After the release of Yeezus on June 18, 2013, rumors began circulating that West would embark on a solo tour. Co-producer of the album Mike Dean reported that there would be a tour for the album and that he would be a backing producer for the show.[4] On September 6, 2013, West tweeted the word "TOUR" along with the promotional picture of the tour. All of the dates for the opening tour performances (all of which were in North America) became available via his official website.[5]
Kendrick Lamar served as a supporting act through the majority of the tour, with "special guests" replacing him on the dates he missed. At the October 25, 2013 show, GOOD Music signee Pusha T served as the opening act.[6] On October 15, 2013, it was revealed that two of the four New York shows would feature A Tribe Called Quest as supporting acts instead of Lamar.[7] These concerts were stated to be A Tribe Called Quest's final performances ever, which ultimately proved untrue as they reunited two years later.[8]
Stage and equipment
West performing as part of the tour, with LED screen and mountain visible in background.
West said that the initial idea of The Yeezus Tour came from him thinking about the end of the world, which influenced explosions, fire, mountains, masked beings and Christian symbolism as prominent imagery during the show. Fashion was an important element of the tour's visual identity. Family New York, Vanessa Beecroft, Es Devlin and John McGuire created the scenography. The stage used during the tour heavily resembled a fashion catwalk.[9]Maison Martin Margiela and West worked together to create fashion pieces and outfits for the tour. Another influence for the stage setup, according to West, came from the 1973 film The Holy Mountain, a "biblical redemption story". This can be seen with one of the stages main features; a 50-foot high mountain, called Mount Yeezus by some,[9][10][11] that could change its appearance into that of a volcano. The foot of the mountain then lead to a secondary stage that elevated up to the pointed main stage, which was also motorized. Above the mountain, a 60-foot wide circular LED screen was placed along with a custom sound system by DONDA.[9]
The performances were separated into five parts, Fighting, Rising, Falling, Searching and Finding. The division serves to frame it in a theme of redemption. All performances featured 12 female dancers.
On October 30, 2013 while on the road to Vancouver, a truck carrying custom-made video screens and equipment for the show was involved in a car crash; the crash damaged the equipment beyond repair. Def Jam issued a statement on the issue saying,
"This gear is central to the staging of The Yeezus Tour, and central to the creative vision put forth by Kanye West and his design team at DONDA. As a result of this event, it is impossible to put on the show and The Yeezus Tour will be postponed until these essential pieces can be reengineered and refabricated. Kanye West will not compromise on bringing the show, as it was originally envisioned and designed, to his fans. The Vancouver, Denver and Minneapolis dates have been postponed."[12]
West lying on the triangular main stage accompanied by dancers; all shown on a circular LED screen above Mount Yeezus.
The tour picked back up on November 16, 2013, at the Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia. The missed Chicago and Detroit shows were rescheduled however, the rest of the missed dates were cancelled, Def Jam cites routing logistics as the reason.[13]
On January 7, 2014 Kanye West added 9 new dates to the tour, starting on February 13 in University Park, Pennsylvania and concluding on February 23 at Uniondale, New York.[14]
In February 2014, dates were announced for an Australian leg of the Yeezus Tour, beginning May 2 at Perth Arena.[15] However, in early April West postponed his Australian leg until September, using the months in-between to work on his seventh studio album, which later became The Life of Pablo.[16] The performances in Australia had a significantly more minimal visual production, compared to the previous shows.
Reception
The tour was met with rave reviews from critics.[17][18]Rolling Stone described it as "crazily entertaining, hugely ambitious, emotionally affecting (really!) and, most importantly, totally bonkers."[17] Writing for Forbes, Zack O'Malley Greenburg praised West for "taking risks that few pop stars, if any, are willing to take in today's hyper-exposed world of pop", describing the show as "overwrought and uncomfortable at times, but [it] excels at challenging norms and provoking thought in a way that just isn’t common for mainstream musical acts of late."[19]NY Daily News wrote that "the show wasn’t about crowd-pleasing. It was about unyielding beats, hellish textures and a brusque flow, all delivered with an impact every bit as stunning as West's ego itself."[20] In 2019, Vivid Seats named it the 68th greatest tour of all time.[21]
Set list
The tour told a story of redemption through 5 stages. West performed every track from Yeezus, along with some songs from his previous records.[22]
In February 2014, West uploaded a trailer of a film connected with the tour to his website.[39] In October 2023, Hype Williams in a interview with Complex explained why the film was never released:
So we decided we're gonna do a partnership. His job was to clear everything and then get it a distributor. My job was to shoot it. So we went and shot it. And it's based on the tour. We shot in two cities, Chicago and Toronto. And then a dress rehearsal where we were allowed to film the entirety of the concert, but with no people in the stadium. So I was literally able to shoot the details and close-ups of every costume and of every part of the show as if it was a video. I had free rein to do it, and we filmed all these things and it kind of got lost in what he was meant to do in terms of the agreement. I had to deliver the film, and he had to deliver some things that fell by the wayside. So by the time we got together, he already did The Life of Pablo. And he was like, “Yo, let’s just make this part of Life of Pablo.” So then we went and shot an additional bunch of stuff, which was the “Highlights” video. We shot a “Waves” video. We shot in Scotland. All over Iceland.
Scooter Braun and I spent six months with IMAX to release it, and when it came to the signing of it, that’s exactly when all that shit happened with Kim in Paris, and he got lost in himself and the whole thing fell to the wayside again. So no one, even Kanye, has seen Yeezus. We shot it in 2014 by the way. This is like us having like The Rolling Stones concert or some shit, or like The Beatles’ A Hard Day's Night. Like, that’s the level of movie Yeezus is, and no one has even seen it. So it may come back in a big way because that Kanye doesn’t exist anymore. So it’s historic. And by the way, it's flawless. Like, this Yeezus movie is mind-blowing like. It’s like some Pink Floyd shit. I'm lucky he allowed me to just do it. Me, him, and Drake was onstage together in Toronto for that show. It was 2014. So it'll come up in some capacity, but now it's really rock ‘n’ roll history.[40]
