"Jesus Is King": 29-minute film about rapper Kanye West

Film Night in Manhattan: With giant bags of popcorn and a coke of coke, they make themselves comfortable for what is sure to be a great cinematic experience. Slowly the hall fills up, although many come later to save themselves advertising and trailers.

Only in this case there are neither ads nor trailers. The film begins without warning - and is also without warning, 29 minutes later, already over again, as the very last stragglers push themselves to their seats.

Laughter, smirk, credits, bye: What was that?

This question has often been asked by Kanye West. Burst Shows, Psychostress, Political Tirades, Escape to the Mountains: The rapper was drifting with hype and hubris for so long that he idolized his most loyal fans - and made it hard to notice his creativity.

So again. "Jesus Is King" is the name of his latest project: Rap meets Gospel, a much awaited, as always often postponed multimedia symbiosis of album, film and live events, flanked by cynical marketing.

The good news has long been hinted at, but now it is musically evidenced: West, 42, has found God - and he wants his disciples to follow him.

But is this again just a commercial mesh?

Too obvious the rip-off, too obvious how West himself trolls his believers. "I am undoubtedly the greatest human artist of all time," he said in an interview last week. All art, all an insider joke: With that, he was now also doing his dirty business with Donald Trump and his bizarre thoughts on slavery.

Why "Jesus Is King: A Kanye West Film" is the full title of a staged feast. Bad Boy with Bible: He preaches his new faith, but it remains: Kanye West.

photo gallery

11 pictures

The rapper as a priest: West has tried this fusion since 2004, when he recorded "Jesus Walks". "Kanye has made it okay to talk about faith," says John Legend in the new US documentary series, "Hip-Hop: The Songs That Shook America."

The film, which flanked the album this weekend, was also touted as a documentary to accompany West's Sunday Service: At these exclusive mini-gospel fairs, he performs here every few months.

But a concert film à la "Woodstock" is not. Although the Sunday Service Choir is the true star, even his first "Hallelujah" (from the new song "Selah") makes the cinema quake. But the singers rejoice without audience, in a dead volcanic crater in Arizona, which the artist James Turrell transformed into a cathedral of nature.

photo gallery

6 pictures

One spiritual chases the next, they echo and sound. Some are old, others sampled with the "Jesus Is King" track list. Inbetween Bible verses and moving optics: mountains, desert, clouds in fast motion, dandelions.

West appears only very late and only as a silhouette. Finally, he even sings, his baby Psalm in the crook of his arm, an acapella version of "Use This Gospel" - which also unifies the rap duo Clipse with the Schmalz saxophonist Kenny G.

Then: finish. The film, a hybrid of music video and visualized meditation, is terrificly produced, yet far too short to illustrate West's alleged conversion.

"Such a shit"

After all, he is two minutes longer than the - musically brilliant - album. Still, viewers are aghast at this Imax movie theater in Manhattan, who spent $ 18 per capita - what they could have seen "Joker" next door.

"Such a shit," one says to his friend, as the 29 minutes are around and their popcorn bags still full.

Being God's Son is a question of money. West's parallel redesigned online store offers matching T-shirts ($ 60), sweaters ($ 170), and caps ($ 45), and of course, "Kanye West" is written just as big on it as "Jesus Is King."

photo gallery

10 pictures

Marketing also shapes West's Sunday service. The VIP events - only private, then always public - are strange mixtures of piety and publicity. Katy Perry, Courtney Love, and Brad Pitt arrived, sometimes at Coachella, the Californian music festival, once in a black Methodist church in New York's borough of Queens, where West's clique drove local church members into the streets.

All this was in the end only a preliminary to the album and the movie. Likewise, the two charter buses, the Manhattan with "Jesus Is King" sonicated, and the appearance on the TV talk show "Jimmy Kimmel Live!", Where West proclaimed, "God has called me."

On Friday he walked through Midtown, wife Kim Kardashian at hand, watching TV cameras in tow. Fans screeched, police asked for selfies. If he finally plans a tour again? "Next time," he says.