In a recent GQ profile of Kim Kardashian West, the July cover star is out to dinner when she decides to call up her husband, Kanye West, to ask him what habits of hers, if any, annoy him. Never mind the answer that Kanye does, after “an excruciating amount of time,” ultimately provide; and never mind the 100 percent likelihood that Kanye West is the more annoying partner of the celebrity marriage in question. What I wanna know is: How did Kim Kardashian West get ahold of Kanye West, who answered her call immediately?
I ask this because Kanye West is famously averse to the latest smartphone technologies, and has on multiple occasions been rumored not to own a cell phone at all. Readers of his defunct KanyeUniverseCity blog will recall that, as of January 2008, the rapper’s favorite mobile phone was the Motorola Razr — a model which has been, coincidentally, the subject of comeback rumors. And while Spike Jonze once directed a bizarre skit in which Kanye mashes at those baby-teeth BlackBerry keys, I refuse to believe that Kanye West would own a BlackBerry Curve for personal use and public fashion. It’s a very Jay Z phone.
In an April segment from Kocktails With Khloé, Kanye West admitted that he purchased his first smartphone in 2011 for the express purpose of trolling and seducing Kim Kardashian with text messages. Reportedly, Kanye gave his number to Kim K. and no one else. As recently as 2012, the rapper French Montana described Kanye West as a “strictly email” kinda guy. Which is notable: Kanye West, a quasi-futurist pastor and millennial deity, is, in reality, so quaint that he only signed a two-year contract in the name of love; and even then, he forces guys like French Montana and Theophilus London to coordinate whereabouts via combustible telegrams and such. What a legend.
Ever since Kanye West started dressing like an Endor forest camo Sith in 2012, paparazzi have frequently caught footage of the rapper talking into a black iPhone. This is a charade.
When paparazzi spot him in the wild, I can only assume that the black iPhone that he’s inevitably clutching is, in fact, a prop, possibly borrowed from his 3-year-old daughter North West. (Alternate theory: his phone is fake because North keeps flushing the real one.) Kanye West can press this plastic facsimile of an iPhone to his cheek and mumble into it as pretext for avoiding discourse (or worse) with the local paparazzi. I don’t believe that Kanye West just happens to be six grocery items deep in conversation with Kim Kardashian West every time he hops in or out of an SUV in SoHo. I believe Kanye West stashes his true phone for the sake of discretion and misdirection. And in his private moments, I believe Kanye West utilizes some extravagant combination of satellite phones, Calabasas landlines, human couriers, and refurbished Motorola Razrs. All that, and a Sidekick LX. He knows what girls like.
