Now that the dust has settled and the hype has relaxed since Drake dropped Certified Lover Boy, Kanye West dropped DONDA, and they duked it out, you'd think there'd be a bit of a gap between headline-worthy.
Oh, sure, Kim showed that Yeezy taught her by taking a variation on her DONDA look to The Met (though she wasn't the house's only fan in attendance) and Kanye had that weird escapade in Berlin but it seemed like things were slowing down after Chicago.
So here's the thing: after Kanye uploaded an image of Kim wearing the Balenciaga fit she showed off at the Met Gala on September 16, his Instagram account went dark.
Not literally, I guess, but he did black out his avatar on IG and YouTube in the vein of DONDA's album cover. His Twitter remains untouched, though.
This could just be attributed to organic buzz built up for Kanye's new music video for DONDA track "24", which was uploaded on YouTube on September 17. All seems normal enough, but here's the weird thing: Kanye has begun following back Instagram accounts that black their avatar out to mirror his, even though the video premiered hours ago.
Everyone — from fan pages to celebrities (including Jaden Smith, Solange Knowles, and Kendrick Lamar) to, uh, Fashion Nova — is getting a follow-back if they have the all-black avatar. There's no apparent rhyme or reason, as is the norm for most things that Kanye does these days.
Some of the fan pages have begun uploading images of black squares or promotional imagery for the "24" video, but they could just be showing love to Kanye, rather than fulfilling some kind of contractual obligation (i.e. a Kanye follow in exchange for a post about the music video).
We reached out to a few of these pages on Instagram for clarification about the process — specifically, did Kanye's team reach out to them to initiate the blackout? We haven't received a response yet.
The album drops, simultaneously sudden and brief were only one stop on the Kanye train that rolls ever onward. Now, though, everyone's invited on board.
