How much does it cost to feel like Pablo? For the thousands of fans at the 21 pop-up shops Kanye West opened worldwide last weekend, this meant racked credit debt, hours of practicing patience, and most likely a dead cellphone battery. Some shelled out hundreds of dollars, piece amounts ranging from $45 for a hat, $55 for a T-shirt, to $350 for a bomber jacket—all exclusive merchandise inspired by Ye’s recent The Life Of Pablo album as well as customized designs for the cities hosting them. For these same attendees, it meant patiently waiting in a line that wrapped around city blocks to enter the shop—with reports of the wait being up to 9 hours long—while others camped the night before opening. Coinciding on the same weekend, Frank Ocean dropped his long-awaited and highly anticipated studio album, Blond(e), by first impromptu scheduling “Boys Don’t Cry” pop-up shops in four cities last Saturday. At these pop-ups, a free 350-page zine was given out that included a physical copy of the album. It’s now reportedly being flipped and sold on eBay for $1000 dollars. And other artists—Justin Bieber, Drake, and Beyonce, to name a few—have already been aligning pop-up shops and tour merchandise to go hand-in-hand with their concert tours and album releases.
One copy of the book per person. For free. Frank Ocean’s Boys Don’t Cry Pop Up pic.twitter.com/xnyP7V8lkL
— Big Chai (@dharmicX) August 20, 2016