If there’s one thing Kanye West has proven himself to be very, very good at (besides making music), it’s talking about things. Anything, really. Heard about that store, The Gap? Kanye West has some feelings about that. Want to be kind of a dick at awards shows? Yeezy’s got your back. 12 Years a Slave? Kanye’s seen it, and happy to share. Which makes it very fitting that in a new interview with L.A. radio station Power 105.1, he revealed that he’s working on a new album that will not have a release date, but rather be a complete surprise, in the way that things you know are coming are always a surprise.
“I’m trying to get it finished. I’m trying to get it to the people… Release dates is played out. So the surprise is going to be a surprise. There go the surprise,” West said, in what is likely one of the clearest approximations of how his mind works ever caught on tape. Nonetheless, West said the album is “80 percent” done, and that he just wants to make a record people could play at, say, a barbecue, or a bar mitzvah, or any other collective celebration that may occur to him. “[It’s] cookout music that just feels good. My last album was protest music. I was like, ‘I’m going to take my ball and go home.’… This album is just embracing the music, embracing joy, being of service to the people.” And nothing says “service to the people” quite like a new fashion line, a selfless charity move if ever there was one.
Of course, while talking about the record, West was also more than happy to pontificate about Beck, police brutality, Louis Farrakhan, and eating dinner with Taylor Swift, because he is Kanye West, and his mind knows no bounds. The entire video is here, and well worth checking out if you’d be interested in what My Dinner With Kanye would be like.