Finally a book that can adequately express the exquisite ambition and ego of the one and only Kanye Omari West, the man behind such stirring religious texts as “Jesus Walks” and “New God Flow.” Kanye reportedly considered naming his sixth album I Am God (it was actually named Yeezus) but then settled for merely calling one song on it “I Am a God.” In an interview with BBC News in September 2013 Kanye defended himself on his use of the title by in effect crying racism:
I just told you who I thought I was: A god. I just told you. That’s who I think I am. Would it have been better if I had a song that said “I am a n*gger” or if I had a song that said “I am a gangster” or if I had a song that said “I am a pimp”? All those colours and patinas fit better on a person like me, right?
Well, maybe, Yeezus. The opposite of naming a song “I Am a God” isn’t naming a song “I Am a Pimp,” it’s opting not to name a song “I Am a God” in the first place! And the end result is that you do seem to spend an awful lot of time wondering if you are God. So there’s that.
Seemingly designed to mock at least as much as honor Kanye, you can now buy a bound edition of the Book of Genesis in which “God” or “Y——A” has been replaced “Kanye” and “Yeezus.” So for instance, the first sentence of The Book of Yeezus is, “In the beginning Kanye created the heavens and the earth.” The books costs $20 but includes “a 300-word social commentary on the religion and spectacle of media icons in the 21st-century.”
Kanye West, “Jesus Walks”: