The meaning behind Kanye West masks "Mask on my face, you can't see what I'm finna do"

Throughout his career Kanye West has often used the accessory as a medium to enrich his artistic and personal performance, chronicling phases of his career and emotionality by hiding his face in what has often seemed like a search for the normalcy in the life of a global superstar. Not just the Margiela Mask from the Yeezus Tour in 2014, from the launch of Donda to the months that followed West never stopped covering his face, creating in some cases what seemed like a piece of performance art orchestrated four-handedly by Kanye along with Demna Gvasalia, which saw its evolution first in the events that anticipated the release of the album and then in other public events, from the Met Gala to the last Balenciaga fashion show, in which pop culture has known its peak in the cancellation of celebrity, making us ask simply "why? ".

The name change, now made official, from Kanye West to Ye could have a specific weight in the story, linking to an old tweet in which the rapper wondered: "Who or what is Kanye West with no ego? Just Ye." The cancellation of the personality seems to be the central point in an operation whose ultimate goal could be to reset his ego and his fame becoming almost a character without connotations. An operation that clashes, however, with the weight of the notoriety of Kanye, followed 24/7 by fans and paparazzi and therefore with a life continuously controlled, a golden cage from which it is impossible to escape if not with a magic trick. If in Off the Grid Kanye says "Mask on my face, you can't see what I'm finna do", the appearance of doppelgangers around the world, people with a total black look accompanied by fake bodyguards as in the case of Warsaw, could give us the final answer to the question "what do masks mean for Kanye West? A way to hide, to escape from one's ego, but above all a collective illusion with which to make fun of ourselves once again.