It's official: Yeezy has gone digital. Whiz kids—and self-described "Kanye futurists"—Sid Kandan and Carlos Roque have created Ye.i, an interactive app in which an avatar strongly bearing the likeness of Dr. West engages with you. "Little Ye," as they so affectionately refer to him, saunters into center-screen, and what he does kind of depends on you.
There's an updated news-ticker-like-link to Kanye's rare but always intriguing Twitter feed, and a bevy of classic interview quotes and bars. But there's no actual interface. Clicking his right hand twice sets him up for a dramatic, classic Kanye mic-drop moment. But otherwise? There's absolutely no way to control "Little Ye," much like the genius-rebel he's fashioned after. Poke and prod him aggressively and he may just exit, with a matching quote to express his displeasure. Then again, he may just come back if you deserve it, and give you a reassuring fistbump too. In the background, re-composed, computerized instrumentals of songs like "Only One" play upon the app's opening and closing. Sid and Carlos, who work at Facebook when not developing Ye.i, have no plans to monetize the app though they will take its artificial intelligence to even higher levels in the coming months. After playing with the app for a good while, we hopped on the phone with the duo to get some more details on the app, why they chose to make it, and where they hope to take it.
Frazier Tharpe is a staff writer at Complex. Follow him @The_SummerMan.
Why choose Kanye as your A.I. avatar?
Sid: We've been huge Kanye West fans for years now, and respect all his work from his music to his products. Kanye’s message of inspiring creators motivated us to build a product that he would be proud of. Carlos and I have both been fortunate enough to be often teamed coming up and developing products, but we wanted to take this as an opportunity and a challenge to develop and create a product on our own. Not just any product, but something [Kanye] would be proud of. We were also hoping that this would lead into the opportunity to work on other cool projects with him. He mentioned redesigning water bottles. We’ve actually started working on a water bottle technology to help you stay hydrated by tracking water/Gatorade consumed. We would love to share that with him or license it to him as an edge if he comes out with his own model. Selfishly, Kanye and I have the same birthday, and it’s been a life dream to throw a joint birthday party with him, so this is a cool opportunity to maybe achieve that dream.
How close would you say you are now?
Sid: I guess we'll see after this interview comes out.
Is every single Ye bar loaded in here or just his best and most recognizable? If the latter, how did you go about choosing which?
Sid: There are over 250 lyrics, or snippets rather, in the app. That was just me sitting down and thinking about all the Kanye lyrics that came to mind. My friends always tease me about knowing so many Kanye lyrics. I wish I could've allocated that brain space to remember other stuff back when I was in school, but I'm glad it's finally coming to use now.
Carlos: We classified the lyrics by placing them into categories like frustration, happiness, etc. If you long-press or interact with it aggressively, we’ll show you a corresponding lyric, but if you play with him we’ll show you a playful lyric. We also made sure to remove any mature lyrics. One of the main things we had guiding us was, if North were to play with this app, would it be appropriate?
Walk me through the app. What's the ideal way to interact with it? How should people use it daily?
Carlos: The design of it, we wanted to make it minimal like Rick Rubin's Yeezus approach, keeping it raw and functional. We also wanted to make it fun and light, all the while having no user interface, which is somewhat unique. Often people are so inundated with buttons and switches, but we wanted to keep it simple. That might lead to a little frustration on both ends, but [Little Kanye will] remind you he too is a god and crash the app if things get too aggressive. But if you want to keep interacting with him you'll start picking up on the ways to do that, whether it's the fistbump or getting a laugh out of the Daily Dose of Kanye, which is that clever lyric or charming animation of mic dropping when you need it. In an ideal world, imagine you're in a meeting and feeling disconnected, you can just pull the app out and get a funny reaction like him walking off-screen or fistbumping him.
Sid: I would love to see a video of [the actual] Kanye fistbumping "Little Kanye." Or people pulling out the app when they need someone to drop the mic, or need the perfect Kanye lyric for the moment.
We jOked about not giving him red eyes in case he turns evil. —Sid Kandan
Are there any plans to make it interactive like Siri, where you can actually speak to it?
Carlos: In the coming weeks—we recently just partnered with Ali Graham, a fantastic, professional Kanye illustrator whom you’ve covered before. He's the author of Lil' Ye and the Hip Hop Hoorays, and all of his stuff is at lil-ye.tumblr.com. We've partnered with him, and we're going to have new animations, new features, new ideas. We've had the pleasure of talking to him a few times now, in the last week, and we've basically just been thinking of different approaches and different animations, which we're hoping to get out in the near future.
Sid: The project actually started off with the room interface in the clip. I'd made some previous room interfaces, like a DJ Roomba that would follow you around and play songs, or an alarm clock that made you do jumping jacks to wake up, but they just didn't have the same character and the same pizzazz as Kanye West. He talks about being a shot of espresso in the morning to wake you up, well, we're helping him get there. The specs for the room interface are not yet readily available to the public unfortunately. When they become more available is when we'll start to push them out for the interface. Until then we'll include new features like the alarm clock. We also recomposed a few Kanye songs. I figured out how to play them on the piano and with a different meaning. For example, in "Only One" he says, "As I lay me down to sleep," so we rewrote it on a glockenspiel to sound more like a lullaby. Speaking to Kanye and adding natural language processing is something we'd want to add in the future as well. There were a lot of Android and iOS issues we ran into while making this app. We joked if Apple or Google would ever guess that these issues would’ve been surfaced and resolved because of a cartoon Ye app. For that we say, "Thank you and you’re welcome."
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Do you hope to one day make this into a completely interactive sidekick like Jarvis in Iron Man?
Sid: Yea, I mean, that would be a really cool world. It already exists—in my room. Actually coming home and having this little dude say, "Ever, ever Mr. Kandan's in the building," is really rewarding. Having him turn off the lights when I say, "Ye, set my alarm for 6 a.m.," and having him play a lullaby and turn off the lights then waking me up with a quote like, "I had a dream I could buy my way to Heaven, when I awoke I spent that on a necklace." That's an awesome interface I'd never experienced before, and we'd definitely love to go further in that direction.
When making the app and these updates, do you ever think of cautionary tale A.I. movies? Is this Skynet? Yeezy-Net?
Sid: When we were creating it we joked about not giving him red LEDs [for eyes], in case he turns evil. I can imagine a showdown between Dr. West—it's doctor now!—and Ye.i, like Iron Man and Ultron.
What's your favorite Kanye album? Favorite song?
Carlos: I’m a visual person, so the accompanying movie/video for My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy put it at the top for me. I think Sid got sick of me asking him to play the piano key intro for "Runaway" or include it in the app. It ignites that image of him sitting at the dinner table, or at the piano in his tux with the ballet dancers running out. Favorite song right now is "Wolves," partially because of his SNL performance with Vic Mensa and Sia. From the song production to the contacts and stage, it set it apart.
Sid: It really depends on what I’m currently going through in life. When we first submitted [the iOS app], we were rejected by Apple multiple times, and I found myself relating to the emotions and struggles Kanye expressed in Yeezus. Historically, I love the "Power (Remix)" with Jay Z and Swizz Beatz. I'm loving the stuff he's doing with Big Sean like "All Your Fault." "White Dress," I want to play that at my wedding. So it really depends on my stage of life. Right now I’m excited about launching, and thus relating a lot to the joy and excitement in The College Dropout, especially "Last Call."
What are your hoping for from SWISH?
Sid: Ben Horowitz is another hero of mine. I’ve had a life-long dream of appearing on a track with Kanye and Ben Horowitz. Hope it’s not too late and could make that happen for SWISH. I’ve already started writing down lyrics for a song where I start a verse about the grind and creating a first product, and pass it to Ye to talk about making it. Ye then passes it to Ben about enabling others to make it. Even if I don’t make it on the track, I would love to play a small part in helping a joint West/Horowitz masterpiece enter the world.
