The Yeezus Tour
The Yeezus Tour was the fifth concert tour by American rapper Kanye West, in support of his sixth studio album, Yeezus. Announced with a promotional poster in September 2013, it served as West's first solo concert tour since the Glow in the Dark Tour. West shared the opening North American dates that same month and in January 2014, he revealed an additional stint across the continent. The rapper announced legs across Europe and Australia for 2014, although the European dates were cancelled. The tour was intended to combine staging, production, and West's aesthetic to showcase his creativity. Its stage design was handled by Es Devlin, the firm Family, Virgil Abloh, and John McGuire, with Devlin having worked on the likes of mountains and icebergs with West. For the imagery, such as the mountain, West was largely inspired by Alejandro Jodorowsky's cult film, The Holy Mountain. West was accompanied by an opening act from Kendrick Lamar on most dates and Pusha T for some of them, while A Tribe Called Quest opened two shows and Travis Scott accompanied Pusha T on one show.
The tour began in Seattle on October 19, 2013, travelling across the United States, as well as to Canada and Australia, until the last show in Brisbane on September 15, 2014. Due to West's equipment becoming damaged after an accident with his tour truck in late October 2013, numerous tour dates in the US were cancelled and others re-scheduled to later dates. West performed the tracks from Yeezus alongside work from his earlier albums and accompanied some tracks with narratives, including delivering stream-of-conscious speeches after "Runaway". The concerts were separated into the five themes of "Fighting", "Rising", "Falling", "Searching", and "Finding", which were introduced with elements from the Bible. West followed different stages of his life in the themes, using masks to represent the personality shifts. The tour made use of a light show that included a light beam, laser beams, and an LED screen.
The Yeezus Tour received widespread acclaim from critics, who lauded its imagery and generally focused on the mountain. Some critics commended the lighting, while a few reviewers highlighted West's collection of masks. The tour scored the second-highest grossing leg of a tour in 2013, only behind Paul McCartney's Out There! Tour. It was the highest-grossing hip-hop tour of 2013, at $31.8 million from 33 shows. The tour was included as the year's most seminal concert in Corbin Reiff's 2017 book, Lighters in the Sky: The All-Time Greatest Concerts, 1960-2016. An accompanying Hype Williams–directed film was teased by West in February 2014, although it was cancelled despite negotiations with IMAX due to his personal issues after Kim Kardashian was robbed in 2016.
Background
In June 2013, West's sixth studio album Yeezus was released to commercial success, reaching number one in 31 countries. Co-producer Mike Dean subsequently confirmed that a tour would be held for the album with him as a backing performer. On September 6, 2013, West announced the Yeezus Tour with a promotional poster showing the album's title and him dangling backwards using his arms. West shared 23 dates and the accompaniment of an opening act from fellow rapper Kendrick Lamar, who was scheduled for all but five dates that had a "special guest" set instead. This marked Lamar's first live appearance with a full backing band, although his label Top Dawg Entertainment wanted him to focus on recording rather than joining the tour. West's team insisted on his inclusion however, which the label allowed once a studio bus was secured for Lamar to record while touring. In spite of expectations from journalists that the rappers would have engaged in communal bonding, they spent little time around each other. Lamar mentioned that West desired for him not to seem like "just the opener", impressed with the rapper wanting his opening show to be on the same level as the headlining set. Tickets went on sale the week after West's announcement and tour dates ran from October 19–December 7, 2013, venturing across the United States and also visiting Canada. Later in September, West announced an additional six dates across North America.The Yeezus Tour stood as West's first solo tour since the Glow in the Dark Tour from 2007–2008; he did not tour for his fifth album My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy due to a lack of sponsorship in 2010. West had previously performed tracks from Yeezus live for television shows, including "Black Skinhead" on Saturday Night Live and "Blood on the Leaves" at the 2013 MTV Video Music Awards. Music programmer Alluxe handled music programming and live vocal effects for the Yeezus Tour, referring to her work as "controllerism" since she felt this represented the complete process of utilizing hardware controllers to control software. West previously worked with her on West and fellow rapper Jay-Z's track "Made in America", and their Watch the Throne Tour. The programmer generally strayed from talking about working with acts like these rappers, wanting people to support her music because they enjoyed it rather than because of her connections.
For the tour's show at Las Vegas' Grand Garden Arena on October 25, 2013, rapper Pusha T served as the opening act. A Tribe Called Quest opened the concerts in New York at the Barclays Center and Madison Square Garden on November 20 and 24, respectively, marking their first shows since performing in California during August. The group insisted on doing these final two concerts in their home city, although they later performed together again for a 2017 tour that ended at the English festival Bestival. On October 30, 2013, West's tour truck was involved in an accident on the way to a concert in Vancouver. The vehicle carried custom-made video screens and equipment, which was damaged beyond repair and this caused the show's cancelation since it was central to the staging. West also canceled tour dates in Denver, Columbus, Montreal, Minneapolis, and St. Louis, with Def Jam citing "routing logistics". Shows in Chicago, Toronto, and Detroit were rescheduled to later dates; the tour leg was set to run until December 23, 2013. The tour resumed at the Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia on November 6, 2013.
On January 7, 2014, West revealed nine dates for the Yeezus Tour across the US East Coast and Canada from February 13–23. Live Nation Entertainment held a credit card-sponsored presale the following day and tickets went on sale on January 10, while a press release said the leg would be the last chance for North Americans to see the rapper's "creative concept". On February 17, 2014, Live Nation announced tour dates across Australia from May 2–10. The leg featured Pusha T as an opening act and marked West's first appearance in the country since the 2012 Big Day Out festival. On March 25, 2014, West announced a European tour leg that included the likes of Germany, Norway, and the United Kingdom from June 21–July 6. A German promoter reported three days later that the European dates had been cancelled, citing "production problems". On April 1, 2014, Live Nation issued a statement that West postponed the Australian leg until September. The statement cited "unexpected timing requirements" for working on his seventh album that had been set for release in 2014.
Stage and design
A press release for E! Online said that the Yeezus Tour would combine "state-of-the-art staging, production, and lighting design with unmatched aesthetic", creative mind, and decade-long discography of singles. Set to represent the "end of the world", the tour featured a triangular main stage that resembles a catwalk. At a show in New York on November 20, 2013, West revealed that filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky's 1973 cult film The Holy Mountain was an inspiration for the Yeezus Tour. Imagery was influenced by the film's mountain that is shown when the thief leaves from a cross after getting attacked with stones by boys, before a spiritual guide attempts to lead him to the Holy Mountain. The tour's 50–foot mountain appears on stage prior to West performing on the top, while explosions from fire and lava occur when the mountain breaks open; it was sometimes referred to as "Mount Yeezy". Various groups of women form circle arrangements in The Holy Mountain; women appear nude or cloaked as they surround West in mostly circular movements during the tour. Faces are covered, uncovered, and attacked by insects in the film, which West references with the various masks of himself and his dancers. The thief is carried in multiple film scenes and West is carried out by a touring crew of semi-naked women, while the character and one on the Yeezus Tour both resemble Jesus. West and Jodorowsky met each other in June 2014; he was taken aback by the rapper's pureness and deep desire to craft "a work that develops the consciousness of young people".The tour's stage design was handled by British designer Es Devlin, who had previously worked on the Watch the Throne Tour and West's Touch the Sky Tour. Devlin stated that West was continuously evolving creatively and the two had talked about mountains since 2005, discussing them alongside icebergs during the Watch the Throne Tour. The rapper's concert with Jay-Z in Atlantic City was supposed to feature mountains and icebergs in 2012, which West and Devlin used as a starting point for the tour's planning. Devlin noted West's dependence on reflected light like an opera and compared pointing a light at the crowd during the concerts to pressing "the energy button". New York firm Family, Donda's since-deceased creative director Virgil Abloh, stage designer John McGuire, and architect Oana Stanescu also contributed to the design. Abloh posted behind-the-scenes photos of the Yeezus Tour and McGuire had unsuccessfully attempted to persuade West not to use a 60–foot circular LED screen, recalling the screen having to be built. Scenography and choreography were done by Italian designer Vanessa Beecroft, who worked with West on material such as a listening party for his 2008 album 808s & Heartbreak, his 2010 short film Runaway and the music video of "Only One" in 2015.
In October 2013, it was reported by The Daily Telegraph that the French fashion house Maison Margiela provided West with his clothing for the tour which consisted of 10 specified pieces, 20 ready-to-wear pieces, and a pair of trainers. They designed four face masks that were based in black silk gauze; a spokesperson explained the transparent material needed to be in black for models to see through "because white becomes opaque". The fashion house issued a statement that they were unfazed by West's public image in October 2013, focusing on working together from appreciation of his support and music. Maison Margiela was not briefed for the Yeezus Tour and only told to design in line with Beecroft's artistic direction, working closely with West since the start of the year and beginning from reinterpretations of their archives. They went through a few fittings for the garments, fabrics, textures, colours, and details, having no limits to production in their Parisian workshop. One of West's masks reinterprets Maison Margiela's signature mask from their shows; they said it was obvious for him this after he performed "in a crystal veil" for their couture collection in the fall of 2012.