On a weekly basis, Kanye West hosts a Sunday Service performance, which features gospel tunes and other songs reinterpreted in a similar style. This past weekend, he decided to honor the most legendary grunge group of all time, Nirvana, with Christian reinterpretations of two of their biggest hits: “Come As You Are” and “Smells Like Teen Spirit.”
In the new version of “Come As You Are,” some of the lyrics include, “Just confess, he’ll do the rest, Christ is here — hallelujah.” Meanwhile, the chorus of “Smells Like Teen Spirit” was changed to, “Let your light shine, it’s contagious, here we are now, inspiration.”
This isn’t the first time West has publicly displayed admiration for Nirvana and frontman Kurt Cobain. He’s been spotted in Nirvana shirts, he and Kid Cudi sampled a solo Cobain track on Kids See Ghosts, and in a 2007 interview, West said, “I’m doing pretty good as far as geniuses go. I’m delivering product on a whole new level. I’m like a machine, I’m a robot. You cannot offend a robot. I’m going down as a legend, whether or not you like me or not. I am the new Jim Morrison. I am the new Kurt Cobain. […] The Bible had 20, 30, 40, 50 characters in it. You don’t think that I would be one of the characters of today’s modern Bible?”
Watch clips from the Sunday Service performances of “Come As You Are” and “Smells Like Teen Spirit” above.
