Kanye West's "Jesus Is King"

About

Jesus Is King, previously known as Yandhi, is the ninth studio album by American rapper Kanye West, released on October 25th, 2019. The album, which explores themes of Christian faith and features songs performed by Kanye together with his Sunday Service gospel-rap group, became a subject of online discussions and memes following its release.

History

On August 29th, 2019, Kim Kardashian-West tweeted ^[1] a photograph of a notebook opened to a page labeled "Jesus Is King." The page contains a list of what many believe to be song titles and the date "September 27th." Within one month, the image received more than 129,000 likes, 26,000 retweets and 3,600 comments (shown below, left).

The following month, on September 27th, Kardashian-West tweeted^[2] a second, different tracklist. The tweet received more than 85,000 likes and 16,000 retweets in three days (shown below, right).

That day, people anticipated the release of the album, posting their excitement on Twitter (example below, left). However, when West missed the release date, they also discussed their disappointment (examples below, center and right).

On September 28th, West held a free listening party for the record at the Auditorium Theatre in Chicago, Illinois.^[4]

In addition to the album, a film, Jesus Is King: A Kanye West Film, was announced for an IMAX-exclusive release date of October 25th, 2019 (poster below).^[3]

On September 30th, Fader^[5] reported that the album no longer has a release date.

Release

On October 25th, 2019, Kanye West released the 27-minute 11-track album, with a concert film of the same name released on the same day (cover art shown below).^[6]

Reception

The album received mixed critic reviews, maintaining a 55 score on Metacritic with 6 reviews as of October 28th, 2019.^[7]

Online Reactions

Online, the album became a popular subject of online discussions and memes, partially due to its religious theme. Many memes about "Jesus Is King" imagined that the album would instantly convert the listener to the Christian faith. For example, a meme posted by Twitter user @shanuddin889, gained over 410 retweets and 1,400 likes in three days (shown below).^[8]

Nobody:

Atheists turning up too Sunday church like this after listening to Kanye West’s “Jesus is King” album#JesusIsKing pic.twitter.com/z3l4yWNCzc

— Shan (@shanuddin889) October 25, 2019

In the following days, the album remained a popular subject of memes on Twitter, Instagram and other platforms (examples shown below).

Search Interest

External References