Kanye West has not released an official studio single for his album “Yeezus.” There is no pre-order for the June 18 release, and apparently no cover art (so far). He performed “Black Skinhead” and “New Slaves” on “Saturday Night Live,” played both of those plus new “On Site” in addition to another song that’s already been heard in pieces, “I Am a God,” at the Governor’s Ball over last weekend.
He hosted a listening party in New York on Monday this week that yielded mostly adulation (and some confusion) from EW, NME, The Fader and so on. During that very loud listening, West confirmed that Daft Punk helped on “three or four” tracks; Kid Cudi, Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon, Chief Keef and Frank Ocean and Rick Rubin were also on hand.
Little leaked from that session except for this circulated speech (above), but he did preview “I Am a God” live, a cappella, at a different party in Switzerland yesterday (June 12) along with some over samples from “Yeezus.”
And in the last 24, West posted a little more “I Am a God” a cappella, culled from when he was in the studio with “executive producer” Rick Rubin, who only recently came into West’s studios to helps shine some remaining tracks up.
Listen to that excerpt at kanyewest.com and look at the tease below, where you can hear Rubin chiming in.
Last but not least, West had an epic interview with New York Times writer John Caramanica for a published piece Tuesday, yielding some of the greatest Yeezy-isms of all time. Do not miss this.
This is all to say, West isn’t promoting his album — due in less than a week — with a traditional radio single, but he is promoting the hell out of it. Which is, in part, why Billboard is estimating “Yeezus” will still sell around 500,000 copies of this nontraditional album.
“We ain’t drop no single to radio. We ain’t got no big NBA campaign or nothing like that — sh*t, we ain’t even got no cover. We just made some real music,” as he said. We’ll see!