Kanye West Postpones Vancouver Yeezus Show Due To Production Problems

So Kanye Westlaunched his Yeezus tour in Seattle Saturday night--and then crashedlanded it in Vancouver less than 24 hours later when the Sunday night show was postponed due to “unforeseen circumstances,” an announcement that came just a few hours before doors were supposed to open at 7pm PST. As you doubtless know if you've been paying attention to social media since last night, that show has now been pushed back until Thursday 10/31 (Halloween Night). Though Kanye himself has not taken to twitter (or anywhere else to our knowledge) to comment on or explain the postponement, we are hearing that the last minute change was quite simply due to problems executing the incredibly ambitious stage production. Apparently the show's producers had budgeted 8 hours of prep time to stage the epic concert--which demands a variety of set-pieces including a heavenly choir, a Jesus lookalike, an actual scale mountain on stage and a blinding UFO/angel spotlight rainy glory down on Yeezy from on high--a process which took closer to 15 hours on the first night.

Though this is all unofficial information, it is certainly borne out by the videos and pics which are filtering out from the Seattle staging (scroll through a gallery of instagrams above and watch the video clips here). It also appears to be in keeping with what we know about Yeezy's no-holds-barred--and occasionally overreaching--passion for performance and what could be described as an acute will to aesthetic bigness. You may recall, for instance, that his vision for the Watch The Throne tour apparently called for such "next level production" that Jay Z had to step in to scale back the proposed $400K/show price tag, for fear that WTT would not be able to recoup its advance from Live Nation.

Behind the scene beef and cutbacks notwithstanding, WTT went on to be one of the most talked-about and successful tours in years. As yet there's no indication how the issues encountered in Vancouver will affect future shows--if at all--or whether/how much Kanye will have scale back his vision this time around (one report suggests that the delay was due to a stolen truck or other equipment--still no official source for that info). Nobody wants to see a Spiderman-on-Broadway sitution, but we kind have to hope that the bugs are worked out without much change in the program--because, let's be real, from the glimpes we've seen so far it looks pretty sick.