Why Kanye Is Living In Tokyo: Inside The Making of His New Album

It's a new chapter in his career and his life

Kanye is now living in Tokyo. He’s living in a hotel, hard at work on his next album Bully, a concept album that could be very exciting for his fans. He’s recording the album in his hotel room, not in a recording studio, and he’s planning to be the sole producer on it. It seems like he’s moving into a new chapter of his life and his journey as a musician. He might end up being the only rapper on Bully, but it’s not done so who knows. Someone who knows said, “This album is 100% him.” They meant it’s pretty much made by Kanye alone. “He’s producing everything 100% himself. This will be 100% Kanye West, which it hasn't been in many, many years.”

I love this image of Ye, the embattled global star making his comeback album in a luxury hotel in one of the biggest, most beautiful, most aesthetically interesting, and technologically advanced cities in the world. I picture him taking a break and leaning on the balcony, looking out at this amazing futuristic city while wearing something from the future as some groundbreaking beat plays behind him on a loop. If his life were a movie it would be an amazing scene.

It reminds me of the period before the release of My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, when he was embattled and holed up in Honolulu, making his comeback album. That time he invited a ton of people to come out and help him build an epic, iconic album. This time he’s in Tokyo and he's pretty much alone. It seems like he’s turning the page and moving into a fresh chapter of his life with a new city, perhaps a new sound, and a new sense of peace.

A friend said, “I think Japan is good for him. In L.A. he's got a war with the paparazzi. He does not like the paparazzi. When he's in Japan, people see him, but they're very quiet. They're very respectful. Very seldom will they even come up and ask for a picture. So he can move around Japan with no security.” TokyoWeekender recently reported that he’s been spotted at a Pro Wrestling event in Shinjuku and in the Jamaican restaurant Good Wood Terrace in Shibuya. A friend said, “In Japan he has a different level of peace of mind, which obviously leads to being able to make really good music. Because your mind is at ease. Your mind is at rest. You're not paranoid about anything.”

I don’t know when Ye began living in Tokyo. A year ago? Maybe. Some of the Vultures music was made there. People say it’s hard to quantify when he started living there because he’s sort of upper-class homeless nowadays. He’s living in hotels all over the world. There was a stint at the Chateau Marmont in Beverly Hills, a stint in Florence, and a stint in Dubai, but now he seems to look at Tokyo as home. That will have an impact on the music. Maybe not in some obvious way like working with Japanese MCs, but surely it’ll manifest in ways we can’t easily hear.

In Tokyo, Ye’s got no entourage. In the past he traveled places with 30 to 50 people around him ranging from music people to architects to shoe designers to fashion designers—a whole creative beehive buzzing around him. Now, in Tokyo, it’s just him and an engineer in a single hotel room, pulling together an album at a big crossroads in his career. This is more than a comeback album. This is a I’m-in-a-new-stage-of-my-life album.

Musically, Ye is normally the product of a team—he comes with big ideas but there’s producers helping him pull the sound together and writers helping him pull the lyrics together. Not this time. “I don't think that's the reality of this record,” a friend said. That means lots of Ye himself playing and when he’s in front of the keyboard and the drum sequencer and other music-making machines, it can be magical. A friend said, “When you get him actually on the machines, that’s a different beast. That's when you get Kanye the producer at the highest level. When he's actually touching the machines there's nobody better. He just has a gift when it comes to that.”

What's the general sonic direction of Bully? “He's pulling from an eclectic pool. He's traveled the world a lot so he's aware of a lot more music than probably ever before. So I think sound-wise, it's probably varied. But in a Kanye-esque form.”