Kanye West has once again found himself in the crosshairs of controversy after he sported a shirt wearing an image of Varg Vikernes of the Norwegian death-metal band Burzum.
On Friday (January 19), JPEGMAFIA took to Instagram to post a few photos of himself alongside Yeezy, seemingly teasing a possible appearance on Ye and Ty Dolla $ign‘s Vultures album. “Can’t talk right now. doing hot girl shit,” he captioned the post.
Eagle-eyed fans couldn’t help but notice that West’s shirt featured a graphic representation of Vikernes, who stabbed a fellow death-metal superstar named Euronymous to death back in 1993. Vikernes’s viewpoints, which were often expressed in his music, included his beliefs in Odinism (modern German neopaganism) and “Esoteric Nazism” (which explored the more mystical aspects of Hitler’s antisemitic belief system).
In a 2005 blog post for Burzum’s official website, Vikernes even spelled out his beliefs in black-and-white, making clear that he was a practitioner of “Satanism, nationalism, racism or racialism, Paganism or Heathendom/Heathenism and even ‘nazism,’” although he would later backtrack on that.
In 2014, Vikernes was found guilty of “inciting racial hatred” by sympathizing with Anders Behring Breivik’s neo-Nazi terrorist attacks, which he claimed were part of a “Jewish conspiracy.”
Even the comments on JPEGMAFIA’s Instagram post reflected the confusion. “This ain’t it. Eff burzum into the Nazi sewer of infinity,” wrote one commenter, while another wrote, “Burzum’s music and views are trash so that makes sense for YE.”
Others, however, couldn’t make heads or tails of the photo. “this has to be the most confusing day for terminally online music nerds,” one commenter wrote.
The meet-up between JPEGMAFIA and Kanye West comes on the heels of JPEGMAFIA calling out Kanye in a Twitter rant earlier this week, which apparently got back to the College Dropout rapper.
“Also Kanye West, I respect [you], but the way [you] acknowledge n-ggas who have less to offer [you] than me makes me feel a way. I’m a scientist in the lab, a surgeon, bruh, and [you] skip over me for n-ggas that’s [letting] their baby mommas get fucked on camera. I wanna make money, fuck these n-ggas,” he wrote.
“You got 27 n-ggas tweaking hi-hats just to make some mid [music]. Talk to a real scientist, brother. Stop wasting time. This n-gga got 80 n-ggas in a room and [made] a Backstreet Boys song.”
He continued to seemingly take a subliminal shot at rival Freddie Gibbs: “And if [you] got a problem with me saying that about your baby momma, do something about it. I’m in LA, and I don’t run from no one.”
As for Vultures, Ty Dolla $ign promised that he and Ye still plan to drop the album soon even after suffering through multiple delays of rumored release dates late last year and into January.
