It wasn’t so Yeezy to get a callback. Kanye West’s Yeezy Season 4 casting call, held on Sunday, September 4, raised several eyebrows for its stipulations. The Life of Pablo rapper, 39, hasn’t revealed when his actual show is, but announced the call in a Saturday, September 3, tweet.
“Multiracial women only,” West, who shares North, 3, and Saint, 9 months, with wife Kim Kardashian, wrote. “No makeup please come as you are.”
After news of his demands surfaced, plenty of angry tweeters replied to the post with disgust. “..so no black women??” @kanye, a fan account, tweeted on September 3.
“So like….how is he determining this? Is there a board to verify they multiracial?” @TrillSmith wrote that same day.
Despite the controversy, droves of aspiring Yeezy ladies arrived at New York City’s Jack Studios well before the start time of 11 a.m. One hopeful, Sable Yong, told The Cut that the line stretched around the block … and that she stood in it for six hours.
“Picture approximately 1,200 beautiful ‘multiracial’ girls, 30 percent dressed ‘model off-duty’ style, 30 percent ‘dancer off-duty’ style, and the other 40 percent in street-style bait,” she wrote. “I stared in awe at the women in three-inch stiletto heels. The ‘no makeup’ stipulation was loosely interpreted, with several no-makeup-makeup looks to be seen in the line.”
And not all of the models followed the multiracial instruction either. Yong, who described herself as “two kinds of Asian,” noted that “there were a handful of white girls in line, and I may have been one of maybe 20 Asian girls.”
Aside from models, the casting call drew a few protesters as well. “Multiracial only,” one sign read. “Lightskin only … You ain’t slick, ye.” The reveler also included an edited quote from a 2006 Essence interview that the rapper did. “We call them mutts,” he said of multiracial women.
