By Anton Karve

As I scroll through my various social media feeds, every once in a while a post or story pops up that makes me do a double-take. It might be because its contents looked familiar, interesting, or maybe they were just plain weird. A quick calculation tells me that the enigmatic Kanye West’s social media accounts are responsible for most of these double-takes, particularly in the latter category.

Now, Ye’s social media posts are just about as elusive he is—he’s notorious for posting something extremely controversial and deleting it within the minute. It’s not uncommon for me to go back for a third try at decoding the image, brow furrowed in pure disbelief, only to find the post gone. As you can tell, it’s not easy to compile a comprehensive timeline of Ye’s online presence, and some key aspects may have been missed out, but here’s our favourite moments from Kanye West’s Instagram this past month.

1. Ye’s beef with adidas

Kanye’s always had issues with his business partners. His most lucrative venture with adidas, the groundbreaking Yeezy, was only fully brought to life as a result of his falling out with Nike. Now, given Ye’s impulsive nature, it’s difficult to tell how serious the state of affairs with adidas really is, but we have no doubt that tensions are running high right now.

Secondly, why do his rants somehow read like the lyrics of a song from Yeezus, or maybe Graduation? Maybe his once-in-a-generation talent even transforms his ravings to one with rhythmic flow—or maybe he’s just writing an adidas diss track for Donda 2.

2. Yeezy-Gap no more

There’s a lot going on here. Besides Kanye screenshotting a not even half-loaded news article and changing ‘Kanye West’ to ‘ye’ in Instagram Stories (we’ll get more into that later), these posts came during a period when his famous Yeezy-Gap collaboration was in complete disarray. While Ye’s lawyers have reportedly been working overtime to free Mr. West from his contract with the apparel company, Kanye was promoting another Yeezy-Gap release on his Instagram. Simultaneously, teasers of futuristic Yeezy-Gap SHDZ sunglasses were dropping that looked like a cross between a fashion prank and fever dream.

Now, Kanye’s probably not continuing his collaboration with Gap. However, knowing Ye, we need to consider every timeline. Including the weird ones. It’s probably safe to assume there will be a couple more Yeezy-Gap drops before the apparel line dissolves completely.

3. Ye pretty much changing his official name to ‘Ye’

Kanye seems to have gotten into the habit of using Instagram’s photo editor to erase all other letters from his name except for ‘ye’. Why does he do it? It’s possible that he wants the @ye Instagram handle, and this is his way of signalling his intentions to the account’s owner. He knows there’s better ways to do that, right?

Also, that has to be one of the best celebrity poses we’ve seen in a while. Low key wished we saw that in the Balenciaga show, but more on that later on.

4. Ye doing… what is he doing?

Last but not least, out of all the contextualised ravings, legal drama and rocky collaborations, we have the rest—which, more and more, is making Ye’s Instagram seem more like a meme account than that of one of the most legendary artists currently alive. Taking the cake are a photoshopped photo of the late Queen Elizabeth II (R.I.P.) dripped out in Yeezy SHDZ, as well as “The Art of Ye” by “Sun Tzu”.

At first glance, these posts and stories appear to be created on a whim, without much thought behind them. But even as we raise our eyebrows at his weird, random content as it makes its way across our feeds, the level of attention his account garners every time it springs back to life tells us something about Kanye. Even in his social media renaissance, his level of creativity has never dropped, and he still retains his fascinating talent of capturing one’s attention.

ICYMI, for a brief period, he had Kris Jenner as his display picture. In a respectful, change-the-narrative way, of course.

5. BalenciYEga

Perhaps the most unprecedented of Ye’s appearances this period, even more shocking than his diamond “slides” at Burberry, was the rapper adding high-fashion modelling to his prolific resumé. Opening Balenciaga’s Summer 2023 runway was Kanye leading the muddy march in utility gear that characterised the fashion house’s militant-esque collection.

Post-show, Ye was back on the app, but this time employing the seemingly forgotten Feed function to immortalise (at least for now) his modelling debut. Creative Director Demna’s choice to appoint Kanye for his collection is not so left field considering the house’s Couture Show models—of which includes Selling Sunset’s Christine Quinn, Dua Lipa, and who can forget, Balenciaga’s newest campaign ambassador Kim Kardashian. Who just happens to be Ye’s ex-boo, and someone he had a whole ‘nother Instagram dispute era with (notoriously involving a certain Skete).

Whether it’s dropping music that makes your head bop, releasing sneaker, apparel and accessory designs like nothing you’ve ever seen before, stealing the microphone from Taylor Swift and ranting to the crowd at the VMAs, or posting almost meme-like content on his Instagram page, Kanye West has never ceased to fascinate the public. And that, more than anything else, is the key sign that in pop culture, Ye is here to stay.

Images via @kanyewest