Ye sold out Madison Square Garden with an album nobody had heard

Ye walked across the floor of Madison Square Garden on 11 Feb 2016 and plugged his own laptop into the soundboard. Then he told the arena, “I’m about to play my new album.” Tickets had sold out in 10 minutes. About 20,000 people were in, and up on two platforms the cast of Yeezy Season 3 stood waiting under a sheet of olive silk.

Hip-hop and high fashion sharing a stage is old hat now, Complex wrote in its oral history of the night a decade later. In 2016 it wasn’t. Ye premiered an album and a collection at once, in an arena, streamed on Tidal and in cinemas.

Ultra Light Beam, then the silk came off

When “Ultra Light Beam” ended, the silk peeled back. Vanessa Beecroft staged it again, and Complex says she’d worked from Paul Lowe’s 1995 photograph of a Rwandan refugee camp. The models stood in maroon, ochre, beige and grey: bodysuits, distressed sweats, bulky jackets trimmed with fur. Naomi Campbell came out in a black bodysuit and a floor-length mink, and the cast had Ian Connor, Lil Yachty and Young Thug in it too. At the end, the models raised black power fists.

There was a shoe in it too. The 350 V2 got its first preview at Season 3, seven months before the Beluga dropped in September.

Out on the floor, Rolling Stone watched Ye, Pusha T and friends start something close to a mosh pit. He closed by calling it “really a gospel album”.

Cali DeWitt’s gothic letters

Ye had played the whole thing in a maroon long sleeve with “I feel like Pablo” across the chest in gothic letters, and a black Yeezus cap. The lettering was Cali DeWitt’s. Complex says burgundy and royal blue tees, hoodies and caps with red letters went on sale at MSG that day, and they didn’t last. Fans had queued about an hour at the booth, Rolling Stone reported.

Backstage, Kevin Mazur photographed him in a different shirt. It’s an airbrushed “In Loving Memory” tee with his mother, Donda West, on the front, and Kim Kardashian’s late father, Robert Kardashian, on the back.

The Life of Pablo wasn’t out yet when Ye played it to the Garden. The shirt he played it in was already for sale.