Don’t bother Ye with your bland apes. The rapper formerly known as Kanye West has announced himself as somewhat of a surprising outlier in the NFT game: while more and more celebrities are cashing in on the hyped crypto art scam, Ye posted on Instagram claiming he can’t be bothered with creating and selling meaningless digital receipts — at least not yet.
Like a beautiful middle-finger poem, Kanye posted a photo of a handwritten note, with line breaks and all: “My focus is on / building real / products in the / real world / real food / real clothes / real shelter / do not ask me / to do a fucking / NFT,” he wrote. He signed the letter before adding one more curious footnote: “Ask me later.”
In a similar caption, he wrote, “STOP ASKING ME TO DO NFT’s I’M NOT FINNA CO-SIGN … FOR NOW I’M NOT ON THAT WAVE I MAKE MUSIC AND PRODUCTS IN THE REAL WORLD.”
It seems Ye is wise enough to recognize and implicitly call out the empty value in pawning lines of code to his fans, who would most certainly pay exorbitant sums and eat up anything he has to offer. Say what you will about Ye, but he’s at least always cared most of all about creating something meaningful. Then again, he’s announced his stance with an open back door: if you “ask him later,” maybe he’ll have gotten bored and resorted to the monkeys becoming his Medici family. That is, after all, largely what NFTs are for: a gambling scheme heavily tilted in the favor of wealthy people and celebs who can essentially profit off of their fans while offering nothing that has any actual worth.
But for now, count Ye out. It’s a nice change of pace from the ongoing deluge of other famous people cringingly announcing their NFT debuts. But most importantly for Ye fans, it’s good to know he’s not being distracted while he prepares to finish Donda 2 at least somewhat close to his February 22 deadline.
