We’re a few days past when everyone assumed that West would release his new self-titled album, Jesus Is King, and though there’s still no actual sign of it, West did hold some kind of listening event over the weekend in Detroit. As reported by Uproxx, Fake Shore Drive’s Andrew Barber was in attendance and was able to both hear Jesus Is King and see the “accompanying film” (more on that in a second), and he says “the beats on Jesus Is King sounded fire,” combining the stuff people liked about West’s previous albums with “a gospel spin.”
That gospel spin isn’t just an aesthetic that West adopted for the album, though. According to Barber, West also announced that he “is no longer making secular music” and will focus on gospel “from here on out.” That definitely sounds like something West would say, and (as Uproxx notes) it is more or less something he has said in the past, but it remains to be seen if he’s really following up his turn toward Trumpism with a full-on dive into making nothing but religious music.
As for that movie, it’s apparently going to involve IMAX footage of one of his Sunday Service events that was filmed at the Roden Crater art installation in Arizona. The Roden Crater is the creation of artist James Turrell, who has been carving interesting tunnels into an old volcanic crater for over four decades, and earlier this year he received a $10 million donation from West to help keep the project alive. We still have no idea when this movie or the album will be available, since the stated release date already came and went, but religion has always been more about faith than actual facts and figures anyway.