Music fans around the world did not responded favourably to the news that Kanye West was planning to release an album in tribute to the late David Bowie, who passed away after a secret battle with cancer earlier this month.
As the Mirror reported, an unidentified source claimed the rapper was preparing an album honouring the Thin White Duke, spending hours in the studio covering Bowie classics and dropping rhymes over Bowie instrumentals.
Fans of the late icon weren’t exactly on board. No sooner did the news drop that fans began launching petitions attempting to stop the controversial producer and emcee from having anything to do with Bowie’s legacy.
Despite no confirmation any album was even happening, several petitions began circulating, some accruing just a few dozen signatures whilst others managed to yield thousands. 38 Degrees user Peter Piranha’s has 18,955 at the time of writing.
“David Bowie was one of the single most important musicians of the 20th and 21st century, it would be a sacrilege to let it be ruined by Kanye West,” Piranha writes on his campaign page, though it’s not clear exactly how one would stop West from recording the LP.
According to the unsubstantiated report, Kanye sees himself as a successor to Bowie in terms of musical innovation. “He is determined to carry on David’s work as a musical innovator. He says that the torch has been passed to him,” the insider said.
There was just one problem with all of this civic action: the whole thing was totally bogus. A rep for the rapper has told TMZ that no Bowie tribute album is in the works and never has been. The whole thing is just a UK tabloid preying on the knee-jerk tendencies of the Yeezy-hating public.
West himself has not commented on the reports or the petitions. Considering the rapper’s infamous cover of Queen’s ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’, it’s probably best he doesn’t go messing with Bowie – he doesn’t have the best track record when it comes to covers.
