most of the merch predominantly featured Murakami’s Graduation Bear character on brightly colored T-shirts. In the Figures of Speech book, Virgil Abloh says that making the Glow In The Dark merch was one of the first projects he worked on with West.  —Lei Takanashi

"808s & Heartbreak"

808’s & Heartbreak never received a grand tour treatment because Kanye West canceled the hyped Fame Killz  tour with Lady Gaga. However, he did release a small amount of merch to promote the album on kanyewest.com. One piece from that limited release of merch is this T-shirt with a broken heart logo.  —Lei Takanashi

"Watch the Throne" Tour

Year: 2011-2012

For a collaborative project this monumental, the merch had to be on point. The Watch the Throne tour merch indicates West’s street goth style at the time, which included leather kilts and Givenchy graphic T-shirts. It’s also the first round of merch that looked more like actual product. Around this time, Ye made his interest in pursuing fashion even more evident. Many people remember the Givenchy-esque pieces that were actually designed with the help of its creative director at the time Riccardo Tisci. West and JAY-Z each had their own version, which featured their faces fused with the mouth of a jungle cat. Alongside those shirts was a white option with the American flag artwork from the “Otis” single cover printed across the front. Considering their “falling out,” these designs are even more significant in retrospect.  —Mike DeStefano

"My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy"

My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy merch featured a bit more design prowess than past collections. The George Condo artwork  featured on the interchangeable album covers made its way onto T-shirts. The formula is very simplistic, but the Condo art is so good that not much more had to be done to produce some cool pieces for the fans.  —Mike DeStefano

"Yeezus" Tour

You could argue that the Yeezus tour merch is the reason many artists began putting more effort into their own offerings. Kanye’s most rebellious project was paired with designs to perfectly match the tone. Artist Wes Lang, known fo previously working with iconic heavy metal band Metallica, was commissioned to design the graphics? The result is skeletons in traditional Native American headdresses, kneeling in prayer, and dressed like the Grim Reaper wielding a scythe. This tour also produced the infamous bomber jacket with a Confederate flag patch embroidered on the sleeve. Although West tried to position the design decision as taking control of the symbol and giving it a new identity , it is a notable stain on an otherwise excellent collection. The Yeezus merch was so popular that it even spurred a more attainable line sold at PacSun. Exclusive designs were also available at select festivals like Made in America and Bonnaroo throughout Ye’s headlining run that summer.  —Mike DeStefano

Atlantic City

Kanye performed three shows at the now defunct Revel Resort and Casino in Atlantic City, New Jersey, back in 2012. A special T-shirt designed by Virgil Abloh was available at the merch booth. It featured a small mountain graphic on the left chest and “The World Ended and I Saw Kanye West Perform Right After” in large lettering across the back.  —Mike DeStefano

Europe/Africa Merch

During the Yeezus era, Kanye West performed a number of one off shows in places like South Africa, London, Paris, Brussels, and Amsterdam. For these shows, West released simple tees with large, bold, lettering, and the flag of the country he was performing in. The front of the T-shirt featured a small graphic of the Yeezus mountain, one of the most iconic stage elements West ever incorporated into his tours. Although not as embellished as West’s other tour merch, these are certainly collector’s pieces.  —Lei Takanashi

Hollywood Bowl

Kanye decided to celebrate his polarizing 2008 album 808s and Heartbreak in 2015 with a track-by-track live performance at the Hollywood Bowl. The set borrowed some of the visual stylings from the Yeezus tour, and introduced a vocal ensemble to perform the genre-bending tracklist. Black and tan T-shirts and hoodies sold at the event  were incredibly minimal in comparison to other Ye merch. They marked the date of the show on the front and the 808s tracklist on the back. White T-shirts and hoodies were also released with melting floral artwork by Nick Knight plastered on the back.  —Mike DeStefano

Glastonbury

This merch was made to commemorate Kanye West’s 2015 performance at the Glastonbury music festival. The merch showcased the Yeezus logo that’s featured on other Yeezus pieces. However, this merch captures a particularly notorious moment within West’s career. When it was announced that West would headline the festival, over 135,000 people signed a petition to remove West from the bill in exchange for a rock band. The show went on, but not as West had planned. Early on in the show, British comedian Lee Nelson crashed Ye’s set while he was performing “Black Skinhead” and forced West to restart the song. Later, an attempt to win over the crowd with a performance of Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” ended with Kanye forgetting the lyrics to a British rock classic. At one point, West declared to the crowd that he was “The greatest living rock star on the planet.” A year later, he mentioned in an interview that his experience at the Glastonbury Festival left him depressed.   —Lei Takanashi

"I Feel Like Pablo" (OG)

Kanye’s Yeezy Season 3 fashion show and The Life of Pablo listening party held at Madison Square Garden back in February 2016 was monumental. Alongside moments like Kid Cudi and Kanye bouncing around to “Father Stretch My Hands Pt. 1” and Young Thug modeling a bright yellow fur jacket, the event also provided fans with the first opportunity to purchase the maroon and blue “I Feel Like Pablo” merch, an item that would dominate the entire year of style and spur countless ripoffs. Lines wrapped the halls of MSG that afternoon. The airbrush-inspired tribute graphic to his mother Donda West and Kim Kardashian’s father Rob Kardashian, who are both deceased, was another memorable option for fans. Pop-ups in New York City would follow that drew equally impressive crowds. The TLOP merch felt more like a streetwear drop than some Gildan merch, and it certainly ranks among his most memorable.  —Mike DeStefano

"The Life of Pablo" City Pop-Up Merch

It can be safely said that Kanye West’s The Life of Pablo pop-ups marked the first time West’s merch reached an unforeseen level of extreme hype. Originally sold exclusively at pop-ups hosted in 21 different cities, never before have lines snaked around several city blocks for Old English logos printed on Gildan T-shirts and long sleeves. Eventually, the “exclusive” pop-up merch was widely released online, so a lot of TLOP merch barely fetches any coin on the secondhand market today. However, it did get nominated by the London Design Museum for the Beazley Design of The Year award.   —Lei Takanashi

"Saint Pablo" Tour

The “I Feel Like Pablo” designs are the most memorable, but the collection that Kanye designed for the accompanying Saint Pablo tour was just as good, if not better. The main graphic used across the product was a take on the Yamaha logo. Standouts included the all-over Realtree camouflage long sleeve T-shirt, and a black long sleeve with bright red lettering that featured a photo of Kim Kardashian playing tennis across the back. The product can easily be acquired on the resell market to this day, but it’s still unfortunate that Ye abruptly ended the tour, that’s known for its floating stage setup.  —Mike DeStefano

"Ye" Wyoming Merch

Jackson Hole, Wyoming will forever be remembered as one of the most bizarre places for Kanye to have an album listening party. Even if the cover was photographed while Kanye was on his way to the listening party, those mountains are iconic and it will forever serve as a testament to this particularly intense period of Kanye’s life. Who knows how fast this merch was made. However, Wes Lang’s long sleeves will definitely be future grails.  —Lei Takanashi

"Kids See Ghosts" Merch

Many people were underwhelmed by Kanye West’s run of seven-track albums in Summer 2018, but the one highlight was the Kanye x Kid Cudi collaborative project Kids See Ghosts . The concise LP also provided some great merch. The initial round of items featured the Takashi Murakami-designed album artwork on the back of beige T-shirts and hoodies. The second round, which is much more coveted, was crafted by Cactus Plant Flea Market’s Cynthia Lu. The crewnecks and hoodies came in various colors and featured puff print lettering that said “Lucky me! I see Ghosts,” alongside crudely drawn smiley faces and hearts.  —Mike DeStefano

"Sunday Service" Coachella Merch

One of Kanye West’s larger “Sunday Service” performances was held at Coachella. To commemorate the performance, West released a T-shirt, crewneck, sweatpants, socks, and even a poncho. Like the merch released for Kids See Ghosts , it was also designed by Cactus Plant Flea Market's Cynthia Lu. Although it’s only available on the resale market today, it’s a must cop for Kanye fans and those looking to come to church dripped out. —Lei Takanashi

Mother's Day

A slight variation on the aforementioned “Sunday Service” merch is this exclusive crewneck that was released on Mother’s Day earlier this year. Rest in Peace Donda.  —Lei Takanashi

Pornhub Awards

Certainly one of Kanye West’s more obscure projects was his heavy involvement with the Pornhub Awards in 2018. Not only did he premiere the official music video for the annoyingly infectious single “I Love It” featuring Lil Pump, he also designed some special merch for the occasion. Tan long sleeve T-shirts honored various award winners from the night. Each featured a painting of the respective performer on the chest. Certainly not the easiest designs to wear walking around in public if you want to go unnoticed, these shirts are reserved for people who don’t mind some extra stares and comments from random strangers.  —Mike DeStefano

"Jesus Is King" Listening Sessions

To mark what many thought would be the official release of his ninth studio album Jesus Is King , Kanye produced some more merch. Along with an online release, the pieces dropped at the venues in Detroit, Chicago, and New York City, which is where West held listening sessions for his “gospel” album. T-shirts, crewnecks, and sweatpants all flaunt their own religious details like “Sunday Service” script, ancient paintings of Jesus, and the official seal of each respective state. With the project in limbo, this might be the only way for fans to celebrate Ye’s new work for some while.  —Mike DeStefano

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The Origin Of The “Yeezus” Cover Art

Is this where Kanye got his inspiration for the ‘Yeezus’ artwork?

When Kanye West revealed the artwork for his controversial album ‘Yeezus’, the industry was buzzing about his minimalistic effort towards his 6th solo studio album. Mr. West isn’t the only one who’s taken this approach towards album artwork sans the artwork. Back in 2001, England’s New Order packaged the single artwork for their song ‘Crystal’ in a very similar fashion.

Coincidence?

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Best New Music

By Ryan Dombal

June 18, 2013

Look at the song title "I Am a God" and it seems like easy blasphemy-- Kanye West 's update of John Lennon's "more popular than Jesus" shocker from 1966. But just as the Beatle's proclamation was fuller and wiser in context-- "I believe that what people call God is something in all of us," Lennon would later explain-- "I Am a God" is not simply the latest self-important blast from one of pop culture's pre-eminent egoists. For starters, the track sounds less triumphant than breathtakingly vexed, crashing in with a gnarled dancehall vocal sample and paranoid sawtooth synths that aim to destroy. Here, Kanye raps about loyalty, respect, threesomes, and, yes, croissants with the urgency of someone being chased by a 30-ton steamroller. The song is pierced by a series of primal screams, pixelated outbursts that are only briefly able to halt the beat's heaving evil. In Kanye's hands, being a god sounds stressful as hell, something we can all relate to, and the song's apparent inspiration  is a passage from the book of Psalms: "I have said, Ye are gods ; and all of you are children of the most High."

These are the immeasurably lofty stakes Kanye deals in on Yeezus , his sixth solo album. His intensity here has a heightened desperation as he howls into the void, but the Chicago native has always been beguiled by the view from above. Take " Jesus Walks ", where he references another Psalm while gasping from on high: "I walk through the valley of the Chi where death is/ Top floor, the view alone will leave you breathless." Then, on "POWER", he contemplates leaping out of the penthouse, "letting everything go." In a way, Yeezus is the panicked sound of that ensuing free-fall, a rush of angst and despair with absolutely nothing left to lose.

The album is something of a razor-sharpened take on 2008's distressed 808s & Heartbreak and marks a blunt break with the filigreed maximalism Kanye so thoroughly nailed on My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy . In hindsight, the latter record-- with its ingratiating GOOD Fridays buildup, endless guest list, and uncharacteristically apologetic interview sessions -- was his attempt at recapturing a superstar-sized American audience after a slew of entertaining-yet-questionable PR incidents . Except it didn't exactly work: While Twisted Fantasy was universally lauded and went platinum, it still stands as Kanye's worst-selling album to date, failing to produce a top 10 single. But even if it wasn't a chart smash, the intricacy and durability of Twisted Fantasy incubated the Cult of Kanye to an extreme level. "I’d rather piss a bunch of people off and make myself happy than make everyone else happy and be pissed off inside," he told VIBE around the release of 808s . Yeezus doubles-down on this exclusionary philosophy: "Soon as they like you, make 'em unlike you/ 'Cause kissing people ass is so unlike you."

For Kanye, there's purpose in repulsion. And on Yeezus , he trades out smooth soul and anthemic choruses for jarring electro, acid house, and industrial grind while delivering some of his most lewd and heart-crushing tales yet. This is willful provocation that Ice Cube , Madonna , and Trent Reznor could all be proud of. Some of the record has him tackling the same issues he's been rapping about since The College Dropout , albeit with a fire-eyed stare. On his debut's "Family Business", he poignantly lamented a jailed cousin's absence at the Thanksgiving dinner table in a manner "so sweet, like a photo of your granny's picture." On Yeezus , he's still addressing the plight of incarcerated black men, but now he's incensed. With "New Slaves", he confronts us with vulgar stereotypes while exposing the prison-industrial complex for the deeply systemic racist sham that it is.

Meanwhile, XXX creeper "I'm In It" sounds like a dancehall orgasm mired in quicksand and makes previous come-ons like "Slow Jamz" come off like Disney theme songs. "The kids and the wife life, but can't wake up from the nightlife," says the new father on that track's knowingly button-pushing final verse. "I'm so scared of my demons/ I go to sleep with a nightlight." Kanye told The New York Times he's recently reached a new level of Zen, but this is the opposite of beach-chair music. Perhaps the album's most explicit lines are the blurry fantasies of a confessed porn addict who's described his daughter's mother as a "superstar all from a home movie." Without much room for levity, Kanye's complicated and distrustful view of women is unrelenting on Yeezus . And while there's no real excuse for flat oafishness like "eatin' Asian pussy, all I need was sweet and sour sauce," many of the album's most powerful moments have him broken down, insecure, and bloody, railing against an ineptitude with the opposite sex.

Album pinnacle "Blood on the Leaves" tells a nightmarish story of divorce and betrayal, all while samples of Nina Simone 's pitched-up "Strange Fruit" and TNGHT 's demonic "R U Ready" horns play yin and yang to the protagonist's alternately sorrowful and furious headspace. "Hold My Liquor" and "Guilt Trip", meanwhile, find Kanye trying to restate his manhood while his emotions crumble around him; if he's not drunk and swerve-y, trying vainly to reconcile with an ex, he's hoping to brag himself out of being dumped. Caustic humor shows up now and then, buoying certain lines or tracks like "Send It Up" and "Bound 2", but it's often fleeting. As on "Runaway" , there's something palpably sad about the men in these songs, which twists them away from misogynistic assertions of power toward feelings that are ultimately more self-destructive. As contemporaries like Jay-Z , Beyoncé , and Justin Timberlake increasingly devote their music to largely winning tales of contentment, Kanye is unwilling or unable to settle for settling down.

This discomfort is essential to his enduring appeal. For instance, instead of working with giant phone companies to guarantee commercial success, a la his big brother , Kanye's now making a point out of rejecting corporate sponsorship. Whether it's a meaningful stance or a blindly contrarian move is up for debate. But after  recent tensions between  hip-hop and corporate America, visceral and disturbing lines like "put my fist in her like a civil rights sign" put Kanye beyond the reach of mainstream brands hoping to siphon his credibility. As he told the Times , he's not disinterested in the idea of big companies or big money-- he compared himself to Steve Jobs, after all-- but he wants control.

The restlessness spreads to his aesthetic and collaborative choices. Rather than relying on known hitmakers to augment his music, Kanye solicited ideas from exciting up-and-comers including Hudson Mohawke , Young Chop , and Arca . And even veteran producers involved in the project, like Rick Rubin and Daft Punk , were seemingly chosen not for their name recognition but their history of rule-breaking. In the mid-1980s, Rubin veered away from the colorful, party-starting tones of early rap music and created bare, hard beats for LL Cool J, Run-D.M.C., and the Beastie Boys-- a perfect fit for Yeezus ' less-is-more snarl. And though Kanye's blaring, digitized assault couldn't be further from Daft Punk's naturalistic, groove-based Random Access Memories , the artists share a basic philosophy. As Daft Punk's Thomas Bangalter recently said of their new record: "We had the luxury to do things that so many people cannot do, but it doesn't mean that with luxury comes comfort."

The idea extends to the how Yeezus treats the human voice. Running with the confounding hook from last year's "Mercy" , dancehall patois is scattered throughout, bringing with it that music's sense of menacing confrontation. And Bon Iver 's Justin Vernon shows up on a few tracks, using his voice to give the darkness an angelic tint. Expanding upon the cracked vocal experimentation on Twisted Fantasy 's "Blame Game", Kanye's own voice is often shadowed by pitched-down ghouls. And though he could've likely chosen any rapper on earth to guest on the riotous "Send It Up"-- probably the most likely, if not only, chance Yeezus has for a rap-radio hit-- he chose Chicago's relatively unknown King L . His presence, along with that of fellow Chi-town driller Chief Keef , makes the message clear: America may want to ignore these young black men from the gang-strewn South Side, but here, they have a voice.

All of these unlikely choices demonstrate how cohesion and bold intent are at a premium on  Yeezus , perhaps more than any other Kanye album. Each fluorescent strike of noise, incongruous tempo flip, and warped vocal is bolted into its right place across the record's fast 40 minutes. The precise approach runs through Yeezus ' guerrilla-style promotion, too, which found an army of dark vans lighting projections onto buildings around the world, itself a boots-on-the-ground reaction to today's InstaTweet brand of music dissemination. I went to one of these impromptu happenings last Saturday night, in the middle of Manhattan. At 1:20 a.m., the words "NOT FOR SALE" lit up on the south side of the Louis Vuitton building. A few guys ran across the street with Christmas-morning glee, snapping photos. Then, Kanye's starkly-lit visage appeared to recite "New Slaves"'s anti-consumerist lines as cabs streaked by the luxury stores below. His was the only black face to be seen across the jumbo ads lining an eerily desolate 5th Ave. The van soon closed its doors and drove away; the culture bomb’s flash was over in an instant, but the reverberations were just starting to spread.

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Kanye West’s Creative Director Virgil Abloh Breaks Down How ‘Yeezus’ Cover Symbolized Death of the CD

Kanye West 's  Yeezus  album has one of the more memorable covers in recent years, thanks to its minimalist approach. Now, Kanye's creative director,  Virgil Abloh , says the cover was meant to symbolize the death of the CD.

On Monday (Feb. 6), Abloh gave a lecture to students at Columbia University. During the talk, the Chicago native breaks down how he and 'Ye came up with the Yeezus cover and speaks about the blank CD's hidden meaning.

"This piece here, often him and I both say, we kinda outdid ourselves in a way," Abloh says in the clip, which can be viewed below. "We weren't supposed to come up with something this clean. I don't know what happened. We don't know what it was but we both looked at it in the end and we were like, 'Damn. It's as if we went to design school.'"

He continues, "Did Dieter Rams come visit us in a dream, and we finally did something good? But it’s metaphorical … Think about the era in which this came out. Two hip-hop kids that are obsessed with design and progressing forward… But for us, it represented the death of a CD... It's an open casket for a format of music we were raised off of that'll never be seen. Like, what's the orange sticker? What are the 30 versions of the orange sticker?"

Abloh also gives props to Kanye, and thanks him for their work together over the years, saying, "For an artist like Kanye West, that raised a generation based on art and music and being progressive, me having the ability to work on those projects was insane, and I’m forever grateful for that."

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Kanye West kicked off his highly anticipated Yeezus tour at Seattle’s Key Arena on Saturday night with a two-hour-plus show that was as emotionally unsettling as it was awe-inspiring. Kendrick Lamar , the tour’s support act, got things started with a frantic 45-minute set made up almost exclusively of cuts from his critically acclaimed good kid, m.A.A.d city album. Lamar has been criticized for being something of a lackluster live performer but he generally managed to put any such concerns to rest from the get-go and delivered a truly inspired performance. By the time the last notes of “Compton” had faded from the venue’s speakers, the crowd was on their feet chanting his name for more.

That was not to be, of course, because it was West’s turn to show Seattle what he could do. Clad in a green tank top and wearing the first of four different masks he would don throughout the evening, West set the scene by taking a place at the front of the stage’s extended catwalk, his arms outstretched, bathed in a single white spotlight and surrounded by a gaggle of women cloaked in white dresses, their faces obscured by stockings. The audience responded to the display with an explosion of jubilation, and with the first strands of Yeezus ‘ opening track, “On Sight,” West was off to the races.

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West’s energy level was extraordinary from the very beginning, with his manic gyrations causing the front end of the stage to rock violently up and down like a giant diving board. The opening number was followed in short order by another two songs off Yeezus , “New Slaves” and “Send It Up.” As the night progressed, West managed to play every song off the new record in addition to a variety of selections from his extensive back catalog, including a sparse rendition of “Stronger,” and truly electrifying performances of “Power,” “Can’t Tell Me Nothing” and “Runaway.” While he did play a few songs from his earliest records, including “Jesus Walks” off The College Dropout , most of the non- Yeezus material seemed to derive from either Graduation , 808s & Heartbreak or My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy .

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The stage as imagined and executed by West was truly something to behold. It featured a sixty-foot tall white mountain as a centerpiece with a gigantic circular projection screen hanging above. But while West’s last solo outing, his Glow in the Dark tour, was a case study in sensory overload, the Yeezus tour is most notable for its starkness and absence of color. Yes, there were the mandatory laser lights, and as always West’s outfits are a surefire attention grabber, but the real grandeur, the real spectacle, lay more with the vast array of unsettling imagery offered by the various stage performers and by West himself.

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The previously mentioned group of women clad in white made intermittent reappearances onstage, most of the time wearing sheer body suits that left nothing to the imagination. At one point, the stage mountain cracked open and they poured out two-by-two in a cloud of thick white smoke carrying various religious iconography – the Virgin Mary, a swinging thurible spewing incense, and a crucifix – with West belting out the song “I Wonder” behind them.

The capper ultimately was the guest appearance by none other than Jesus Christ himself, for whom West finally removed his mask to proclaim that he had been looking for him. Jesus naturally responded that he had been there all along. Later, the mock Christ would ascend to the top of the mountain as West bowed in supplication before him while the haunting refrain from “On Sight” – “You give us what we need/it may not be what we want” – played repeatedly in the background.

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