YEEZY SEASON 3 - REVIEW

Shakespeare’s, The Tempest, is thought of by many critics as a clear example of style over substance. This was his last solo play and he wanted to exit with spectacle; paying little attention to the storyline that was thus left dry.

Kanye West’s, Yeezy season 3, was certainly a spectacle. An audience of 18,000 piled into Madison Square Garden for the reveal of not just season 3, but for the unveiling of Kanye’s new album.

‘Happy Kanye West Day’ was the greeting attendees were using as they entered the building, soon to be fixated by the self-indulgent world of West that waited inside the arena. Spectacle after spectacle was unleashed on Madison Square Garden; a white, fur cloud of Kardashian / Jenner’s exhibiting the Yeezy X Balmain, surprise collaboration; the announcement of Kanye’s new video game ‘Only One’; and of course, shocking misogynistic lyrics thrown at Taylor Swift.

Such drama however, has distracted from the clothes - which aside from being slightly different in shade, were almost replicas of what we have already seen in season 1 and 2. It's proven that Kanye likes to think himself an innovator –“I’m a creative genius and there’s no other way to word it” – yet his designs are stuck echoing that of season 1. It’s understandable a new creative director wanting to put his stamp on the brand image, however Yeezy collections are becoming increasingly bland. We cannot help but feel Kanye has a lot going on right now, he has fully expressed it in his tweets, leading us to believe that the lack of dazzle from this collection is most likely due to him being busy with a thousand other projects. So why not focus all his efforts on one project and create a true spectacle? Because he’s Kanye West. And this event was ultimately about nothing other than Kanye himself.

Just as Shakespeare wanted to be remembered with his extravagant display of The Tempest, West’s blur of events could be seen as being for the sole purpose of self-promotion.

Some dedication to fashion was communicated through his worshipping Anna Wintour – the vogue editor-in-chief renown for pairing brands with creative directors – after earlier telling her that he would love to be made the creative director of Hermès. A tactic if ever we saw one, yet also a stunt that allowed him further publicity.

With there being no such thing as bad publicity, this blog post in itself is giving Kanye the attention he craves. The dig at Taylor, the argument with Wiz Khalifa, the 3x album name change, all working in his favour and further selling himself to the world. His attempt at a political message, having models stood atop refugee tents, seems to have been already dismissed. Although I’m not sure it should’ve been since is it really ok to promote oneself through global crises?

Who knows what the next few days will bring as we await Kanye’s ‘best album of all time’. There is no doubt he is a showman, but whether he’s the creative genius he believes, that’s a different story.