The 44-year-old rapper first discussed changing his name with a tweet in September 2018. He said: “The being formally known as Kanye West I am YE.”
Ye – pronounced “yay” – has long been the rapper’s nickname and was even the title of his 2018 album.
“I believe ‘ye’ is the most commonly used word in the Bible, and in the Bible, it means ‘you,'” he said. “So I’m you, I’m us, it’s us. It went from Kanye, which means ‘the only one,’ to just Ye – just being a reflection of our good, our bad, our confused, everything.”
Ye has also made headlines this week for his appearance. On Monday, the rapper debuted a new avant-garde hairstyle, which seemingly features a series of random shapes styled across his head with a picture on his Instagram. The rapper captioned the post with the Japanese Yen symbol.
Earlier this year, Ye released his long-awaited 10th studio album Donda following several delays. The 27-track album – which is named after the rapper’s late mother Donda West – is 108 minutes long. The album topped the Billboard 200 list and set a new first-day streaming record, which was promptly broken by Canadian rapper Drake who released his latest album “Certified Lover Boy” on September 3.
