Kanye West, Life of Pablo at Madison Square Gardens, review: Yeezy has a blast unveiling experimental new album

As much as the crowd enjoyed dancing along, Kanye seemed to be enjoying himself even more

Kanye didn’t perform, instead choosing to stream his record through the loudspeakers (Rex Features)

Kanye West’s big reveal on Thursday was meant to simultaneously debut his fashion ideas and his new album, The Life of Pablo, but what really stole the show was a video clip showing a cartoon version of his mother flying through the gates of heaven, which he wants to make into a video game.

When the audience, gathered at New York’s Madison Square Garden, seemed more amused than amazed by the video he told them “this shit is hard to do, man,” before playing the video clip again, as though we didn’t fully appreciate its true artistry the first time. In other strange moments, he announced it had always been a dream of his to be creative director of Hermes, and debuted his fashion collection, titled Yeezy Season 3.

For the fashion showcase, he gathered a huge group of models together and then dressed them in something that resembled a Seventies version of the Derelicte collection from Zoolander, or possibly the peasants from Section 12 from the Hunger Games. The models, all of appealingly diverse skin tones, had to stand still in the below zero temperatures and looked quite cold and glum in their knee high boots and knitted swimsuits.

Kanye didn’t perform, instead choosing to stream his record through the loudspeakers. It was possibly his most experimental album to date and he continued the tradition of bringing in other talent; Frank Ocean, Ty Dolla Sign and The-Dream all featured.

It was hard to focus on the music between Kanye’s shoutouts about the brilliance of Adidas, but there was a lovely cover of Nina Simone’s "Do What You Gotta Do" by Rihanna on "Famous," a track all about, you guessed it, how brilliant and famous Kanye is. It starts with the brag: “Me and Taylor [Swift] might still have sex/ I made that bitch famous”, which Taylor Swift is reportedly not too happy about, but the rap is incredibly witty and the tune is banging.

As much as the crowd enjoyed dancing along, Kanye seemed to be enjoying himself even more, bouncing around in front of his laptop and mouthing along to the lyrics. Oh Yeezy. Another highlight was a little ditty about Kanye, “We still love you, like Kanye loves Kanye”, he trills merrily. Oh Yeezy, don’t you know that no-one loves Kanye as much as Kanye loves Kanye?