Ye’s Saint Pablo Tour had no stage, just a platform floating over the crowd

Ye opened the Saint Pablo Tour at Bankers Life Fieldhouse in Indianapolis on 25 Aug 2016, and there wasn’t a stage at the front of the room. He was on a platform hung 15 feet over the floor, moving all night under a rig of lights that ran the length of the arena. He started with “Father Stretch My Hands” in a light denim jacket, black leather pants and Yeezys, Rolling Stone reported.

The crowd didn’t face a stage. It followed one around. Rolling Stone reported that Ye had pictured the idea ten years earlier and that it took eight months to plan. Down on the floor, a lot of the fans were dressed in the tour itself.

Chicago rehearsals: why have a stage at all?

It started in rehearsals in Chicago, when Ye asked his crew why they needed a stage at all, Rolling Stone’s Steve Knopper wrote. They built a 16-by-20-foot platform ringed with Par Can lights, hung from trusses and moved by motors. The floor didn’t stand still, and neither did the people on it.

The Garden, 5 Sep 2016

The tour hit Madison Square Garden on 5 Sep 2016. In GQ’s look book he’s up there that night in a cropped, textured jacket over a cream hoodie, camo trousers, tan boots and gloves. At the second Garden show, Billboard’s reviewer watched him drop the hoodie at the edge of the platform. It stayed there.

A TOUR hoodie and a shoe that wasn’t out

Off the platform, he wore the tour. He left his SoHo apartment on 26 Aug 2016, the day after Indianapolis, in a black Saint Pablo hoodie with TOUR across the back. The black 350 V2s on his feet weren’t out yet. SPLY-350 in red on the outside means the Bred, which didn’t drop until 11 Feb 2017. Three days later he’d be in Midtown in another pre-release pair, the Zebra.

The crowd wore it too. At the Garden a big share of the floor was in tour pieces, Billboard said, and it wasn’t only tees. Complex counts 41 dates plus pop-up shops. The Pablo jacket was a Levi’s trucker stamped PABLO in red, four times across the back, and a Realtree camo long sleeve marked the last West Coast swing.

Called off in November

That swing didn’t finish. Ye cut his Sacramento show short on 19 Nov 2016 and pulled a makeup date at the Forum the next night. On 21 Nov his rep said the rest of the tour was cancelled, 21 dates in all.

The platform came down with 21 dates still on the calendar. The TOUR hoodies had already gone home with the crowd.