Everything We Know About Kanye West’s Sunday Service
Back in January, Kim Kardashian-West started sharing Instagram stories of Kanye West staging gospel choir performances of his songs. These performances were often in rooms lit to suggest that a James Turrell glow is the modern-day equivalent of a Catholic rose window. (West is an avowed Turrell devotee.)
Since then, West’s so-called Sunday Services have become one of Hollywood’s most mysterious and strange events. Is it a party? A new kind of church? One of those “normal” things celebrities do that cannot ever seem normal to the rest of the world? Rick Rubin, Courtney Love, Kid Cudi, and Katy Perry have all attended, and the celebrity and celebrity-adjacent attendees alike have shared images and videos from the services, which are splashed every Monday across the Daily Mail’s website. A Montreal-based student named Wilhens Norvil has collected most of this content on the Instagram account @kanyessundayservice.
This coming Sunday, West will headline Coachella with his Sunday Service. Unlike the usual Sunday Service, it will be open to the public and, presumably, will not require attendees to sign an NDA. But there will obviously be a few surprises: merch, at least, and maybe even a few new songs.
It’s pretty weird that two of pop culture’s most prominent iconoclasts have ended up in two of the most establishment, conservative fields in our country: something approaching religion, for West, and law, for his wife. But of course, West never does anything the way you’d expect him to.
I reached out to a handful of choir members as well as people who appear to help organize the event, who kindly informed me they couldn’t speak to me because they had signed non-disclosure agreements. But I spoke to Norvil—who hasn’t attended a service, but is sort of the project’s unofficial curator or amateur scholar—and did my own social media digging. Here’s what we know about Kanye’s Sunday Services.
The Basics
The service has been held every Sunday afternoon in Calabasas since January 6, per a Twitter announcement from Kim Kardashian-West. It is invitation-only. The location varies every week, and is allegedly selected by West’s assistants. “One guy named Nico Ballesteros seems to do the scouting,” Norvil says. Ballesteros is something like West’s personal videographer. He selects the location “one to three days before the service is done. They don’t like to stay at the same place a lot, because people might figure where it is.” Over the past month, most of the services have been outside, in spots in the remote hills of Calabasas that bear an eerie resemblance to a Microsoft screensaver. The spaces, including the interiors, are designed by TrasK House, a stage design firm that produces a number of West’s live shows.
The services appear to be produced by a social media manager named James Tyler Fazio, who wrote about his experience on LinkedIn (?!), and who serves as the primary contact for attendees and the choir.
The concert experience includes the approach to the service’s remote location: in one post, you can see West walking up a palm tree-lined path with Rick Rubin, the architect Francis Kere, and others last week, for example. This is where most of the paparazzi images seem to come from; who knows who’s tipping them off.
It’s Not a Church—It’s a Concert
The run of show is pretty much what you see on Instagram. This is not a full-fledged church service, with gospel readings or sermons. Instead, the gospel choir sings for about sixty minutes. It is decidedly a concert—not the “new church” people have speculated about. West sometimes speaks in between the songs, but this is more in keeping with the tradition of gospel choir concerts (or Kanye’s signature extemporizing) than a sermon per se.
Everyone involved is insistent that it is not a church. The World Famous Tony Williams, who is West’s cousin and often sings on his records, recently did an interview on Instagram live while getting a new tattoo (I know!!!) explaining the Sunday Services, and said that “we don’t even pass a plate,” meaning the offering plate traditionally passed during Christian church services. The show’s music director—more on him below—has been similarly resolute, saying that people “see it’s on Sunday morning. They think, ‘Oh, he’s starting a church.’ But you can’t just call it that.” But he added that for West, “in his mind, metaphorically speaking, it is a church.”
TL;DR: not a church, unless you are in Kanye’s mind, in which case, it is a church.
For Coachella, They’re Building a Mountain
@kanyesundayservices shared a screenshot yesterday that includes photographs of speakers installed into the sand, over which West’s team seems to be building a mountain to approximate the landscape of the original. The mountain is once again the work of TrasK House.
This Is a World-Class Choir, People!
The music director is Phillip Cornish, who spoke to Jammcard, a private social media platform for artists. Cornish said he tapped Jason White, a major figure in the Los Angeles gospel scene, to assemble the choir. The musicians tagged in various posts are serious studio and career musicians, making it clear that West has put together a pretty formidable lineup, particularly from the world of gospel music (and not just in Los Angeles).
The music itself is a mix of gospel-fied covers of West songs (with lyrics tweaked where necessary) and gospel classics. Here they are covering “Father Stretch My Hands,” for example, which samples heavily from a song by the Pentecostal preacher and gospel legend from South Chicago, T.L. Barrett.
Of Course There Is a Dress Code
What makes West’s Sunday Services especially unusual is that there is a dress code. All of the choir members wear a uniform that varies from week to week, but is usually a garment that’s a merging between a t-shirt and a choir robe, plus Yeezy sneakers and trousers. Norvil’s understanding is that the producer of the event relays the information to the band, and they’re given the clothing and shoes for free either a few days before or the day of. The outfit is usually white, but West pulls from the full Yeezy palette--he’s also done buttery beige, graphite, and black. Here’s the percussionist in a recent choir ensemble:
Not only do the choir members wear uniforms--usually all white--but West also seems to dictate the dress code for attendees. Courtney Love attended in that buttery beige color, as did Katy Perry, on the same day.
The exception to the dress code seems to be West’s daughter North, whose contrasting ensemble make her a distinctly “chosen one” presence.
Courtney Love, Katy Perry, and….
DMX, Orlando Bloom, Charlie Wilson, Kid Cudi, and Diplo have all attended, per New York Magazine. But a look through @kanyesundayservices reveals even more celebrities and notable names, especially prominent black entrepreneurs, like the entertainment mogul Steve Jones and David Bullock, founder of a digital marketing agency called 907.
But also, otherwise totally normal, cool area-LA people seem to go regularly, too.
About That NDA…
As I said, the attendees and participants I contacted told me they were unable to answer questions because they’d signed an NDA. It’s a slippery situation for something that one of the hosts announced on Twitter and promotes weekly on Instagram, and that paparazzi appear to be invited to attend, and that almost every attendee posts about on social media. But who am I to question the grace of God, or at least Yeezus!
