Forbes Says The Yeezus Tour Is Grossing Over $1 Million Per Night

It’s more than halfway through one of Kanye West’s recent Yeezus tour dates, and the audience still hasn’t seen his face. His head has been covered by a series of masks designed by Maison Martin Margiela: one that appears to be covered in bedazzled dream-catchers, another that resembles a black diamond Spider-Man mask, another that seems to be festooned in white Chiclets, and another that makes his head look like a disco ball.

That’s just a small part of his setup, which, in typical fashion, aims to frame West’s music—and West himself—as art bordering on the divine. Throughout the show, West offers lordly flourishes, conjuring fire (flashbomb explosions so bright you relive them every time you blink) and ice (artificial snowflakes that fall from the rafters, evaporating before they hit the floor).

And right now he’s preaching, as he does throughout the show—sometimes from the top of a mountain-like structure that dominates the stage—in the form of an eight-minute-long, live auto-tuned monologue that’s equal parts song, sermon and artistic discourse

“Can y’all just give me one little chance?” he asks, before taking off his mask for the first of two times all night, and replacing it. “I was just saying Alejandro Jodorowsky’s name and y’all don’t know who the f**k he is.”

Between turning himself into an objet d’art with his Margiela masks and basing much of his setup around the aforementioned Jodorowsky’s 1973 film Holy Mountain, West’s latest tour might be the current mass cultural phenomenon best described as “artpop”—perhaps even more than Lady Gaga’s recent album of the same name.

Though his stream-of-consciousness prattle between songs can be confusing, jarring, and contradictory at times, West is taking risks that few pop stars, if any, are willing to take in today’s hyper-exposed world of pop. The tour–which rolled into New York last week for two shows at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center and another pair at Madison Square Garden this past weekend–echoes the aim of his 40-minute aural assault, Yeezus. The album eschews the catchy soul-drenched hooks that made West famous in favor of a raw, spare, aggressive work that’s more Nine Inch Nails than Otis Redding.

“In terms of the role of the dangerous entertainer in 2013, nobody is beating him at that game,” Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor told Rolling Stone earlier this year. “It feels like he might implode.”

It’s precisely that air of risk—perhaps even to himself—that allows West to succeed in pushing all sorts of envelopes to which others simply pay lip service. Yes, Gaga named her album ARTPOP. Sure, Jay Z performed “Picasso Baby” for six hours straight in an art gallery. But having Jeff Koons balloons at your launch party or giving butterfly kisses to Marina Abramovic doesn’t automatically mean a piece of music will be considered a transcendent work of art.

West’s tactics don’t guarantee artistic immortality, of course. But the Yeezus album and the tour of the same name seem so much less calculated than the attempts of his fellow musicians to achieve the tired trope of turning pop content into pop art. As West put it at the height of his Barclays performance last week, “Every celebrity’s so goddamn scared of losing everything that they will never say nothing to you.”

That’s not to say there’s anything subtle about West’s presentation on the Yeezus tour. There are white-frocked ladies in various states of undress and a hairy, red-eyed demon stalking him from a giant mountain, not to mention a man dressed as Jesus who greets West toward the end of the show (the second and final time he removes his mask before putting it back on).

Like his album of the same name, West’s Yeezus concert experience is overwrought and uncomfortable at times, but excels at challenging norms and provoking thought in a way that just isn’t common for mainstream musical acts of late. Perhaps that’s why West so often chafes at being pigeonholed as a rapper (“Anybody who writes down that ‘He’s the best of rap,’ that’s racist!” he exclaimed in the middle of one of his New York shows).

West does put himself in that box on occasion, namely in the not-so-humbly named “I Am A God,” in which he calls himself “The only rapper compared to Michael.” There’s some debate as to which Michael he’s referring—Jordan, Tyson or Jackson—but the latter certainly fought a battle to break out of the R&B category into which he’d been categorized early in his career. It wasn’t until years after Thriller that he rightfully came to be known as the King of Pop.

Though West may be among music’s foremost creators of art, he isn’t among the top 25 moneymakers. He pulled in $20 million last year, less than half Jay Z’s total and just one-quarter of Lady Gaga’s. The Yeezus tour, which is grossing over $1 million per night, should boost his total going forward, but that doesn’t mean his earnings will ever equal his artistic fame and infamy.

At one of his recent Barclays Center shows, he recounted a recent conversation with an acquaintance who used to run a billion-dollar company. This person didn’t approve of the way West has been “going about things as of late.”

West didn’t seem terribly concerned.

“When I get on the phone with these people that used to run companies, and they try to tell me how to be me,” he said, addressing the crowd, “you give me the power to talk my shit.”

Criticize West’s style, his arrogance or even his work itself, but it’s hard to question his authenticity–and his ability to make people think. Does that turn his music, or West himself, into pop art? The answer lies in the eye of the beholder; either way, it sure is fascinating to watch.




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