Magazine Analysis 5- Kanye West

This magazine is promoting Kanye West's album 'Yeezus'.  It is a very simple advert as Kanye West and his team know that whatever he puts out to the public, it will sell.  This means that extra effort doesn't need to be put into the construction of the magazine posters promoting it.  Although saying this, this magazine advert is still very 'Kanye'.  The image displayed on it is a basic picture of one of Kanye's mixtapes for this album.  It is a simple transparent CD case with a single disc inside, taped shut by some red duct tape.  On the duct tape the word 'Yeezus' is handwritten.  This simple but effective image shows how the album is personal from Kanye as the signature of 'Yeezus' looks as if it could have been written by Kanye in his own home.

The colour palette used is red, white and black.  This is the same as Jay Z's album 'Kingdom Come'.  This suggests that with hip hop artists, they like to keep things quite similar.  As the tape is red, and red has connotations of danger, it could be seen as a warning that when the tape is taken off and the CD is opened, danger is possible. This album does contain 10 songs and all of which have an explicit warning which suggests that this is what the red tape signifies.

The name of the album, 'Yeezus', represents Kanye West and quite a confident artist as he has named his own album after his own nickname.  Kanye West is also known as 'Yeezus' in the music industry.  'Yeezus' is written in large writing at the top of the magazine advert which not only showcases the name of the album but at the same time it is getting Kanye's name out there too as 'Yeezus' is his nickname, as stated before.  Underneath this main title it says 'New Album from Kanye West'.  Kanye West's name is written on it's own line as if it deserves separate positioning from the rest of the sentence.  Kanye West is known for thinking very highly of himself and is a complete narcissist, which for a music artist isn't always a bad thing.  The way that all the writing appears to be painted on in black paint suggests that Kanye is trying to go back to his roots.  This magazine advert's writing looks similar to a homemade banner or something along those lines where the writing has been painted on.  As Kanye West openly speaks about how he didn't come from a very privileged background, the use of a homemade looking poster is very fitting.

The claim that there is to be 'No Pre Order' which is all capitalised shows how strongly Kanye West and his team feel about how they do not want a pre release date where it could be possible that the album could then be leaked early (even though it was anyway).  The majority of albums are usually available for pre-order but as Kanye West is Kanye West, he of course didn't want this.  Releasing an album in the middle of June ensures that it will be a summer hit so this is why Kanye and his management decided on this date.