Kanye West’s latest string of attention-grabbing stunts continues. Just a week after legally changing his name to “Ye,” the mercurial producer started wearing a playful but deeply unsettling Halloween mask for public appearances, then debuted a strange, seemingly self-styled haircut — but it doesn’t stop there. As photos from Kanye’s latest Sunday Service on October 31 emerged online, fans noticed yet another new change that will certainly raise a few eyebrows. Not Kanye’s eyebrows, though… because it appears he’s shaved them completely off.
It’s as yet unclear why he would do such a thing — other than, y’know, the whole Kanye of it — but fans have already noticed and begun sharing their impressions.
The move certainly appears to have been inspired in part by the controversial guest Kanye brought to the latest edition of Sunday Service, Marilyn Manson. Kanye seems to have developed a soft spot for the disgraced rocker over the past few months. After Manson was accused of sexual assault and several other musicians distanced themselves from him in the wake of his arrest for that assault, Kanye brought him out to the third Donda listening event in Chicago along with DaBaby, who was also under fire for making homophobic comments at Rolling Loud in Miami. Ye even added Manson to the final version of his album, and now, it looks like he’s even starting to take on some of Manson’s styling tips — for better or worse.
Straight up, streetwear wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for hip-hop. The two entities go hand-in-hand, pushing up against and off of one another in their steady quest to take over the world. That’s not hyperbole, streetwear and hip-hop have taken over the world. Hip-hop went from a niche genre that was written off as a fad in the late ’70s and early ’80s and blossomed into a phenomenon that has since influenced every other genre of American music (see autotune country) and become the dominant musical genre of cultural expression in America. Streetwear similarly went from being a niche fashion aesthetic to a world-dominating force in modern fashion. Whether you’re a small fashion label just getting started, or an iconic luxury house like Gucci or Louis Vuitton, if you’re not designing streetwear, you’re not connecting with the people.
Streetwear and hip-hop haven’t just been growing parallel to one another, they feed off of one another. Hip-hop provides the face, streetwear provides the look, and the two entities rely on one another to move product. So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that some of the best sneakers (arguably the emblem of streetwear itself) have a rapper’s name attached. In a celebration of hip-hop and streetwear, we’re running through the most important hip-hop sneaker collaborations of all time, starting with…
Adidas Superstar, 1986
Adidas
The Adidas Superstar is not technically a hip-hop sneaker collaboration, but because of Run-DMC’s hit single “My Adidas,” it felt wrong to start this list anywhere else. Make no mistake, a fresh white pair of Adidas Superstars with contrasting stark black stripes is a look wholly owned by Run-DMC Streetwear fans treat this sneaker silhouette and colorway as a stone-cold classic, and Adidas has “My Adidas” to thank for that.
The song’s video gave the world its first glimpse of hip-hop’s new look and from “My Adidas” on, the two entities have been in lock-step. The sneaker features a leather base with a shell toe cap, it’s one of Adidas’ oldest and best-selling sneaker silhouettes. Adidas would go on to let Run-DMC design their own version of the silhouette, but nothing beats the OG.
Nike Dunk High Wu-Tang, 1999
Nike
No other rap group quite understood the synergy between streetwear and hip-hop like the Wu-Tang Clan, who went off and started their very own successful streetwear label, Wu-Wear. In 1999 Nike tapped them with a special Friends And Family Only release of the high-top Nike Dunk.
The colorway was lifted from a set of sneakers celebrating different university sports teams, this black and gold iteration was meant to represent Iowa University, but since it shared a color scheme with the Wu-Tang logo, Nike slapped a W on the heel and tongue, and with that simple move created one of the most sought after sneakers of all time.
ICECREAM Dollars & Diamonds, 2003
Getty/Uproxx
Pharrell Williams doesn’t get enough credit for being lightyears ahead on seeing the linkage between not just hip-hop and streetwear, but the importance of Japanese designers to the medium. Streetwear wouldn’t be what it is today without the influence of Japan, and it was Pharrell who was smart enough to link up with cutting-edge designers like BAPE figurehead NIGO before anyone else. The result was his very own label, Billionaire Boys Club, and the brand sneaker brand ICECREAM.
Pharrell was the first rapper turned sneaker designer, and this pair Diamonds and Dollars silhouette was his attempt at fusing streetwear and skatewear into a single entity. It was a success, it signified a turning point in streetwear that would see the aesthetic completely absorb the world of skateboarding.
Air Jordan 4 Encore, 2004
Getty/Uproxx
When “My Adidas” and the Wu-Tang Dunks dropped, streetwear was still pretty niche, but by the mid-00s the fashion aesthetic started to hit the mainstream. When Eminem linked up with Nike for the Air Jordan Encore, named after Eminem’s album of the same name, people lost their minds. This shoe single-handedly created the modern sneakerhead.
It remains one of the most popular sneaker colorways of all time, fetching bids exceeding $20,000 on aftermarket sites like StockX and eBay. Nike will occasionally drop a refresh of this sneaker in very limited runs, so it’s still possible to own a pair without paying a fortune for it. Good luck.
BAPE Kanye West Bapesta College Dropout, 2007
Bapesta
Long before Kanye West had his own sneaker brand, and even before he started calling himself “Yeezy,” West linked up with Japanese streetwear label BAPE for the College Dropout version of the brand’s Bapesta sneaker silhouette. The sneaker features a tan and brown leather upper with red accents and a cartoon graphic of Kanye’s Dropout Bear character.
It’s been a while since we’ve seen the Dropout Bear, Ye ditched the mascot after the “Graduation Album” which was released the same year. It’s a reminder of a younger more playful Kanye and still to this day, a pretty dope design, even if it’s a far cry from what Kanye would design with his own Yeezy brand.
Odd Future x Vans Syndicate Old Skool Pro S Golf Wang Pack, 2013
Vans Syndicate
Pharrell combined the worlds of street skating and hip-hop, and out of that came Tyler The Creator’s Odd Future collective. Inspired by the sort of bright color palettes you’d expect out of a Wes Anderson movie and not what you’d find in a typical hip-hop music video (at the time) Tyler The Creator presented his dark strain of hip-hop with a juxtaposing visual aesthetic that forever changed the look of modern rap music.
Before Tyler The Creator, the idea of a rapper wearing a sneaker with a pink sole is something only Kanye West would do, but he didn’t. Tyler did, and this early collaboration with Vans eventually caught the eye of Converse, who swooped up Tyler and gave him his own sneaker line by the name of Golf Le Fleur.
Air Yeezy 2 SP Red October, 2014
Getty/Uproxx
Another Kanye West sneaker? Yes. If you can’t talk hip-hop without mentioning streetwear, you can’t talk about either without mentioning Kanye West. His presence will weigh heavily throughout this roundup. While his cultural status is not quite at the heights it was just seven years ago you can’t deny that the name Kanye West still holds a lot of weight amongst hip-hop fans and sneakerheads alike.
But before Kanye West put his stamp on the world of footwear with his Yeezy Brand, he tried things out with Nike. Ultimately, it didn’t work out (Nike didn’t want to give Ye as much creative control as he wanted) but 2014’s Air Yeezy Red Octobers were the first indication that people needed to take West the sneaker designer as seriously as they took West the hip-hop producer and rapper.
Even today, it’s impossible not to fall in love with this all-over scarlet red colorway. Just look at the thing! Tell us you don’t want a pair.
Air Jordan 12 White OVO, 2016
Jordan Brand
Drake hasn’t had quite the same level of success attaching his name to sneakers as his contemporaries, but the Jordan 12 White OVOs is one of the finest colorways the sneaker has ever seen in its entire run, and it has Drake to thank for that. There is nothing special about this sneaker, Drake didn’t offer up any radical suggestions for a re-design, but what it presents is a highly effective colorway that exudes luxury and class thanks to its mix of white leather and gold accent work.
You can hardly tell Drake has anything to do with the sneaker, and that’s kind of its strength.
Adidas Yeezy BOOST 700 Wave Runner, 2017
Yeezy Brand
We can’t overstate just how important Kanye West’s name is to the world of sneakers. It’s arguably just as big as Michael Jordan’s, so we couldn’t finish this list without talking about West’s label with Adidas, Yeezy Brand. By 2017 Kanye West and Adidas had already been making sneakers together for five years, but West wasn’t really taken seriously as a footwear designer. That all changed with 2017’s Wave Runner.
When the Wave Runner dropped, which is still the 700’s best colorway, Kanye West singlehandedly made the ‘90s influenced “dad shoe” the hot footwear item everyone had to have. The world of sneakers changed once this shoe dropped, brands like New Balance, Nike, and Adidas started to bring out more of their ‘90s designs and Adidas was able to slash the price of these shoes from the usual $300 to the more affordable (but still expensive) $240.
After the success of the Wave Runner, Adidas themselves started to put more faith in Kanye, increasing the sneaker release runs of all of his future shoes in an effort to make them more accessible amongst the public.
Jordan 1 High OG SP Fragment x Travis Scott, 2021
Nike
If Kanye West dominated footwear in the 2010s, it’s looking more and more like Travis Scott will inherit that crown for this current decade. This year saw the release of Travis Scott’s 13th Nike collaboration, the Jordan 1 High OG SP Fragment x Travis Scott, a partnership with streetwear label Fragment Design. It’s not the first sneaker people would associate with Travis Scott — that would be the Jordan 1 Mocha — but, and brace yourself for this one, it is the best.
No, it’s not quite as iconic as the coffee-toned Mocha that it’s meant to be a sequel of, but give it time, that combination of University Blue, white leather, off-white midsole, and a black oversized backwards swoosh will no doubt go down as not only one of Travis Scott’s best sneakers but one of hip-hop’s best sneaker collaborations of all time.
Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
Ye’sDonda seemingly took forever to come out. The project arrived more than a year after it was originally announced and after three album listening sessions held in major stadiums in Atlanta and Chicago. Thankfully, the wait came to an end at the end of August when the rapper released the project complete with 27 songs and guest appearances from Jay-Z, Lil Durk, Young Thug, Roddy Ricch, The LOX, Lil Baby, The Weeknd, Playboi Carti, Kid Cudi, Don Toliver, Ty Dolla Sign, and more. Two months after Donda was released, Ye is seemingly gearing up to release a deluxe version of the album.
A Twitter user shared two screenshots of teasers for a deluxe reissue for Donda on Twitter. The first appear on the platform’s Italy page and was captioned, “A deluxe version of Yeezus’ tenth recording miracle,” while the second appeared on Apple Music’s Germany page. Ye or anyone in his camp has to confirm when the deluxe would arrive or whether or not one is in the works in the first place.
This comes after the rapper’s Donda stem players were finally delivered to fans who purchased it. The device allows “customize any song” and control vocals, drums, bass, and samples, isolate certain parts of a song, as well as add effects. The stem players were also delivered three unreleased songs — “Life Of The Party,” “Up From The Ashes,” and “Never Abandon Your Family” — in addition to Ye’s complete tenth album.
You can view the screenshots of the Apple Music teasers for Donda deluxe above.
Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
The last time the world received a Sunday Service concert from Ye, who legally changed his name from Kanye West a few weeks ago, the rapper was just a few months removed from his 2019 album Jesus Is King. Fast-forward 18 months, Ye returned with a new Sunday Service concert on Halloween. The event was held on the rooftop of an unknown location and it featured appearances from Marilyn Manson, Justin Bieber, and Roddy Ricch according to viewers who tuned into the livestream which was broadcast on Triller and Fite TV.
marilyn manson is currently leading a prayer circle with justin bieber and kanye west pic.twitter.com/rDFUza5lvn
justin bieber is currently reciting a prayer out loud thanking god for creating birds, trees, and all animals surrounded by marilyn manson, kanye west and roddy rich pic.twitter.com/3OOgh1vw52
Manson, who was controversially invited onstage by Ye for Chicago’s Donda listening session, and Bieber both lead individual prayers of their own during the service while Roddy Ricch was spotted with the trio in the surrounding crowd. While this was the first official Sunday Service event in 18 months, it marks the first time the group delivered a live performance since DMX’s funeral earlier this year where they performed tracks that included Soul II Soul’s “Keep On Movin’” and Ye’s “Ultralight Beam.”
The performance comes after Ye’s Yeezy brand was hit with a lawsuit. Recently elected LA County District Attorney George Gascón filed the suit on October 22 for the brand for their failure to “ship items within thirty days and failing to provide adequate delay notices” to customers.
You can few images from the Halloween Sunday Service above.
Roddy Ricch is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
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Just days before Kanye West finally released his tenth album Donda, it was revealed that the rapper would be packaging purchases of the album with a stem player that allows its users to “customize any song.” The product’s features let users control vocals, drums, bass, and samples, isolate certain parts of a song, and add effects. It also supports Bluetooth capabilities and features a headphone jack, volume buttons, speakers, a haptic engine, and 8GB of storage. Two months after it was made available, the stem player is finally being delivered and it appears that the device certainly lives up to the hype. Furthermore, Kanye uploaded three more songs, in addition to the entirety of Donda, to the stem player.
The first song that was added is a censored version of “Life Of The Party,” featuring Andre 3000. For those who remember, the song was thrown into the middle of West and Drake’s beef after the latter leaked it during a late-night radio broadcast. Andre spoke out about the song being leaked in a statement, writing, “It’s unfortunate that it was released in this way and two artists that I love are going back and forth.”
The other two songs that were added are the official version of “Up From The Ashes” — a track that was a last-minute scratch from West 2019 album Jesus Is King, according to HipHopNMore — and a final and complete version of “Never Abandon Your Family.” Additionally, Kid Cudi appears on “Remote” with Young Thug after he was removed from the digital version of the track.
You can check out previews of the added songs as well as how the stem player works all together in the videos above.
Young Thug is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
Complex reports that Yeezy, the apparel brand founded by Ye, the artist formerly known as Kanye West, is being sued in California for “failing to ship items within thirty days and failing to provide adequate delay notices” to customers. Recently elected L.A. County District Attorney George Gascón filed the suit last Friday, October 22 on behalf of the State of California, pointing out how Yeezy violated California state business codes.
Essentially, in California, any product purchased online must be shipped within 30 days. If there will be any delays, the merchant must either notify its customers, provide a refund, or inform consumers of any other possible solutions. Yeezy allegedly “made untrue or misleading statement regarding its ability to ship products within a certain timeframe, particularly where customers paid an additional charge for expedited shipping.”
Other counties included in the suit are Alameda, Napa, and Sonoma. The suit wants the company fined $2,500 per violation. The Yeezy brand has proven to be popular and lucrative for the artist, with Yeezy’s Gap deal approaching a $3-4 billion estimated value and items like the puffer jacket the producer wore at his Donda listening events and his Adidas sneakers sending fans clamoring and often selling out within hours of release.
With the artist formerly known as Kanye West running around in spooky masks weeks before Halloween and pulling other attention-grabbing stunts like renting a room at the stadium in which he held the listening events for his latest album, it’s getting harder and harder to understand where the once-relatable artist is coming from. However, if anyone were to have a shot at coming close, it would be one of the two artists who most recently worked with West to secure a No. 1 hit record.
In a new interview with British GQ, Jack Harlow — who worked with Kanye West and Lil Nas X on the hit single “Industry Baby” — takes a stab at explaining Ye’s oddball behavior of late. “I think he sees himself as Mozart or Beethoven,” he guesses. “I think he’s worried, not about what it looks like now but what it will look like in 100 years. Take what happened with the Taylor Swift situation: at the time it was all pitchforks, but now people treat that as iconic. I am always fascinated to see what he does next. This Donda roll-out, people are going to remember that for years.”
People may remember the rollout, but the music itself received a lukewarm reception from both critics and fans. You can read Uproxx’s review here. Elsewhere in Jack’s interview, he addresses his often fraught relationship with race as a white hip-hop artist. “I think what has worked for me is that my music has never been about the fact that I am white,” he hypothesizes. “I don’t try to lean into the, ‘Hey, I’m the white boy.’ I try not to make it a novelty. I rap from the heart, rather than trying to do a white version of the art form.”
If you had an opportunity to see Pusha T play a live show around the time that DAYTONA dropped in 2018, you’d have seen a rapper whose dedication and delivery are on another level in the game. He’s seemingly committed to not just rapping over his songs on stage and for an artist of his caliber, it just increases the intensity of the already pressing music on an album that’s tough to top. But wait…
King Push spoke with Billboard for a feature that was presumably centered about how he was sifting through his closet to produce a portfolio of threads for a “The Vault:Pusha T” Closet Sale on the high-end menswear site Grailed (you can rock Pusha T’s 2015 Burberry floral print jacket for $600; adjust your holiday gift lists accordingly). But the pride of Virginia Beach clearly had more on his mind, namely his next album, which was said to be nearly done back in March when he was just waiting on a collaboration from Kanye West.
He told Billboard today that the project is being mixed and the finishing touches are being put on feature verses. It’s set to have production from The Neptunes and Kanye West, and he added that “I want to give fans an offering of not only great music but something merch-wise, hard copy, vinyl, everything.”
He says the goal is to put some form of music out this year, but the biggest statement was when he called his shot: “I think I’ve topped Daytona for sure,” Push told Billboard. “One-thousand percent.” This is very much in line with when he told the Instagram Live show Behind The Velvet Rope in March that it’ll be “the best album that drops in 2021.” Here’s hoping he’s not reading too much into Kendrick Lamar’s new Spotify photo like everyone else is…
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