The #ProjectWyoming creative approach

Just what can Creative teams take away from Kanye’s #ProjectWyoming?

This post is about Kanye West, so a note before we begin: If you think he’s a douchebag, if you hate his music, if you’re a fan but are troubled or even heartbroken by his support of Trump and are considering cancelling him, this is still for you. I don’t want to debate his work or public persona right now. I want to talk about how Kanye and his collaborators have been making stuff in Wyoming for the past year or so, and what we can learn from it.

Another note: though there is no official name for the self-imposed creative process he’s been working to, the hashtag #ProjectWyoming has been used here and there, and the tag is significant for a few reasons that become clear when you understand what Kanye’s been trying to do, so that’s what i’ll be referring to it as in this post.

Wyoming, is a wild, mountainous and sparse state, of which no city within comes close to cracking a population of 100k. It has a buffalo on its state flag. It is as far removed from Hidden Hills, the gated community in California just outside LA in which the West/Kardashian clan currently live that you can possibly get. Yet it was here, at a farmland retreat, that Kanye decided to set up a studio early last year, to escape the noise and relentless churn of the music industry to return to the basics of how he works — crate digging, sampling and production. He was working on a new album.

Or at least that’s what we thought he was doing. Despite whispers of guests flying in and out and speculation over suspiciously Wyoming-esque Instagram posts from adjacent artists, nothing leaked… until Kanye returned to Twitter in a flurry of confusing politics and self-love affirmations. And then he started to talk about the music.

First, he would be releasing an album in June that would be only seven songs long. But not only that. He would also be releasing four other records for four artists that would also be only seven tracks long each, on which we would produce every track, working on them concurrently, and each album would come out one week after the other. It sounded insane. And unlikely. And arbitrarily pointless. Until it happened.

The seven creative lessons of #ProjectWyoming

I’m not gonna give you a run down on each album (and the less we talk about Nas, the better). But what happened during and after #ProjectWyoming was surprising and inspiring, so here are seven lessons I reckon any creative team can learn from it:

1. You are never just working on separate projects; you are creating a body of work. This feels like such a simple thought that had somehow never occurred to me… until I saw Kanye, at each release party, dancing like each separate record was as important as his own. We focus so much on the ‘important’ projects, the big budgets, the key clients… and then rush the little jobs, or even write them off entirely, mechanically going through the motions. But the reality is, each informs the other, and a strong portfolio beats a strong project any day.
2. It’s okay to fail. This follows on from the above, and is something we rarely tell ourselves. But when you focus on the body of work rather than the separate projects, failure becomes a necessary outcome to create. For example, ‘Ye’ is easily Kanye’s worst album, and not even the third best record of the project. And yet, as a long term fan, the context makes that entirely forgivable, even admirable.
3. There’s more than one way to make stuff. It’s easy to fall into a habit of tackling every brief the same way. And it makes sense to keep iterating and improving the creative process till you’ve honed it into a finely tuned machine. But what does that do to creativity? Sometimes you need to set arbitrary conditions to open up your brain to new ways of thinking.
4. Creativity can be small. I know we’re all caught in a never-ending existential crisis about working in an agency, and whether anything we do matters, and thus are always trying to make something huge and life-changing. But honestly, sometimes a singular sample on a 7-track album found mere weeks before release (see: the glorious first beat drop in Pusha-T’s ‘If You Know You Know’) is all you need to set the world on fire.
5. Trying new things is infectious. One of the breakout stars of the project is 070 Shake, the 20 year-old singer from New Jersey, who’s vocals on Kanye’s ‘Ghost Town’ and Pusha-T’s ‘Santeria’ are clear highlights. After working in Wyoming, she decided to scrap the album she’d been working on, saying the sessions had inspired her to “make music on a higher level”.
6. Diversity should extend to your collaborators, not just your talent. The best album (arguably) to come out of the project is the Teyana Taylor album. Now in the past, Kanye hasn’t worked with women anywhere near as much as dudes — but thanks to Wyoming, we now know how well Kanye’s early-era soul-heavy production compliments an album of expressive, old-school R’n’B.
7. Creativity should be about the process, not just the end result. It’s funny, but you can feel the weight of the project in each of these albums, the craft behind them, and it makes them better, and feel complete, even at 23 minutes or so each. We’re not factories, despite how much it might feel like that sometimes.

Compare that to the release of the biggest album of the year, Drake’s Scorpion — produced to within an inch of its life, preceded by a traditional marketing rollout, featuring expensive guests, 25 tracks to maximise streaming income and almost no surprises. I mean no shade, it’s super listenable (it’s designed that way), but which excites you more? Our job, at the most basic level, is to find new ways to communicate and do things. Surely that should start with the process, not just the ideas.

Tom McMullan, Associate Creative Director, Isobar Australia