Kanye West’s $57 million Malibu mansion is a pretty good metaphor for Kanye himself. Like the man now known as Ye, the Tadao Ando-designed beachside house was once imminently likeable, the epitome of artistic ingenuity.
Now, both Ye and his 4,000 square foot Malibu home have rotted from the inside out.
To be fair, Ye’s issues have always been there but the Malibu mansion could’ve stayed pretty. Let’s take a trip through time, back to when Ye purchased the house, to witness it decline over the past few years, dovetailing neatly with Ye’s public reputation (and, depending on how you feel about his recent music, his career).
In late September 2021, news broke that Ye acquired a Tadao Ando-designed oceanfront house in Malibu for about $57 million.
Before Ye purchased the mansion, it was listed for closer to $75 million. Shortly after, Ye listed his Wyoming ranch for sale (only $11 million!).
Shortly after, Kim Kardashian separately bought herself a gargantuan $70m house in Malibu, not so far from Ye’s new digs.
Ye’s enormous Malibu home boasted a brutalist façade typical of Ye’s tastes, giant windows overlooking the sea, and approximately 4,000 square feet, which is a pretty big footprint for Malibu.
In early 2022, as Ye and Kim Kardashian moved towards their inevitable divorce and he began prepping the much-delayed DONDA 2, Ye brought in contractors to oversee extensive remodeling plans for his Malibu palace, renovations that were destined to remain uncomplete perhaps forever.
By summer 2022, Ye’s Malibu house was entirely gutted and barren as repairs dragged on and on. The floor-to-ceiling windows facing the water had long been removed, leaving the rear of the building entirely open to the elements.
Ye was at one point spotted checking out the progress in the middle of summer, taking one of his many girlfriends at the time with him.
Weeks turned into months and, by the end of 2022, Ye had gone full white nationalist. Eventually, his anti-Semitic outbursts would lead nearly every business partner to officially drop both Ye and his YEEZY brand.
Here we are in April 2023 and Ye’s Malibu property (and his Sunday Service HQ in Los Angeles) has fallen into deep disrepair.
Neighbors told TMZ that they haven’t “seen anyone around for many months” and Ye’s Malibu mansion was “left to rot” given that no one is maintaining the structure in the meantime, despite all the outside advisors that Ye pulled on for the project.
The homes interior walls, exposed to the outside air, wind, and sand as they were, began to crumble and the metal railings are rusting, better as a respite for seagulls than would-be residents.
A Happy Hanukkah sign was even posted onto the Malibu house’s garage door around the time that Kanye was embracing hate speech and far-right conspiracy theorists.
While Ye’s Tadao Ando-designed home collapses into the sea, Kim Kardashian is happy at work with Ando himself, whom she met with during a recent trip to Japan.
Kardashian spoke with Ando about “a dream project we have been working on for the past two years,” promising that the pair would “break ground” imminently.
All this while the Ando-designed Malibu mansion lays decrepit and unused.
Don’t feel bad for Ye, though. Just because he presumably can’t afford to put more money into his multi-million-dollar mansion doesn’t mean he’s homeless — Ye and secret wife Bianca Censori have recently been staying at various top-dollar hideaways across the Los Angeles area, including the Malibu-based Nobu Ryokan, where rooms costs upwards of $2,000 per night. Ye’s still very rich, remember.
Ye also owns acres of land in Calabasas, his childhood home in Chicago, a house in Belgium, and plenty of other real estate so he could easily move somewhere else if he got tired of dwelling in a luxurious motel.
And, to top it all off, all of Ye’s problems are of his own making, his mental and public decline reflected in his rotting Malibu mansion. Suffice to say, it’s hard to sympathize.
