'That's enough Mr. West, please, no more today.'
Kanye West has officially changed his name after years of talking about. Goodbye Kanye, hello 'Ye'.
As reported by TMZ, the rapper officially filed to change his legal name back in August but as any Yeezy fan will know (we're just glad he didn't pick that or, even worse, Yeezus), he's been thinking about it for some time.
The name Ye is something he's been dotting throughout his music over the past few years and many within the industry have been referring to him by that name moniker for some time now. Back in 2018, he even gave us a somewhat Prince-like heads up, also calling himself a being rather than a human.
https://twitter.com/kanyewest/status/1046064289944080388?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1046064289944080388%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ndtv.com%2Fentertainment%2Fmost-kanye-west-thing-ever-twitter-facepalms-after-rapper-wants-to-be-legally-known-as-ye-2518372
Born Kanye Omari West, the rapper simply cited “personal reasons” for the name change but given his intense artistic temperament, it's likely there is a very specific reason for this. To clarify, he will also no longer have a middle or surname from now on - it's just 'Ye'.
Besides having also released an album simply called 'ye' in the same year back in 2018, in the same year he
gave radio host Big Boy a detailed explanation of the word and why he'd taken it to heart:
“I believe ‘ye’ is the most commonly used word in the Bible. In the Bible it means you. So, I’m you. And I’m us. It’s us. It went from being Kanye, which means the only one to just Ye, just being a reflection of our good, our bad, our confused – everything. It’s more of a reflection of who we are [as] beings.”
Let's not forget, this is the same man who
referred to himself as a god in that famous interview with Zane Lowe. The one lesson we've learned over the years is not to try and make sense of Kanye but to simply recognise him as an artist - even if his art sometimes comes in the form of a name change.
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